CHAPTER NINE
CLAIRE
Everything unfolded in a flash. The opening notes of my favorite song ignited me, and I leaped onto the dance floor with my crew in tow. As the pulsating beat of “WAP” by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion filled the air, a guy approached with a charming smile.
“Hey beautiful, having fun?” he asked, his tone casual and inviting.
I met his gray eyes with a mischievous smirk. “I am,” I replied, snapping my hips to the beat.
“Let’s show everyone who the star is tonight,” he continued with a grin, then commanded, “Lean your head back.”
Buoyed by the lingering buzz of my last glass of Louis XIII, I arched my neck, ready for a playful limbo. He tilted the amber liquor over my open lips. The smooth cognac slipped down my throat just as a surge of tension swept over us. Vino appeared out of nowhere, snatching the bottle from the man’s hand. The cool liquid slid down my cleavage, jolting me upright. Vino’s roar cut through the music: “Back the fuck up!”
Vix slid in front of me, forming a barrier. “Get back,” he ordered.
Nearby, another man, strikingly similar to Vino, yelled, “There’s nothing to see here. Drinks on me.” His words somehow calmed the murmuring crowd.
My Vino wasn’t the calm man I’d come to know. In that split second, he transformed into a force of raw fury, unleashing a barrage of blows that left the guy reeling. It was brutal, relentless, and I doubted I could have stopped him if his brother hadn’t intervened.
Vino approached me. “Are you okay?”
A red bruise was forming on his cheek, though I hadn’t seen him get hit. “What the hell is happening, Vino?” I demanded.
His actions stirred memories of a man from my past, and I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment.
When my assistants crowded around, their voices laced with worry, I opened my eyes and smiled. “Yes, go back to the table. I need to talk to Vino.”
“The gangster,” I overheard Teff, one of my reliable models, exclaimed.
I shot him a glare, prompting him to turn and head back to our table.
“Claire, this is my brother Vincent,” Vino stated. “Everyone calls him Vince.”
A smooth smile lifted his bearded cheeks. “It’s good to finally meet you, Claire.”
In this moment I realized I didn’t know Vino at all.
“Nice to meet you, Vince.”
I glared at Vino. “Who are you?”
“We already had this discussion earlier. I’m a ruthless businessman,” he started.
“Very ruthless. Bashing in heads in clubs,” Vince muttered.
Vino’s eyes darkened as he peered at his brother. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m going to rip the band aid off.” Vince smirked.
“I’m Vincent and this is Vino Romano from New Jersey.”
Vino placed up a hand, halting his brother’s words. “We control the city of Hackensack.”
I squinted. “Like the mayor and deputy mayor?” I asked.
“No. We’re in the middle of a war right now between New Jersey and New York. Your Al Capone statement was pretty spot on,” Vino added.
I visibly swallowed. “This is what you wanted to tell me tomorrow?”
“Yes, in the privacy of my home. Not in the middle of a nightclub,” Vino gritted out.
“First, the Bratva,” I murmured, my voice barely audible. Now the mafia. God, I had to be a magnet for bad men.
Tears threatened, but I swallowed them down. “Let me guess. The only way I’ll be safe is with you?”
“Yes,” he replied, his tone resolute.
“Was the man talking to me here to k—” but Vino cut me off.
“No,” he said firmly. “He was with someone else. But he dared to flirt with you and for that, he had to pay.”
I swallowed hard. “You were serious when you said you’d do something about my ex?”
His hand moved to caress my cheek, sending a jolt of warmth and lust through me despite the danger etched in his eyes.
I held his gaze, my heart in a tug-of-war. “I’ll go with you,” I said, voice low and determined, “but know there can never be an ‘us’.” The moment I yanked away from his touch, a sudden chill ran through me. I craved the warmth of his embrace even as I pushed it away.
I stalked over to my table, sinking into the comfort of another cognac. The man I was falling for was a fucking mafia boss.
Teff knocked my shoulder with his. “How are you doing?”
“I don’t know. He’s, he’s…” I couldn’t get the words out.
“An alleged mafia boss,” Teff whispered over the music.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“My cousin Cylinder works for Vino’s friend Nick Pitucco.”
