2. Angelo
2
ANGELO
In ten years, my obsession with the angel before me hadn’t faded. Valentin hated it—hated her for the sway she unknowingly held over me. And now? My brother was dead, and nothing stood between me and taking what I wanted.
I was a disgusting fuck, lusting after a woman fifteen years my junior, a woman who saw me as her uncle, my dead brother’s daughter, whether we were bound by blood or not.
My cock hardened as I watched her, imagined her on her knees for me, biddable and submissive, obeying my every command.
Hah. Ana had never willingly obeyed a man in her life. No reason to think she’d start now. I grinned, well aware of how terrifying my smile was.
She sat utterly still, ankles crossed demurely, waiting for me to speak. She didn’t fidget or push an errant strand of hair behind her ear. She was too well trained in her role as a perfect mafia princess to react to my smile.
My eyes fell to the bruises on her left bicep, and rage flowed through my veins, turning the heat of my lust to fury. Her gaze followed mine, and the left side of her mouth twitched up in an enigmatic quirk I couldn’t read.
“Does this mean war?” she asked again. Her voice wavered, and my gaze snapped back to hers, shocked by the vulnerability in her tone. For a second, sadness softened her face, before she snapped back to icy calm as she waited for my answer.
Did she mourn him? Had she loved him? Did she hate me for taking his place? All questions that would have to wait.
I shrugged out of my jacket and threw it over the back of Gio’s favorite armchair. “No,” I said. “Your father?—”
“Is dead,” she cut me off, revealing nothing of her emotional state.
“I’m sorry,” I offered, wondering if she could hear how insincere my words were.
“I’m not,” she answered, satisfying my curiosity about how she felt, but not what Gio had done to her when I wasn’t looking.
I hadn’t missed the other bruises—the one fading on her cheek, hidden by makeup, or the deep bruise on her thigh that she thought her dress hid, or even that Nico wasn’t the first man to manhandle her and leave bruises on her arms.
It didn’t matter. Gio Costa was dead, and he would never hurt my angel again.
Relief swept through me that I hadn’t had to put him down myself. Our father refused to believe what an asshole he was, but I knew. I’d always known. My brother had tormented me as a child, and now he was dead.
My father had sent me over to see what the fuck was going on—Gio had kidnapped the daughter of another Yorkfield don , apparently the one thing our father couldn’t countenance. Not the trafficking, not beating his wife and daughter, but the kidnapping of another man’s child.
And now he was dead. What the fuck was I supposed to do now?
Ana waited, one eyebrow raised slightly.
“No war,” I said firmly.
Her face remained still, not revealing a goddamned thing. “Are you taking over the family?” she asked.
I had no desire to run any empire—I wasn’t suited for it. My brain had been broken for a long time. I liked killing. I liked watching my father’s enemies scream out in pain as I tortured them, and I liked the freedom I had to disappear for months at a time when I couldn’t control myself any longer.
My father’s disappointment at my inability to take over his empire smarted for a second—the real reason he’d never truly disciplined Gio. I wasn’t good enough.
But now Gio was dead.
Ana waited for my answer. What I really wanted to do was cup her sweet face between my hands and kiss her senseless before throwing her over my shoulder and escaping with her.
Women like Ana weren’t for men like me. Valentin never said it. My lover would never be so cruel, but I knew.
“What do you think?” I asked her. When she didn’t answer right away, I said, “Your father was a scumbag, and my father never should have let him live this long.”
I wanted her to look at me with trust instead of the barely leashed fear she hid so fucking well. Another man might not have noticed, but I’d been watching her for ten years, catching glimpses of her through hacked cameras, paying investigators to keep an eye on her, watching helplessly as other men broke her heart over and over again.
My hands clenched into fists at the thought of her current lover, the Russo whelp she thought no one else knew about. Her eyes followed the movement, and she shifted subtly in her seat, as if prepared to flee. No, I realized as I examined her posture. She was prepared to defend herself against me. What the fuck had Gio done to my angel?
“No war,” I repeated firmly. “The Russos did the world a favor by ridding it of Gio Costa.”
“You’ll need to act quickly to gain control over the family,” she said. “They won’t accept the slight—they’ll want to burn down the city. Enzo’s probably making plans to do just that.”
Gio had promised her to some French asshole, a billionaire with ties to the bratva. He’d sold Ana and access to his supply chain for trafficking in persons in exchange for a share of the profits from importing people into the States.
Ana was mine . I might be a disgusting old man for lusting over her since she was sixteen, but my angel was no longer an innocent teenager. Ana was no virgin, no stranger to cruelty, and perhaps she was the key to unlocking the Costas.
“You need to convene the capos ,” Ana continued. I ignored how she butchered the plural—she was American after all, no matter how good her Italian might be.
“You’re going to Europe to stay with my father,” I decided immediately. That would keep her out of harm’s way while I figured out how to untangle this mess without finding myself the head of an empire I didn’t fucking want.
It would also signal to the Costas that Ana wasn’t a free element—she was under my control, and as long as she remained so, she would be safe.
And then I could return and claim her like I’d wanted to do for a fucking decade.
“I’d prefer to stay here,” Ana said, and I had to fight every instinct to drop to my knees and give my angel whatever the fuck she wanted. It wouldn’t help her, and it wouldn’t help me. And most importantly, I refused to accept any solution that didn’t end with her on her hands and knees, crying out for me as I fucked that luscious ass.
My thoughts must have shown in some way because Ana stood.
“Call the capos,” she ordered.
“You’re not in charge here, angel,” I purred, the nickname slipping out once again. I stalked toward her, unable to resist my base instincts, even though I had a million other things I needed to do, including making sure that Gio’s captains knew who the fuck was in charge.
She backed up, her eyes widening, then stood her ground until we were chest to chest. I towered over her, and she put a hand between us, daring to push me away.
Instead, I continued to press against her until she took a step back, one, then another, until I’d shoved her against the molded wood of the wall, my torso pressing into hers as my arms caged her in with my palms flat against the wall beside her ears.
“Uncle Angelo,” she whispered. I wavered. I was such a filthy asshole. She’d just lost her father. I was over a decade older than her. Ana’s tongue darted out, wetting her bottom lip, and I couldn’t stop my cock from hardening against her pelvis.
“Angelo,” I rasped, leaning forward and burying my nose in the crook of her neck so she couldn’t see the longing in my expression. “Call me Angelo.” Call me Sir , I wanted to tell her. Get on your knees in front of me so that I can praise you for being my good girl and take all of your cares away. But I couldn’t. Not yet.
Ana drew in a shuddering breath. Her fingers scratched gently against my chest as she clutched at my shirt. She looked up at me with confusion swirling in her eyes, and I ached to press my thumb between her eyebrows and smooth the furrow that took up residence there.
Only a little while longer, I promised myself. I’d waited this long. I’d held myself away from her, watching from a distance, waiting in the shadows, and now she was in my arms.
I breathed her in, a fresh citrus scent that made me weak in the knees.
I ignored the hard knock on the door and rubbed my nose up the sensitive skin of her neck. To my shock, Ana tilted her head, easing my path until I reached her earlobe and could bite down on it, drawing not a whimper, but a breathy sigh out of her.
“You’ll accompany Gio’s body to Sicily for the funeral, then stay with my father until the furor here dies down. It’ll keep you out of this mess, and it’ll improve your marriageability,” I lied. It would do neither. The knocking grew more insistent. “You’ll depart tomorrow.”
She shoved me away, her face twisted in a sneer. "Fuck you, Uncle Angelo."
If only she knew how badly I wanted to do exactly that.