Epilogue
Stella
I roll toward Tommy as he opens his arms to me. I snuggle closer to him, careful not to press against his scar.
“Morning, bambi.”
“Morning. What do you feel like doing today?”
“Little one, you know exactly what I want to do.”
I widen my legs to make room for him. I’m still wet from when he came in me last night. He slides in with ease.
“Fuck, Tommy.”
“I know, baby girl. Fuck. You always feel so divine.”
We move together as he massages my breast then twists my nipples. Morning sex is always rough. We joke that it’s invigorating and gets the morning going. We start the day reminding each other how much we want to be together.
I grasp the headboard as he pushes back to kneel. I wrap my legs around his waist, and he lifts my hips off the bed. I push my heels into the mattress, raising my ass farther until I’m resting on only my shoulders. He reaches around me and spanks me.
“That’s for coming before I gave you permission last night.”
He spanks me again.
“That’s for making me come too fast last night.”
He spanks me a third time but says nothing.
“What was that one for?”
“Because I can.”
He pounds into me over and over until I’m begging to come. I’m sweating and digging my fingers into the wood over my head. He brings me to the edge over and over. I love it and hate it at the same time, and he knows that.
“Come, bambi.”
“Yes, Sir.”
I detonate. I clench my legs around him and strain to prolong the ecstasy. It’s pure bliss when I come with Tommy buried inside me. He doesn’t slow as I come down from that high. He pushes me into my second orgasm only moments later, grinding his pubic bone against my clit.
“Come, Stella. I can’t last.”
“Yes, Sir.”
He leans forward on his forearms, and I watch the muscles in his shoulders, chest, and abs flex with each movement. He’s the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. I let go of the headboard and score my nails down his abs before he presses our bodies together, and we kiss. We come together.
He rolls over and brings me with him. I love how he can do that. I love how he can wrap his arm around my waist, scoop me up, and flip us when he wants to be playful or extra dominant. Right now, I curl up around him and rest my head on his chest.
“Bambi, what do you want to do on your last day as a bachelorette?”
“Mmm. There’s this really hot pool boy I’m thinking about having a fling with before the wedding tomorrow. He’s got wavy dark hair, eyes so dark they often look like onyx, rippling muscles everywhere, and this badass scar he got rescuing a damsel in distress.”
“You practically make him sound like a god.”
“He once played Cupid.”
“A Roman god. Fitting.”
I laugh, and he groans as my pussy tightens around his softening cock. I sit up and rock my hips. He clasps them and guides me to keep going.
“Does that make me Psyche?”
“Yes. You are the goddess of my soul.”
“You say the sweetest things. I love you.”
“Just like I love you.”
It’s been two months since Mano died, and I moved in with Tommy.
We justified that by saying he needed a nurse while he was still in critical condition.
He came round long enough to speak to his mom and my parents.
But when Dr. Stansted arrived and examined him, his heart rate and blood pressure plummeted.
We had a couple of those moments during the week that followed him getting shot.
Dr. Stansted agreed it was prudent to have an ICU nurse with him.
It was two and half weeks before I signed off on us doing more than kissing.
I refused to do anything to elevate his blood pressure or heart rate since it wasn’t as steady as I wanted.
Nearly a month to the day, we went to his club again.
He took me into the VIP room and had his way with me.
Over and over and over. We couldn’t get enough of each other, the sex getting better each time as we discovered what we like together.
Now, we can’t keep our hands off each other.
The day after our first trip back to the club, he took me on his sailboat.
And by sailboat, I mean his yacht. Apparently, he calls it a sailboat because it’s the smaller of his two.
We went to Nantucket and checked into a quaint B&B.
I was completely oblivious to what he later claimed was anxiousness.
I thought he just likes the beach and was eager to get onto the sand.
It shocked the shit out of me to find a cabana with fairy lights and a double lounger.
There was a table with a veritable feast and my favorite wine.
There were also two bottles of the same beer we drank at the pub.
He led me over it and dropped to one knee.
I was nodding before he opened his mouth.
I didn’t notice how exquisite my ring is until at least fifteen minutes after he asked.
I love it, but it could have been one of those lollipop rings for all I care.
I was too busy repeating myself, saying yes in between kisses.
Fortunately, the cabana curtains were already drawn on three sides.
If anyone had walked past, they would’ve seen some Rated X shit going on.
We went skinny dipping and stayed out there until nearly midnight. His men ensured our privacy.
It hasn’t all been bliss, but pretty fucking close to it.
“After you’re done ravishing the pool boy, what would you like to do?”
“Hmm. I have this super fine fiancé who I’m not allowed to sleep with tonight because it’s bad luck for him to see me tomorrow before I walk down the aisle. I thought about tying him up and having my way with him.”
He cocks a brow, and I can’t keep a straight face.
The one time he agreed to submitting to me, he indulged me for five minutes.
I tied him to this bed and teased him by stripping then kneeling above him, my hands on the headboard.
I kept leaning forward, swinging my tits in his face.
I’d bring my nipples to his lips but pull away before he could touch them.
But the moment I twisted to grab the blindfold, he was free of the binding.
I put up no fight and loved every minute of his revenge.
“What do you want to do, mio amato?” My beloved.
He still calls me bambi when we’re in private.
He let it slip that day he was shot, but he swears Frank and Santi will never repeat it.
I believe him. It would humiliate me, but it would betray him.
I’ve come up with various pet names for him.
Some are endearing like mio amato, but others are funny like biscottino.
Little cookie. He earned that after he ate a dozen freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in the time it took me to go up to change before we headed to his mother’s.
He swore he didn’t know I planned to take them with me.
