Chapter 13 – Alessandro
S omething slithered through the church. The intangible buzz was laced with an uneasy energy. It wasn’t the majority of the guests, but the members of the Caravello Famiglia. Dante and I shared a look. He felt it too. From where we waited at the side entrance to the sanctuary, there was a direct view of the mobsters, who’d begun to shift and look about. Their whispers flitted as a hushed buzz of undertones to the soft jabber of conversation from the other guests.
“Find out what’s happened,” I said under my breath.
Dante slid a piece of apple off his paring knife, popped it in his mouth, and gave me a short nod. “You think Tito crossed us?”
“That would make him look bad,” I surmised.
For that same reason, I was certain this wasn’t the beginning of an attack. Not with the number of witnesses. To the world, Tito was a prominent member of the community. His wealth and lavish ways made him popular.
No, something else had happened.
I didn’t wait for my second to move away before I strode off in the opposite direction. Toward the end of the corridor, where it opened into church offices to the left and curved to the right to the main entrance, Caravellos scurried about. I took in their nervous expressions and the way no one seemed to be in charge. The moment I stepped from the shadows, they suddenly had somewhere else to focus their attention.
“Where’s Tito?” I demanded.
The soldiers looked between themselves.
I counted to ten in my head. An itch made my fingers curl. Shooting one of them would be a declaration of aggression, but damn it would feel good to spill blood this early in the day.
Fuck, I need to leave this city.
The days of inaction were wearing on me. I wasn’t made for retirement, a life of ease. A vacation? Ha! More like hell.
A memory flashed through my mind of bronze skin, sparkling with water. Maybe I could be the sort to lounge about the pool, but only with the proper incentive—
Dio bono! What the hell is wrong with you?! My conscience, the morally twisted little fucker, screamed at me. It was my wedding day, and this wasn’t the first thought of the country cousin that I’d had to chase away. And last night? When I’d been seconds away from giving in to temptation?
Fuck me.
I swiped a hand down my face. This madness was bad for business. It would have been easy to blame my tangled thoughts on the whiskey, but I’d only had two drinks at the rehearsal dinner. No, it was an insanity that I wrestled with during the night and conquered right before dawn.
This wedding with Signorina Caravello was happening. There was no alternative.
“Tito’s in there,” Dante said, sliding to my side.
Together, we cut a path through the atrium of the church. The guards at the opposite door shuffled in place as we approached.
My second smiled and popped a piece of gum in his mouth. “Move.”
“Signor Caravello is occupied,” the bolder of the two stated.
Dante stepped right in front of him. He snapped a bubble with his gum. “That so?”
There was probably piss in the guard’s pants. It wasn’t that Dante was a large man. Hell, I had three inches on him and about twenty-five pounds of muscle. It was the dissociated look in his eye. The politically incorrect term was bat-shit crazy.
Which was exactly why we were friends.
But right now, I didn’t have time to enjoy the show where my right hand scared grown men into tears. We had a wedding, a party, and then a plane to catch. What Tito didn’t know was that we weren’t sticking around for his wedding breakfast. It wasn’t as much a middle finger to tradition so much as pressing matters in my own kingdom that needed my immediate attention.
I’d been away from the Windy City too long.
Gripping the handle, I pushed into the room, leaving Dante to deal with the guards.
A splotchy-faced Tito took another step forward, reached out, and grabbed the bare shoulders of a woman. And then the bastard made the biggest mistake of his life.
He shook her.
There was a split second where I recognized the lady’s face. Not because of its otherworldly beauty, but because it wore a look of pure defiance.
Wrath surged through me, violent and consuming. I pounced. Gripping the don by the suit jacket, I lifted his squat body into the air—and shook.
“Alessandro! Don’t!” Penelope gasped.
Through the haze of anger, it barely registered she’d used my name. But right now I was more beast than man. My breaths came in great bellows. Every muscle in my body shook with barely contained fury. Blood roared in my ears.
I tossed Tito across the room. He didn’t fall, but he stumbled, pitching forward for a few steps before he righted himself and turned.
“I can explain, Mr. Mancini.”
I paused, but only to throw a quick and thorough glance over Penelope. She was breathing hard, her pretty cheeks were flushed, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.
Rounding on Tito, I got right in his face and menaced, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Those muddy eyes nearly fell from his purple face. “She—she messed this up! It’s all her fault.”
A throat cleared, and a gentle touch brushed against my forearm.