“And you’re just saying something now?” I slurred.
“In our world, we don’t broadcast that information. But now that you’re in this world, you might as well know he’ll do anything to protect you. I heard he was a forever bachelor. I’m not sure how you got his attention.”
“Teff, he called me his soon to be wife.”
Teff’s eyes widened. “He’s claimed you. That’s why he beat the shit out of that guy. He won’t let another man get next to you.”
I arched a brow. “Yet, here you are still talking to me without repercussions.”
“Oh, no. I sent my cousin a text earlier. He talked to Xavier Vino’s right hand. I’m in the clear.”
This couldn’t be my life again. I chuckled and threw my fists in the air. “Let’s get fucked up.”
Those at the table threw their hands up and chanted, “Get fucked up.”
After that last drink, it was time for a bathroom break. Where was Porsha? I scanned V.I.P. and noticed Porsha talking to Vince. She appeared happy, yet nervous at the same time. He stared at her like she was the only woman in the club. Roleta stood near, asking a ton of questions about Vince, even though she saw Porsha talking to him. My poor assistant worked around the clock for me. Clearly, she needed to take a break and get dicked down because the way she looked at Vino earlier and now Vince, I was getting ready to check her.
I stared at Vince for a beat. I knew almost nothing about him. Nothing real anyway. Until today. He and his brother were the mafia bosses of Hackensack, New Jersey. And now Vince was showing interest in my friend. Was she ready to get wrapped up in a mafia boss’s world? It looked like I hadn’t been given a choice. Vino’s possessive ass roped me into his life. I had to get out of his world.
An hour later, I was whisked out the back door and assisted into the backseat of the SUV.
“I want to sit in the last row. Alone,” I added as I reached for the lever.
“No,” Vino growled, picking me up and planting my ass on the seat.
I folded my arms across my chest. “You should take me to my condo.”
Vino chuckled. “No.”
My eyes swept over him.
God, he looked so fucking sexy.
He reached across my body and buckled me in.
Ignore the horny brain, Claire. Do you realize you agreed to fuck him without a barrier? His dick game is top tier.
Knowing we’re only fucking each other sounds good to me.
Well, it sounded good until I found out he was a mafia boss. Vino, the ruthless businessman, didn’t have plans of letting me go. I figured I could work around that. But he wasn’t a regular businessman. He was a mafia boss. So I was a man’s property, again.
How would I get away from Vino? Would I have to seek help from Gia again?
“You changed suits.” I stared at Vino under hooded eyes.
“I couldn’t walk around covered in blood,” he muttered.
I pushed down my anger. I’d fuck this man’s brains out over the weekend. Why not get some extra orgasms out of it? Then somehow, I’d escape afterwards.
His cologne curled under my nose and slid up my skirt, tapping my pussy. Vino was making it impossible to keep my hands off him.
I slid my hand into his suit jacket, and my jaw dropped when my fingers felt a gun holster and Glock beneath it.
Drawing my hand back, I met his gaze. “I don’t know you at all.”
“Claire, you will. We’ll use this weekend to get to know each other,” he confirmed.
“You want to get to know each other, fine. Hopefully, this story will help you understand why I will never settle down.”
I blew out a breath. “When I was in high school, I dated a boy who was sweet. My friends envied me and called him the perfect boyfriend. When we went to college, our campuses were only about a half-hour apart, so we met up frequently. Then, out of the blue, he began to act differently. He became irritable and withdrew from me.I couldn’t understand what I’d done wrong.”
A rumble sounded in Vino’s chest. He was getting upset.
His fists curled on his thighs.
“I’ll skip right to the part where my world was turned upside down.” I blinked a couple of times, then continued.
“My boyfriend had bodyguards like you do. I was told his father was a powerful businessman.” I shook my head.
“I’d been in a committed relationship with this man for years. I thought I knew him. In our last year of college, he told me he had to move to Russia and wanted me to move with him. I told him I couldn’t. During sex, he lost control and choked me, his anger palpable and terrifying.”
Vino looked like he was about to pop a blood vessel.
