18. Renzo
W hen Giulia called, she caught me off-guard. I couldn’t risk the capo listening in while we dealt with a traitor, so I stepped outside. I wasn’t sure that I had to be there personally, anyway. Luka used to supervise fucking everything. It was taking time for me to retrain everyone in the organization that I didn’t need to be right there and watching over their every move.
If he said that the man had to be punished and killed for his incidents of lying, then I believed him.
At her word, I planned to leave. Traveling used to be a routine for me. Before I had to assume so much responsibility, I could do whatever I wanted, and I enjoyed taking off and going wherever I pleased.
Heading out of town with Giulia was the first chance I had to leave the city. I looked forward to it—both the opportunity to get away and the time I would have to share with her alone.
We were asking for trouble. Ever since the night Luka was killed, we struggled with resisting each other. Already, we’d lost so much ground in that fight. I made her come. We kissed. She came on my dick and milked me so perfectly. The other day, when we both knew better, we succumbed to kissing again.
Keeping my hands and mouth off her was an epic struggle. Hearing her admit how much she'd liked fucking me only goaded me to want her even more.
So, heading up along the coast with her was nothing but flirting with temptation. But it wasn’t enough to keep me away from her.
I picked her up, as planned, at a seedy restaurant her Family owned. She was waiting in more casual clothes than what I’d ever seen her wear, and the laidback look suited her. I had no doubt her short black skirt was designer, as was the white blouse that accentuated the large swells of her breasts. But she looked looser. Calmer.
The smirking smile she gave me as I pulled up to the curb hit me square in the chest. She was radiant. Gorgeous. Full of life and excitement. And I reveled in the fact that simply seeing me coming for her made her grin like that.
Careful. I couldn’t afford to fall any further for her when we were doomed to sink into a pit of hopelessness.
If Isabella was already making official plans for her to be with Nickolas, time was running out.
But maybe today will change all of that. A big reason I wanted to seek out Cecilia was to gain information about Luka’s death, and probably Rocco’s as well since it seemed that the same person had killed them both.
If Giulia and I could uncover who was killing these prominent men, there was a chance that Isabella might change her mind about foisting Giulia onto Nickolas. The Romanos were always shady as fuck. While an alliance with them suggested more wealth, at what cost would Isabella want them tied to her name?
I drove away, feeling more confident and in control with Giulia in the passenger seat. She didn’t speak until we were further from the city. Once she opened her mouth to say something, my phone cut her off.
“What do?—”
I growled at the ringtone. “I hate that thing.” I answered, though, too duty-bound to think twice.
“Where the hell are you going?” Gio asked as a greeting.
I rolled my eyes. “Out of town,” I replied.
“The fuck you are,” he replied.
I glanced at Giulia, who raised her brows at the speaker call.
“Dean said you were taking off for some personal time,” Gio said.
“I am.” It was a personal matter to be with Giulia, even if we were working on finding Luka’s killer.
“You don’t have personal time anymore,” he argued. “You can’t take off and act like you don’t have any responsibilities anymore.”
“I can. And I will. I don’t need to micromanage everything like Luka did.”
“He didn’t micromanage anything. He led our Family. He oversaw the men.”
“And I can do the same while letting them actually do what is expected of them.” I shook my head. “I’m not discussing this. You told me to step up and replace Luka. I am. I don’t use the same supervision methods as he did.”
“Oh, sure. I’m supposed to just trust you, huh?”
“Yes.” Because I’m your fucking son, remember?
“You’ve never given me a reason to trust you so freely before.”
“You also never gave me a chance to prove myself before.” I didn’t want to get into this with Giulia listening. I wasn’t worried about confidentiality. I simply preferred to focus on anything other than Gio. “Since Luka’s death, I've seen to every goddamn thing you tasked me with. Talk to me when I fuck up and you have proof of this incompetence you think I’m prone to.”
I hung up, no longer in the mood to let him ruin another moment with Giulia. It wasn’t like I could take her on a date or be seen with her in any romantic sense. I’d be in trouble if I were caught near her in the capacity of friendship, too. If going out of town to seek a woman who was potentially hiding was all I could use as a reason to get away with her, then I wanted to embrace every second of it.
“Hasn’t been easy, huh?” she asked. “Stepping up to do what Luka did?”
I shook my head and rubbed my hand over my face. “No.”
“I bet not. Uncle Dario was the same as you. The spare younger brother. But when he was injured and rendered unable to have children…” She shrugged. “I think in a way, he was relieved to escape all that duty.”
Yet, her uncle was involved in the wake of Rocco Acardi’s death. He’d sent Giulia on a harebrained mission to spy for information. It made me wonder whether he knew she was seeking out Cecilia now.
“I don’t mind the duty. I grew up knowing I was the backup.”
“Were you ever close with Luka or your father?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. Gio focused on him and has only ever paid attention to me when I had to step up. Gio is a businessman through and through.”
“Unlike my father. He delegated as much as he could, much to my mother’s distaste. She likes power, wielding it and hoarding it. She always wanted to know who was where and what power was at play.”