I dropped my gaze. Penelope was holding me back. She must have sensed I was about to strangle her uncle.
“It’s me you want, Mr. Mancini,” she said, voice clear and without a tremble.
Yes, and I shouldn’t.
Vaguely aware of the soldiers filing into the room, guns drawn and pointed in my direction, I took a healthy step into the cleared middle. Dante popped a bubble against the roof of his mouth as he pointed twin handguns at the Caravellos. Whatever was happening over there, he had it under control.
Penelope slipped between her uncle, his men, and me. This woman, this beautiful, vibrant woman, was placing herself as my shield.
A deep breath filled my lungs. No one did that. Ever. Not even my second in command. She was something else.
Awe filled my chest as I stared at her.
“Start talking,” I demanded. There was a split second of clarity where I realized I’d lost my iron control yet again—over this woman who wasn’t my bride.
Tito barked at the guards, who reluctantly lowered their weapons. I didn’t need to do the same to make Dante lower his twin handguns. There was no reason for the bullets to fly…yet.
“There’s been a change of plans,” Penelope said evenly. “Poppy won’t be getting married today.”
Fear pulsed in the room, all eyes on me. This wasn’t a simple wedding day disaster. The ominous drone of war drums beat in the distance.
“Is that so?” I mused, managing to keep my voice steady, bored even.
Penelope tipped her chin up, inviting me to be judge, jury, and executioner. “Yes, she’s left the mob.”
Dante let out a long whistle. The same surprised noise whispered through my mind, but I kept the reaction to myself.
“People don’t leave the mob, Miss Greenbriar.” I pulled the sleeves of my tux over my wrists, straightening the cuffs. “Once you’re in, you’re here for life.”
“That’s not always the case,” she countered.
Tito rumbled, and I shot him a warning look.
“She’ll keep quiet, live a life without bringing attention to herself. But if any of you interfere, you’ll find the long arm of the law will meet out swift and decisive retaliation.”
She has no idea what she’s done. A rough laugh threatened to bark up my throat, but I squashed it. Here was this quaint country girl, the object of some of my darker fantasies, standing before her uncle and me, telling us she had no problem with breaking a binding contract.
“Are you—” I held up my hand, disbelief surging through me. “Are you threatening a king of the underworld?”
Something glittered in her eyes. “Two of them. But there’s no threat, not if you leave her alone. We can continue with business as usual, simply forgoing the wedding.”
How simple it must seem to someone from the outside world. What this vibrant fireball didn’t seem to understand was that bargains like the one that we’d struck were what made empires rise or fall. Her actions might have come from a place of good intentions and ignorance, but the result would still be devastation. I would be perfectly justified in burning her uncle’s organization to the ground, exacting whatever penalty I saw fit, and no one would condemn me.
No wonder Tito physically assaulted her. This could be pinned on him. A clear failure of his ability to control his kingdom and his daughter. And the weaker man proved his cowardice by lashing out at the sheer determination and defiance it took to bring him down. He’d lost control to his fear. The red evidence of his outburst marked the bare skin of his niece’s shoulders.
Which prompted my own tangled reaction.
I am not subject to my feelings. It took every drop of strength to draw in calming breaths. But the bright handprints taunted me mercilessly.
“And you helped her? Arranged all this?” I demanded, addressing the heart of the situation.
“She didn’t want to marry you,” Penelope explained simply. “I made sure it didn’t happen.”
I rubbed a hand along the line of my jaw. You little wasp. Such a sharp sting in her words, mirrored in her eyes . Admiration spread through me.
“If she doesn’t return, if she doesn’t marry Don Mancini, you two idiots started a war!” Tito raged.
He stank of desperation.
Penelope shifted. It was a subtle tell. A small crack in her facade.
And here I thought I was the one coming to the table at a disadvantage. I sought Caravello out, since he had a daughter of marriageable age. It was my proposition that we join forces to stop the pests invading the Midwest with their drug poison.
But this sudden change from him had me wondering what I didn’t know. There had to be something. His raw reaction proved it was as beneficial to be joined to me as me to him, which we hadn’t found hard evidence of when snooping through his organization. Yes, we suspected it to be the case, but here was the undeniable proof.
Interesting—very interesting.
It was a pity we weren’t being joined. I wanted very much to see how he would try to play me. Plus, his resources were a valuable asset to my plans. Unlike him, there was always another tree to shake down. My determination to accomplish the impossible would drive me to discover an alternative.
