3. Edward
Edward
W ell, fuck . Just when things are starting to get good.
I’m ready to ignore the gunshot and keep ravaging her. Her nipples are pert, hard little buds underneath the thick fabric of her bra.
In the next half a heartbeat, I’ve got her shirt pulled down, her nipple just poking out of the top and rolling between my thumb and forefinger.
Christ.
She’s a taunt and a taste, and I know better. I fucking know better than to take advantage of a young woman, an innocent I barely know. So why can’t I control myself?
I pinch her nipple until she gasps and kiss her lips, our tongues tangling.
One gunshot is fine to ignore. Not a second. Especially not when it’s accompanied by voices lifted in mangled shouting.
“Eddie—” Her tone is a sultry moan. “I think we need?—”
“I know.”
I pry myself off of Nicola, helping her readjust her breast into her bra and her shirt and buttons over the lace. Her skirt as well. There’s not much to do about all that hair, though. It’s a deep red and brown cloud around her head. Her eyes are darker than midnight as she stares at me with her chest heaving.
Her chin is red and scraped from my stubble, her lips bruised and plump and pink.
A few more seconds, and I would have thrown away every ounce of convention I have and fucked her underneath her arbor. Whether it was her plan all along or not, I’m not willing to ask, and there isn’t time to play these word games anymore.
“Let’s just hope nobody’s dead,” Nicola mutters, sounding bitter and disappointed as hell.
“Come on.” I reach out and grab her hand, pulling her along behind me on our way out of the garden. Back toward the main house and the meeting I’d absolutely forgotten.
Not with the heat of her body against mine. Not with the way she smells, sweeter than any bloom around us, and her distinctive taste of old soul and innocence.
Honestly, even if the two old fucks did shoot each other, I can’t bring myself to care. Not when I still taste Nicola on my tongue and feel her clenching underneath my fingers. The timing of the gunshot couldn’t have been any better.
Or worse.
I haven’t quite decided how I feel about the whole thing yet. Guess I have to see what fresh pandemonium we walk into.
Her fingers link through mine, and I stomp my way back through the house while pulling her at a breakneck pace. The door to the office is already open, and several men from both operations have poured inside. Yet there are our fathers, Giovanni and Arden, both holding literal smoking guns pointed at the other.
Only Arden breaks eye contact to stare at me.
There’s a bullet hole in the wall near Father’s head and a shattered picture frame behind Arden.
I drop Nicola’s hand, shaking my head and stalking in between them with the foolish confidence of a man in his twenties with nothing to lose. “Can’t leave the two of you alone for a goddamn second,” I tell Father.
And my head snaps back, pain ripping from my cheek after he pistol whips me. “You don’t talk to your father like that, boy. Respect your elders.”
My face burns, and the frustration inside of me shifts into something much more insidious. Something that skirts the line of hatred, but not for the family I’m supposed to hate. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. But toward my father for treating me like a goddamn pussy in front of our enemies.
I snap my spine into place and square my shoulders, staring him dead in the face even as smoke from the spent bullet burns the inside of my nostrils. “Yes, sir.”
Obedience is key, and pride is the price I pay for it. No matter how old I get, things will never change.
“He brought it on himself,” Arden argues belligerently. “Damn fool doesn't know when to quit.”
Father pauses only another moment before he clicks the safety back on the gun and lowers his arm, making the first move to disarm. “Perhaps if you hadn’t shown up to our meeting drunk, things might have gone a different direction.”
I glance over my shoulder to where Nicola froze in the doorway. Her gaze meets mine, and her statement is palpable enough to be shouted even though she refuses to speak.
Where did they hide the guns if neither one of them was supposed to be armed ?
Sneaky fucking bastards.
They will fight to the end despite any contracts signed or their tentative truce. Hell, these two are like dead men, still standing at arms, still ready for battle. Honor.
My gut tightens and twists.
I’m willing to bet Arden made the first shot as well. He wouldn’t have drawn his weapon without provocation. Talk about lack of trust.
“This is absolutely ridiculous and would not be an issue were you not so voracious in your appetites,” Father tells Arden as he slides the gun back into the inseam of his jacket. “You’ve become greedy. Seems to me it’s led to more than a few oversteps.”
Arden’s face is dead calm, although the ruddy blush from being drunk has somewhat faded. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” he says slowly, cocking his head to face me. “Perhaps you need to ask your son about greed.”
Father takes immediate offense and bristles. His cheeks quiver, and a muscle near his temple ticks. “That’s enough.”
“The first thing you’ve been right about all day, Gio.” He snaps his fingers and Nicola, who had been holding back behind the guards at the door, now steps forward.