I nodded. “That sounds about right.”
She huffed.
“Gio told me the same thing. She’s too calculating.”
“She definitely is.” As she turned to face me fully, I strained to keep my eyes on the road.
“Has she ever tried to calculate something with you? With your Family?”
I shot her a dubious look. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. I was asking my guard about the rivalry between our Families. It’s like we said. We were raised to know the other is the enemy.” She flicked her finger back and forth between us. “But we never knew why.”
“Lots of Families don’t get along in our world.” While the Bernardi name was a rival of the Acardi’s, others operated around and beneath us. If any one of the patriarchs slipped and lost power, another would swoop in and take it for themselves. Or arrange a coup. Or stage turf wars to conquer more. It was a never-ending game of movable pieces and ulterior motives.
“He seemed to think that it had to do with our parents not getting along.”
I glanced at her again, smirking. “I wouldn’t be surprised. But it makes it more ironic that you and I…”
She huffed, shaking her head. “There is no you and I . We’re co-conspirators in going to talk to Cecilia. I want to know who killed my father, and that ties into your wanting to know who killed your brother.”
I took her hand and held it tightly. Instead of pushing away, she twined her fingers with mine, belying what she said.
“What about this pull to each other?”
“It’s just physical.” She swallowed hard and looked out the window.
It was physical. A visceral, gnawing need to touch and be close. But I was starting to suspect that it might be more than that.
“Speak for yourself.”
She sighed. “Renzo. Don’t. Please .”
I ground my teeth, pulling over on the highway to slam the car into park. She gasped at the sudden stop, and with her caught unaware, I lunged over to kiss her.
Hard.
She parted her lips as I sealed my mouth over hers, and just like every other time, a sweeping wave of desire lit me on fire. Cupping the back of her head, I kept her close so I could devour her. It’d been far too long since I’d had a sample of her sassy taste, of earning her sexy mewls and feeling her tongue duel with mine.
“The only time I want to hear you say please is when you beg me to fuck you again.”
She moaned, tipping her face up for a longer, deeper kiss. As she threaded her fingers through my hair, I shivered at the scrape of her nails on my scalp. If she kept this up, we’d both be a shaking mess of need.
“But we can’t,” she argued weakly as she twisted in her seat to crawl closer.
“Do you really think it’s possible to tell ourselves no?”
She kissed me again and again as she grappled with her seatbelt buckle. I guided her, welcoming her into my embrace as she crawled over to sit in my lap. It was a tight fit, snug with her straddling me. Behind her, the steering wheel trapped her flush against my chest. Within my arms, I fought the nagging thought in the back of my mind that warned this wasn’t wise.
I didn’t understand how something so forbidden, something so wrong, could feel so damn right and good.
As she made out with me, moaning into our kisses, she clung to me like she feared ever letting go.
“You can’t be with him,” I insisted.
She shook her head, out of breath as I cupped her face to stare into her eyes.
“I know.” She licked her lips, torturing me. “But I can’t be with you, either. My mother—Gio—they’d never allow it.”
I couldn’t refute that, and kissing her silenced my need to reply.
“I won’t be with him,” she whispered as she rubbed over me.
I held her ass, urging her to grind over my erection, and kissed along the sweet flesh of her neck.
“I’ll run. Whatever I need to do to avoid a life with him.”
I dug my fingers in her cheeks, gripping her tighter as though I could hold on and prevent her from disappearing in the flesh.
“Because I only want you, Renzo.” Her breath hitched as she kissed me soundly. “All I want, now and forever, is the enemy I can’t have.”
Fuck. She was killing me here. She spoke the truth, but I never wished for a lie more than I did at that moment. I wanted it to be false. I longed for a way to stay with her.
“Don’t run,” I told her. “Because I need?—”
Gunshots rang out in the distance. Then closer.
She gasped, falling against my chest. I didn’t wait. Hearing bullets hitting the car threw me into action. I held her tightly and turned her back into her seat, lowering her with my shove.
One glance in the mirrors showed me that men had found us. My instincts had been right. Someone had been tailing us out of the city. I’d lost them, weaving around and throwing them off our tail, but parked here for a stolen moment with Giulia made us vulnerable, sitting ducks.
Their cars were marked as the enemy. Not the Romano, Bernardi, or Acardi outfits, but another. The Greeks. I’d been so focused on Giulia and our conversation that I hadn’t noticed we’d been driving near their territory.
“Stay down,” I ordered her.
She was already slinking low in her seat, aware of what was necessary. No hysterics. No fear. Just the simple understanding of how things worked in our violent lives.
“Here.” She handed me the gun from the glove compartment, competent and knowing what came next.
I took it, keeping one hand on the wheel. “You know how to shoot?”
She rolled her eyes at me, already sliding a smaller gun out of her purse. “Why wouldn’t I?”
I laughed. If I hadn’t fallen in love with her already, this cemented the fact that I would soon. “Because you’re not a soldier.”
“My uncle thought I should know a thing or two about defense,” she quipped as she watched the side mirror, prepared to help me shoot our way out of the trouble on our tail.