But I might be this don’s only hope.
The surge of power felt too good to resist. And then I swept a look over the other temptation—the one I was tired of resisting.
“I was promised a Caravello bride,” I mused, the idea forming as I spoke. “Miss Greenbriar is your blood, correct?”
Those hazel eyes widened with horror. Penelope’s chest rose and fell, each inhale more rapid as horror dawned on her.
“No!” she gasped. “You can’t do this!”
A dark possession twisted the corner of my mouth up. “Oh, but I can.”
Fight fueled her body, not flight. She took a step forward, glaring daggers at me.
Yes, little one, you just stepped into the trap of your own making. She might have been trying to free the cousin from my clutches, but that only positioned herself to be taken.
And damn me, I wanted to take her.
Tito sucked in a sharp breath, finally catching on to what we already knew. “Yes, she is. She is my blood!”
I shrugged. “Then I see no reason the contract can’t be amended so that I still take a Caravello bride today.”
“We could arrange that,” Tito rushed to say. He snapped his stubby fingers, and a lackey hurried over. They exchanged a rapid series of commands in Italian.
So eager to sell to me…. I continued to smile victoriously at my new bride.
“I won’t do it,” Penelope warned.
“You’ve left very few choices,” I drawled. “Marry me or start a war.”
“I’m not part of that bargain. It’s not my problem,” she said, but there wasn’t that unwavering bite of resistance in her tone.
Moving forward, I brushed the tip of my finger over the red spots still on her shoulder. She flicked a glance, snorting when she saw the marks.
“The moment you set out to visit your uncle, you declared your involvement with the mob.” I lowered my voice. “I still don’t know why you came to him, but you’re in this, Penelope. Which means this deal affects you too.”
Her whole body shook with the violent shudder. My dick stiffened greedily.
“You can’t do this, lupo,” she whispered, violence dancing in her voice.
There! That beautiful fight, flaming beautifully inside her. I was going to taste it after all. A dark possession shot through me. “The moment you crossed me, you staked your position on the board. And you played well, but you lost. Checkmate.”
Instead of stepping away, of doing anything that would come naturally to a cornered creature, Penelope pressed into me.
The contact sent a jolt of raw heat straight through me.
“I’m warning you, don’t do this,” she hissed.
Fucking hell, the things I wanted to do to this woman. Things that I now could do to her. Santa Madonna… this change of plans was too good to be true. The endless possibilities of how I would exhaust that warm body, explore its secrets, and make it unravel—time after time—until Penelope was a spent, sated mess.
The custom-tailored pants on my legs did nothing to hide the hard length that was equally delighted at the prospect of a different bride.
“Oh, trust me, vespina, this is happening,” I whispered darkly.
“I’ll fight you.”
Oh dio. My dick pulsed painfully. “Are you sure that is how you want this to happen?” I drawled.
Penelope pursed her lips. There was something she wasn’t telling me. Some reason that kept her from screaming and spilling our secrets to the civilians gathered in the sanctuary. She wasn’t summoning help from the high-powered players. But…why?
I wanted to know that leverage.
“I thought so,” I said with a smirk.
“I didn’t agree,” she said through clenched teeth.
“One way or another, I’m meeting you at the end of the aisle. The choice of walking there on your own two feet or being dragged kicking and screaming is up to you,” I offered, just to see the flames in her eyes.
“Won’t kicking and screaming send the wrong message?” she spat.
I shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”
“It’s settled.” Tito mopped his forehead as he invaded the space between us.
“Uncle Tito, you can’t—”
“Do not tell me what I can and can’t do, girl,” he barked.
I narrowed my eyes in warning.
The fool was oblivious.
So I pointed my hand right in his face. “Have the papers delivered to my dressing room.”
“They’ll be there in a quarter of an hour,” Tito said, shaking my hand.
I brought my opposite hand on top of his, pinching the tendons viciously. “And if you ever raise a hand against my wife again, signore, no accord between us will save you. Capisce?”
“Ho capito. Ho capito!” Tito gasped.
I straightened. “I’ll see you at the end of the aisle, Miss Greenbriar.”
The last image of my bride was a pure vision of a terrible beauty. Her bridesmaid dress was black and evoked the idea of sin and wrath.
But the feeling had very little to do with what she wore.
No, it was the way this woman carried herself. The way she defied me with every fiber of her being. The perfect queen to bring back to my underworld kingdom.