“Hide from our families for a few more hours before going to the rehearsal.”
My family went back to Chicago once we were certain Tommy was out of danger and after his men swore their allegiance to him.
His men were glad to no longer serve Mano.
I feared how the transition would go, but it was like a lead weight lifted from everyone’s shoulders.
Tommy and his brothers—that’s how he thinks of Santi rather than brother-in-law—discovered the full extent of Mano’s perfidy when they discovered bank accounts he’d hidden under six different fake names.
It surprised me that I missed Aria and Gia as much as I did at first. But they were amazing to me while Tommy was so ill.
They kept me company, ran errands, cooked meals, did laundry.
We’re closer than we’ve ever been, and it’s stayed that way.
I’m also growing close to my future sisters-in-law.
I’ve already gotten used to thinking of them as sisters.
Victoria is older than Tommy, and she’s a softer version of their mother.
She takes no shit from anyone. She terrifies her younger brothers, which still amuses Santi. They’re a match made in heaven.
I’m still trying to understand how Frank married the New York Irish mob boss’s niece. From what I’ve heard it was Romeo and Juliet, except Frank and Kathleen O’Rourke threatened to turn their knives and poison on Mano and Liam O’Rourke if they tried to stand in their way.
She’s stunning with deep russet hair and emerald-colored eyes.
She’s a fucking firecracker. She has the dirtiest sense of humor I’ve ever heard, but you would never know when you meet her.
She keeps it away from Beatrice, and I don’t think even Frank knows just how off-color some of her jokes are.
She has Tori and me howling within five minutes of being around her.
Beatrice.
She told Tommy that there was shit he didn’t know, and boy was there.
She called her three children and their respective partners over to her house right after the men pledged their fealty to Tommy.
Mano’d been threatening Beatrice for years.
That didn’t phase her until Luigi started spying on Tommy and me.
Frank and Santi admitted they knew where Tommy and I sneaked off to the first couple of weeks.
They’d done it because they were worried for our safety. Rightly so.
Beatrice revealed documents Mano sent copies of that would have put Tommy and Frank away for life in federal prison.
He’d been keeping them for a rainy day. It was once he started sending Beatrice screenshots of messages with inmates from all across the country, swearing to kill Tommy and Frank once they went away, that she realized the extent of her brother’s depravity.
She showed us the images and let us read the messages. It was a lot more than just yeah, we’ll off them. It went into grotesque detail about the torture they’d arrange. It would have been guards and inmates alike. Then they outlined how they’d kill both of them.
Beatrice said she searched for each inmate’s records and discovered these were men who were never Gen Pop. They were all in super-max prisons, so she knew Mano had a way to not only get Tommy and Frank convicted but to ensure they went to the worst prisons.
She didn’t know me well enough to trust me with that information.
She would never share anything like that with people outside the family, so that meant not telling my parents or Edoardo.
She was certain I wouldn’t give up Tommy unless he told me to walk away.
Since neither she nor I could communicate with Tommy and his brothers while they were gone, she couldn’t warn Tommy about Mano’s plans.
She wanted me to hate her enough that I’d dread having her at a mother-in-law and to make me think she’d make my life miserable if I didn’t marry Mano.
She admitted she liked me, but she would have sacrificed me in a second to save her sons.
Her gaze locked with mine after she said that.
It was like I was frozen in place. The next thing she said was an oath to protect me just like she would Frank, Kathleen, Tori, Santi, and Tommy.
He hadn’t proposed yet, but everyone knew that’s where things were headed.
She named me her third daughter, and I haven’t doubted for a moment since that she has no limits to what she’ll do to protect her children, by blood or by marriage.
When we finished that meeting, Tommy and I stayed behind.
She called my parents and apologized for flirting with my father.
She’d done it to push them away. She couldn’t afford either of them noticing too much about Mano or how he was running the family.
She didn’t want Papa and Mano getting close because she didn’t trust her brother not to kill my father.
She knew the easiest way to make Mama and Papa want to keep the Vizzinis at arm’s reach was to flirt with another woman’s husband.
My marriage to Mano was always a political match.
My parents never wanted it, but it was never about just them or me.
It was about what was best for our branch.
Papa hates it, but he was born into his role.
He shoulders the full weight of protecting and providing for the families who rely on him.
My parents had already explained to me that out of their four children, I was the one who took duty and service to heart.
It’s why nursing appeals to me beyond the science part.
It’s a way for me to give back to the community since the Mafia takes so much from it.
They knew I was the only one of their daughters who could be selfless enough to serve our family and another one.
A lot of heavy shit came out that day. That night, Tommy and I went home and watched a movie. I sat on his lap the entire time, and neither of us could bare to be away from each other for more than a few minutes. We simply held each other until morning.
“Earth to Stella.”
“Huh? Sorry. My mind wandered.”
“I know. I guess you already find me boring. I thought I had at least fifty years before we got to that stage.”
“No. I was just reflecting on how we got here. Not only being in bed together every night but getting married tomorrow. I couldn’t be happier.”
“Me neither. How about we drive out to the Cape for the day?”
“And get some chowda?”
“You might pass for a Bostonian soon.”
“Or we could pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd.”
“Okay. We don’t all sound like that. I’ll give you chowda instead of chowder, but most of us can say our r’s.”
He tickles me, and I giggle. I squirm away from him and roll off the bed. He’s on my heels as I dash into the bathroom.
“Keep making fun of me, bambi, and I’ll tie you to the bed until it’s time for the rehearsal.”
“Promise?”
He wraps his arms around me and swoops in for a kiss. The Cape’ll be there another day.