“One night, I went to his condo to confront him because I hadn’t heard from him. He had company. A woman. She was naked. My life turned pitch black dark.”
I told Vino how my ex had forced me to snort lines of coke, making me watch as he fucked another woman right before my eyes, then forcing me to fuck him afterward. I ignored the anger simmering in Vino’s gaze as I continued.
“I found out that Ivan Sokolov was with the Russian Bratva. Can you believe that?” I closed my eyes briefly.
“He tells me he’s obsessed with me and that even though he has a fiancée, he has to be with me. He said their marriage would be nothing more than a family arrangement. He planned to haul me off to Russia against my will and make me his mistress. The next morning, his fiancée kidnapped and tortured me. The other woman Ivan had sex with had been brought to the warehouse, too. She killed her right before my eyes. I just knew she’d kill me next. Ivan tried talking her down. She shot me. If Ivan hadn’t intervened…” I tugged at my hair in disbelief.
“I wanted nothing to do with him. Ivan ordered his men to drag me back to my dorm. I fled with a swollen face and a bandaged arm. Thank God for my friend Gia in Italy; she gave me a new identity and helped me transfer to New York University.” I threw my hands up in exasperation.
“I told you earlier I couldn’t protect you. Little did I know I’d have nothing to worry about. But now, Polina, the bitch who is Ivan’s wife has found me. It’s only a matter of time before Ivan comes for me.”
“Stop the car,” Vino barked, his tone laced with an unyielding ferocity that sent a surge of panic racing through my veins. My heart hammered out a desperate staccato as I wondered if he was about to put me out?
Xavier pulled over, and in a heartbeat, Vino leapt out. He lifted his head to the night sky and roared, “Fuck!” The sound reverberated in my ears, matching the frantic pounding in my chest.
Stepping out of the vehicle, I murmured, “Vino, I should go. I can get an Uber.”
But his command was immediate and unyielding. “Come here.”
“You’re scaring me,” I murmured, the tremor in my voice betraying my fear.
His piercing, sorrowful blue eyes locked with mine. “Now, Claire,” he growled.
Dazed by the lingering haze of intoxication, I stumbled toward him. His large, calloused palms cradling my face filled me with an unexpected sense of safety.
“You will watch me rip his fucking heart out of his chest,” he snarled, his words dripping with a raw intensity that vibrated through the core of my being.
“Men aren’t supposed to harm women and children. It’s not the Italian mafia way, anyway.” His touch sent shivers cascading over me.
“Vino, I can’t let you do that for me,” I managed to say, but he was relentless.
“You’re my fucking woman,” he spat, his claim igniting a fierce, forbidden heat that made every fiber of my skin tingle with desire and terror intertwined. I was his. Why did it feel good knowing that?
“Vino, I’m not.”
“Even if you weren’t my woman, I’d still kill that motherfucker,” he declared, his blue eyes now icy pools of wrath. “Your ex, Ivan, is holed up at his compound in Russia.”
A hesitant relief washed over me; the weight of his promise steadied my shaking shoulders. My breath caught. Vino was really hunting down my ex, the man who had haunted my every nightmare.
“He killed innocent people because he couldn’t let me go. I see their faces every night in my dreams,” I whispered, my lower lip quivering with both fear and grief.
As I recalled the dorm attendant who had vanished after I fled. Deep down, I knew he killed her too.
I longed for a swig of liquor to dull the memory. Instead, Vino pulled me into his arms. “I will bring that bastard to his knees, Claire,” he vowed.
He held me, allowing the flood of my sobs to wrack my body with raw emotion. I hadn’t given anyone a play-by-play of the horrors that happened in my past until now.
“Come on, let’s clean your face. We’re almost at the safe house.”
Climbing into the SUV, I joked to his bodyguards, “You guys probably think I’m crazy.”
“They don’t,” Vino interjected firmly. “No man who works for me would ever think it’s excusable to beat or rape a woman. My men will lay down their lives to protect you and they want Ivan dead as much as I do.”
“That’s the fucking truth,” Xavier snarled as he barreled down the expressway.
Hearing that, my heart warmed. They would protect me, and they shared my thirst for vengeance. At that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder who was I becoming