Chapter 18
Lorenzo
There was a headache digging like an ice pick behind my eye.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of a report from my insider with the Irish outfit.
The O’Connelly’s wanted a piece of the empire I had built with the casino, and they weren’t quiet about it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were behind my light shipments.
But I couldn’t focus on the report for fuck all because of this damn headache piercing through my orbital socket. I had already thrown the letter opener on my desk at Damian once today. I had missed on purpose, but he was still pouting about it.
“Boss, you have got to snap out of it.”
Elio was the only person who didn’t have enough sense to leave me alone. “Do you think if I tried hard enough, I could rip your tongue out through your nose?” My cousin actually laughed. The man had a goddamn death wish. “Go make yourself useful and check the warehouses. Take Damian with you.”
That wiped the laughter off his face. Good. “I checked them yesterday. The men doing intake know to check everything thoroughly; we haven’t gotten any calls about problems.”
“Go check in person, all right? Triple check everything.”
Elio scowled. “Is this about what happened with Isabella?”
Damian’s head snapped up. He looked at Elio like he’d grown a second, much dumber head. “Elio, drop it.”
“Why should I?” he demanded. “He’s been pouting like a goddamn toddler for a week because he’s too stubborn to—” I smashed my fist into Elio’s face.
His nose gave way under my fist, but he didn’t scream the way I had hoped he would.
Instead, as blood poured down his face, he grinned at me. “Do you feel better, cugino?”
I nearly hit him again, but then I realized he was right. I did feel better. I rolled my neck, feeling all of my muscles in my shoulders pull. “I still want you to go to the warehouse.”
“Imprecazione,” he swore, flicking his eyes over to Damian. “Are you driving or what?”
Damian glared at him. “Like I would let you behind the wheel of a car that I’m in.”
They headed for the door, bickering all the while. “Can we—?”
“No, I am not taking you to fucking Starbucks.”
The office door shut behind them, and I was left in silence. Normally, it would be a blessing. Today, the quiet pressed in on me like a vise, and I had to get out of my office immediately.
I went to the kitchen and found Amalia prepping for dinner. She rolled her eyes when she saw me. She hadn’t spoken to me more than absolutely necessary in the last week. “You’re just going to keep ignoring me?”
“Are you going to pull your head out of your own ass and apologize to Isabella?”
There was no way in hell that was going to happen.
Beyond taking her to and from doctor’s appointments in the near future, I hadn’t planned on interacting with her at all.
Once she delivered, I planned to put the baby with one of my relatives in New Jersey until it could be sent to boarding school.
Then I could wash my hands of this whole fiasco.
“I don’t need to apologize.”
Amalia looked at me, and something about her gaze pierced into my very soul. “She told me that you had sex with her.”
God, now she was going to be on my ass like Cristian. “When has my sex life ever been any of your business?”
Amalia stopped dredging chicken and turned so that she was actually facing me. “Don’t make me say it,” she said. “We’ve summoned her ghost one too many times recently. I don’t think it’s doing anyone any good.”
“I didn’t have sex with her because of that.”
She scoffed. “I don’t believe that for a second, and neither would anyone else.” Amalia turned back to her breading station, clearly dismissing me.
I wasn’t one to tolerate disrespect, but her words dug into my chest and wouldn’t leave me alone. Goddamnit. I turned and left the kitchen. The walk to Isabella’s room should have taken a minute, tops, but I stretched that walk for almost five and stood outside her door for another ten.
Her door wasn’t locked, but she had remained grounded, so to speak. I turned the knob, and she barely looked up from where she was sitting by her window, looking out.
“It’s too early for dinner,” she said, turning her head. I watched her body freeze when she saw me, and then she rolled her shoulders and forced herself to relax. “Do I have an appointment with Dr. Coleman?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t actually called him yet. Every time I thought to, I couldn’t make myself dial the number. “We’re going on a drive.”
She stared at me, mouth agape. “The hell we are.”
Once a brat, always a brat. But it was good to see her attitude flare up again. I wanted fewer reminders of Sienna, not more. “Get up and get changed, or I’ll put you over my shoulder.”
Isabella stood. My eyes landed on the yellow marks that encircled her throat; the bruising was healing, then. “If you touch me, I’ll scream.”
It wasn’t great as far as threats went, but I backed up, hands raised. “You have five minutes to get ready,” I said. “Hurry.”
Some twenty minutes later, she was in the passenger seat of my Bugatti, shaking. “Where are you taking me?” she asked. It was the first time she’d spoken since I led her out of her room.
“This isn’t the car I would use if I was going to kill you,” I said, and Isabella’s head snapped almost painfully as she looked my way.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Because you were thinking it,” I said, weaving through traffic.
She didn’t protest, which meant my hunch was right.
“This is a fifteen-million-dollar car,” I said, and her eyes bulged.
She looked around like she was suddenly afraid to touch anything.
“Everyone notices this car. I would sooner commit a crime directly in front of a cop than kill someone in it.”
“That’s...oddly soothing,” she said, and her shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.”
I grunted in response and kept driving. I had a fifteen-minute window I had to hit to pull this off, and that required some offensive driving on my part.
Isabella didn’t try to keep the conversation going.
She contented herself with subtly pushing every button around her to see what it did.
When she turned on the seat air conditioning, she let it go for a few minutes and then switched it off with a frown.
