Chapter 9 – Alessandro
“ B ecause…she’s my woman,” I snarled, the words coming from a place deep inside.
There wasn’t time to process their origin, neither could I fathom their significance. They felt right.
Besides, it wasn’t as though anyone heard the moment of madness—insanity, that was what this was. I felt sure that later, when my head was clear and I was back in control, that was exactly what I would call this. Who was going to talk? This putrid specimen of flesh wasn’t long for this world. My outburst would be something this dead man took to his grave.
And the farmer’s daughter? Her cousin said she spoke no Italian, other than a few phrases or cuss words her mother dropped.
I dragged the date back, through the alley. Pushing his twitching body behind a dumpster, I stepped on his hand to pin him in place. His howls filled the space.
“What are you doing?” There wasn’t even a tremor in her voice. It was a matter-of-fact question, piqued with curiosity.
But no fear.
I cut her a look. “Go inside. Sit with your cousin. Order some dessert.”
Penelope drew herself up straight. “You’re going to get in trouble if you do this.”
My lips twitched of their own accord. “Worried about me?”
“You’re Poppy’s fiancé and from a rival mob,” she huffed. “And this is a capo .”
Those weren’t the answers to what I’d asked.
I tugged the leather driving gloves over my hands. “Go, Penelope.”
Bending down, I put my back to her. I would have preferred if I ended this scum after she vacated the area, but time was of the essence.
Reaching into the sleezy fucker’s limp suit jacket, I found the baggy of powder. The moment I laid eyes on him tonight, I knew he’d been using. This amount, however, was unexpected. There was enough here to tranquilize a horse. It would be far more efficient to shoot him up with the stuff, but I didn’t have a needle or any supplies to liquify it.
A calm settled over me as I prepared to make the kill. This was how I usually operated. The heat of the moment, when I found his filthy hands on Penelope, was foreign. I never lost control like that.
“Go, Penelope,” I barked.
She stepped closer. “Not a chance, lupo.”
Fine. I knelt on the capo’s chest. Before prying his mouth open, I checked his pulse. It raced.
“Time for your last hit,” I said in a low, sing-song voice.
There was probably already enough coke in his system that he might OD from the amount he’d taken coupled with the frenzy of the chase. But I wasn’t taking any chances. He’d touched Penelope. His hand, slithering up her leg—
A snap cracked through the air as my heel broke the wrist.
His howl made it easier for me to force his jaw open, and I poured the powdery contents of the baggy down his miserable throat.
As I worked, I contemplated my reaction. The only way it made sense was realizing that Penelope was family. If anything happened to her, it was my wife who would be very upset. Therefore, it was in my best interest to protect her.
That has to be it.
“You’re going to pass off his death as a drug overdose, but what about the stab wound?” the object of my thoughts asked.
“What stab wound?” I shot her a look over my shoulder.
Penelope crouched and jabbed at his thigh. “The one from the steak knife.”
Something close to admiration filled me.
What is happening? I didn’t feel emotions. Certainly not such things as admiration.
And yet what else was it called when a pretty little hellion stabbed a man?
“I was going to tell my uncle about the date groping me under the table after he took a hit of coke,” Penelope explained.
“I’ll do it.” The words slipped free of their own accord. “I have to explain why his wrist was broken. Might as well say I stabbed him too.”
Penelope put her hand on my shoulder. “You’re sweet, but I don’t need a man saving me. Never have, never will.”
With that, she straightened and moved away.
The urge to fight, the desire to yell, they mixed and fizzed inside. Oh, it’s on, vespina. It’s on.
Penelope left her uncle’s office just as Poppy and I walked through the front door. She’d slipped away at the restaurant, and it’d taken some convincing to make my little fiancée leave. Poppy insisted repeatedly that her cousin was just fine and had instructed us to finish our meal. So that was exactly what my fiancée said we were doing.
I hadn’t taken the timid thing as having a backbone. I was happily impressed with the development.
“Mancini,” Don Caravello barked. “Care to explain?”
Penelope shot me a look as she scurried past. My fingers twitched to reach out and grab her. Was she okay? She didn’t look hurt—other than she had dirty feet. I remembered her being barefoot in the alley, but why was she still?
Poppy murmured something about having had a lovely evening, and then she too was hurrying away.
“What’s there to explain?” I folded myself into the stiff-backed modern monstrosity some interior decorator tried to pass off as a chair.
“My niece just told me that one of my capos assaulted her.”
“In public.” The rush of red was still there, even now. But sitting here, facing a force like Caravello, I was able to keep it at bay.
“And she stabbed him.” The don stood at his swanky gold bar-cart and poured a brandy.
I shook my head when he held one out for me. “That would be why she left in a hurry.”
“One of my boys found Jax out by the dumpster.”
The moment of truth. I waited calmly, waiting to see where the cards fell.
“He was high, Penny said. And then, it seems he took another hit to cope with the pain of being stabbed.”
“Sounds like a winner,” I drawled. “Tell me, don, are all your capos made of such stuff?”
The air between us crackled.
“No.” Caravello slammed his empty tumbler on the side table. “He had the problem from the beginning, but after a stint in rehab, I thought the situation was fixed.”
Then why did I smell a lie? “I see. And Penelope, what is her role in all of this?”
“Are you asking if we can trust her?” Caravello sank into a chair. The cushions whooshed from the sudden impact. “That was what I was ensuring by setting her up with Jax. He is the only one who she might have found appealing.”
The bastard was going to marry her off to one of his men. Like a damn prize for their loyalty. The truth sent a deep, resounding thud through me. I guessed as much at the restaurant, but hearing it from the don’s lips created a powerful surge of disgust—and something else I wasn’t able to name.
In the pause, the don watched me.
So I threw the situation back at him.
“Does she need to be controlled?” I leaned forward. “I can’t have this coming back on my new wife.”
The don shook his head rapidly, waving away the warning in my voice. “I’ll handle her.”
That was exactly what I’d feared. “Very good. Now, if there’s nothing else—”
“You tell me, did you see anything else I should know about?” The don stared intently at me.
“Only a coke addict sitting across from your niece, signore.” I rose and left, not wanting to give him anything more. “Other than that, it was a lovely meal with your daughter.”
Caravello grunted.
Turning quickly to hide my look of disgust, I left. It should come as no surprise that the women of the famiglia were chattel. I planned to make up for my part in the charade by spoiling my wife as the princess she was. But the whole arranged marriage tradition was far from ideal.
I wonder what Penelope thinks of being married off…. Somehow, I didn’t think she was a willing participant. There had to be something Caravello had on her to force her to agree. Running my tongue over my teeth, I paused at the sweeping staircase and looked towards the upper floors. She was up there. Doing something.
Maybe she was washing her feet.
I chuckled. I couldn’t believe she let them get so dirty. But…she was also the woman who didn’t flinch at the murder of the man who’d attacked her. From Dante’s research, she was a civilian. Her family hadn’t even visited Detroit, always meeting Don Caravello and his children at far away locations. That made her appearance here all the more sudden.
Stopping at the banister, I looked upstairs. The stolen item throbbed in the pocket of my suit jacket. The past few evenings, when I’d come to visit my fiancée, I meant to slip away and return it. Just like the other times, there wasn’t a chance to do it now.
I needed to rid myself of the connection, cut the ties. That meant ridding myself of the fascinating piece of jewelry.
A small weight against my sternum seemed to burn.
Rid myself of most of the connection. A black soul like me always kept some memento of our sins.
“I’ll do it next time,” I promised myself and stepped toward the front door.
About to push into the night, a noise from down the hall caught my attention. I spared a glance.
And stopped in my tracks.
“What is she doing out there?” I muttered.
A smart man would leave. Normally, I was that smart man.
But not tonight, apparently.
Drawn by instinct, I followed the wisp outside, heat pulsing violently in my veins. Long, tan legs sprinted into the dark. The frayed edge of jeans appeared just in time to cover the slope of skin and muscle of her curves. But at the waistband, more skin was bare. The expanse spread until the triangles of cloth covered the upper swell of curves.
At the side of the pool, Penelope dropped the shorts to reveal the teeny little bikini, and my dick thickened in response.
Right before she leapt into the pool, I spoke. “What are you doing?”
Penelope squeaked but didn’t move her hands to cover herself. “What the hell, lupo?!”
Luckily, she was on the side of the pool that was close to the pergola, where the shadows were deepest. It wouldn’t bode well for me to be caught out here.
“I needed to blow off some steam,” Penelope snapped.
“And why is that?” I stalked forward.
She didn’t budge, holding her ground with more strength than many brutal men. I closed in on her, and she tipped her head back to hold my stare in the dark.
“It was a hellish dinner, and I wasn’t able to help Uncle Tito.”
I cocked my head.
“I don’t like failing,” she added with a sharp bite to her tone.
Hearing the self-deprecation in her tone made my fists clench. The cold hard truth tumbled from my lips. “Whatever you think you failed at, you didn’t. Your uncle is using you as a reward.”
Why did I tell her that?
Because…she deserved to know.
And there was part of me that wanted to know if she already knew. That was answered a second later when she wrapped her arms around herself.
The fierce need to do something for her—maybe comfort her—reared inside me.
I stepped forward, fingers itching to snatch her, to pull her close. To protect her. “Penelope—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand and took a tentative step back only to collide with the pergola post. “You belong to Poppy.”
Forbidden—yes, it was. This woman was off limits. But why could she see that, and I was the fool taking a step toward her. Words spoken earlier tonight in the heat of the moment came surging back through my mind.
é donna mia. She’s my woman.
Another step forward on my part made her breath catch in her throat. A shaft of moonlight fell across her face. The enchantment reached full power, and I couldn’t take another second of it. I reached out and cupped her cheek.
Her sharp inhale was the sweetest music.
An ache pulsed in my groin. I needed to hear her make it again. Needed it more than I needed to breathe. My thumb brushed across the soft skin of her cheek. This close, I couldn’t see the faint freckles in the dark, but I knew they were there.
But I had to do the right thing. Holding tight to my iron control, I forced my mind to stay focused on what mattered. “Penelope, listen very carefully. I don’t know why you are here, but your uncle is not a good man, neither are his men. You need to leave. Now. While you still can.”
Her voice came out breathless. “Then why are you here? Doing business with him? Doesn’t that make you bad as well?”
A dry laugh escaped my lips. She had no idea. “He will use you. Tonight proved that.”
“Like he’s using his own daughter.” It wasn’t a question, neither was it an accusation.
“You can leave. Poppy was born into this world,” I insisted. My chest tightened, heart beating hard with the need for her to hear me out.
But she only shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why?” I demanded.
She jerked her head away, but I slid my hand into her hair.
“Why, Penelope?”
“Drop it.”
Such a sharp tongue on this little wasp. “No.”
“I’m not your concern, Mancini.”
“It’s Alessandro.”
But she shook her head. “Not to me, it’s not.”
With that, she slipped from my grasp.
I let her go. My hand fisted at my side. She wasn’t mine to protect. I turned sharply, marching back into the house. That was it, I was cutting off the last vestige of interest in the woman before she tempted me into an unwinnable situation. And that meant slipping into her room to rid myself of the trophy that tied me to her.