“That was invasive as hell,” she said, more to herself than to me, and squirmed in her seat.
Don’t think about her pussy, I told myself. But it was nearly impossible with her rubbing her bare thighs together like that. The dress she wore rode up a little, giving me a glimpse of smooth, perfect skin. I reached over and turned her seat warmer on to the lowest setting. “That should help.”
The rest of the car ride into the city was quiet, but that didn’t bother me. Incessant chatter made me want to shoot someone. I didn’t mind simply existing in the same space as another person.
I pulled in front of a coffee shop a few blocks from New York University. Isabella stared at it, making no move to climb out of the car. “You drove us all the way into the city for coffee?”
I shook my head. “I drove you all the way into the city to see the barista whose shift is about to end.”
“What?”
I reached over, ignoring her squeak and the warmth of her body, and opened her door. “You have fifteen minutes before she has to leave for class,” I said. “Go.”
Isabella’s eyes widened. “You mean?”
“I found Gemma as easily as I found you.”
She swallowed hard. “You told me that you’d leave her alone if I agreed to be your surrogate.”
“Think of it as insurance,” I said with a shrug. “I’m not going to go anywhere near her, so long as you hold up your end of things.”
“I will.”
I gestured her out. “Go spend some time with your sister. I’ll wait here.”
“You’re going to end up with a ticket doing that. There’s a public parking lot just around the corner.”
“I have never gotten a ticket before, and I won’t now.
” She didn’t want to hear how the NYPD knew to stay away from Vitali vehicles, and we both knew it.
“Go. Time’s ticking.” Isabella stared at me, incredulous, for a moment, and then she was wrestling with her seatbelt.
I reached over and clicked the button, releasing the belt.
“If you tell her anything at all, I’ll gut you both, do you understand? ”
Isabella took a breath and nodded. “I do.”
Fifteen minutes later, to the second, Isabella and Gemma came out of the coffee shop.
Gemma was a touch taller than Isabella, more willowy, but I could see the resemblance between them in the curve of their mouths.
The daintiness of their noses. I watched the sisters hug for a long while, and then Isabella sent Gemma down the sidewalk toward the university.
She opened the car door and slid back inside. The lovely smile that she’d come out of the shop with faded around the edges. “Thank you,” she said, not quite looking at me. “It meant a lot getting to see her, even for a short while.”
I hummed and pulled the car back into traffic. “I’ll do what I can to arrange more time for you,” I said. “When I can fit it into my schedule.”
She was quiet for a dozen or so blocks. “Why would you offer that?”
I gritted my teeth. “Don’t ask questions, Isabella.”
She was silent again. Five blocks passed. “I think I need you to explain it,” she said softly. “Please.”
I didn’t want to. I didn’t have an answer that would satisfy her anyway. “I’m capable of kindness sometimes.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she said far too quickly for my liking. She was just agreeing with me because she thought that was what I wanted to hear. “But I have a feeling that your kindness comes with strings, so I would like to know what they are.”
Damn her. “There are no strings today,” I said. “I promise.”
If she was waiting for some kind of apology, she could keep waiting. We lapsed back into silence, but I couldn’t relax into it now. Isabella shifted in her seat, restless. I glanced over; she had her lip clamped between her teeth. She looked like she was at war with herself.
Finally, she asked, “You can park anywhere, right? That’s what you implied when you said you wouldn’t get a ticket.”
“More or less,” I said.
“Can you find somewhere to park? An alley or something like that?”
I glanced at my satnav. “I can. Why?”
Isabella rolled her shoulders. “Don’t ask questions, Lorenzo,” she said, throwing my own words back in my face.
I shook my head, chuckling under my breath. “Fuck it.” I found an alley and turned into it, sucking in a breath when I realized just how narrow it was. “This better be good.”
For a moment, Isabella didn’t say a word, and I wondered if she had lost her mind. Then she unbuckled her seatbelt and scrambled over the consul to swing her leg over my lap.
I nearly swallowed my tongue. “What are you doing?”
Isabella grabbed my hands and placed them on her thighs, just under her dress. I skimmed them upward, unable to help myself. She shivered when my hands settled on her hips, and I realized that they were bare.
“You didn’t put on panties.”
“I took them off in the coffee shop.”
My cock was already starting to chub up, and I squeezed her hips in my hands, drawing a soft sound from her throat. “That’s slut behavior, dolcezza.”
She shivered; I could feel goose bumps on her skin. “You’ve made me like this,” she complained. “I was perfectly fine hating you, and then you go and do this, and—” She wiggled against me, needy now. “I hate how badly I still want you.”
I slipped a hand between us, sliding my finger through her wet folds. Isabella groaned, and I pulled my finger away and brought it to my mouth. I sucked it clean of her juices and watched her eyes dilate as she stared at me. “You taste so fucking good.”
She went for the zipper on my jeans, and with deft hands, she pulled out my cock.
Leaning up on her knees in the cramped space, she maneuvered me until my crown was pressed against her, and then she sank down.
We both made a sound as her tight walls gave way to me.
“Why does that feel so good?” she whined, hips twitching.
I put my hands back on her hips, guiding her to rock against me. She caught the rhythm, breath catching in her throat as her inner muscles spasmed around me. “Just make yourself come, dolcezza,” I told her, groaning when she ground down against me. “That’s all that matters right now.”