She clears her throat and holds her head high. Our time in the garden never happened.
“Tell me about the painting, Salvatore,” Father demands. “I’m done messing around with you and your attempts to stall. We both know this meeting goes beyond your pretense of excuses for overstepping.”
“What painting?”
“Stop playing dumb.” The tremulous grasp Father has on himself threatens to unleash. He sneers at Arden. “The portrait of the steed and the hart that has always hung above the fireplace in my den. You admired it on your last trip to the house and it disappeared a week later. It’s valuable.”
Arden shakes his head and says, “You’re losing your mind, old man. Are you so blinded by your rage at my overstepping that you’d accuse me of stealing?”
“Of course you would take the painting. Why not? Your girl likes pretty things.” Father sweeps his gaze toward Nicola, and I bristle but make no move against him.
Not even when her lips thin out, her eyes narrow, and her father seems to grow by a full hundred pounds.
“You have a lot of nerve coming into my home and accusing my daughter of stealing from you.”
“Not your daughter,” Father corrects. “You. Just another middle finger to me and my family.”
Arden hasn’t stowed his gun. He turns it in a lazy circle, swinging it like a cowboy of old. “I have more than enough money to buy a painting. There’s no need to steal.”
“It’s not about the money,” Father counters. “It’s about power. Over me.”
“You have a rather large head. How have I never noticed?” Arden breaks their standoff to move to his desk and grab the bottle.
“I think it is absolutely ridiculous you would come here and attempt to cast the blame on us for something personal. If you want to argue about our men overstepping the boundaries of the territory, then fine. I’m sure Father will be amenable once we’ve all come down. But this?—”
Someone flicked a switch inside of Nicola. Like the injustices heaped too high for her to continue ignoring them anymore. As quickly as she erupted, she fell silent, even before her father shot her a death glare.
“Nicola, no one is blaming you,” Arden snaps.
She’s not having any of it, though. Nicola storms out of the room and leaves me torn. The tension is thick enough to choke on and burns every piece of me it touches.
“Oh, go on and fuck off out of here, Edward,” Father says. “We both know you want to follow her. No one needs your bleeding heart.”
I’m invisible. He sees everything, even what I want to hide. With my face still aching from the slap of the gun, I grunt out an agreement and follow Nicola outside.
My longer strides catch up to her quickly. Her back hunches, her shoulders forward, and her fists lifted to her eyes.
“Leave me alone!” She knows I’m there, and it pisses her off even more than Father’s accusations. “I’m really not in the mood for company.”
“What do I want?” I repeat.
Too many things to give voice to any singular one of them. I want to be free, as she accurately pointed out earlier. Chasing this dream of expansion, Father’s dream, doesn’t come close to the simple life I always pictured for myself. Maybe some gardens like the one Nicola retreats to yet again. Her comfort area, I realize with a start.
None of the soothing aspects of the simple life are available to me or people like me. Not when you’re born a Balestra. It’s become synonymous with power, with the underground, with crime and a thorough demolishing of anyone who stands in our way.
She may not be in the mood for company, but she will get it regardless. Because I’m curious about her reaction and the way she went off. I’m curious about what makes her tick and what secrets are stored inside her pretty head. I want them.
I want to know what they are and steal them from her the same way my father accused hers of stealing.
If only Father knew the truth…
“Well?” Nicola says, and her voice is the only thing that snaps me out of my head and back into my body.
I blink at her. “What’s the matter?” I ask.
“I asked you what the hell you want and why you’re following me and nothing . You disappeared even though you’re standing right there.” She glares at me with her hands on her hips. “I’m waiting for an answer.”
She’s as regal as a queen. There, with the sunlight gilding her with a crown, I wonder why I’ve never seen this side of her before. Was she so adept at keeping it under wraps?
Or had I not looked close enough?
“I just…can’t seem to stay away from you.” When in doubt, fall back on charm. It works almost every time on any person. “There is something about you I’m powerless to resist.”
Except Nicola Salvatore, it seems. She sets me with a look and a dubious tilt to her head. Right then, she reminds me of her father, but not in the same swollen and blustery way. Not in the same pickled from the inside way, either.
“Feed me another line, Eddie, and see if it takes.” But she loses a bit of the height and bluster at the words. Now, she just looks tired.
“You think I’m feeding you lines?”
Her hands fly into the air, exasperated, and Nicola takes a right turn this time rather than a left and heads to a different part of the garden. Hopefully not too far from the office because I want to be nearby in case the two men lose their tempers with each other again.
Who knows how long it will be until the inevitable happens? An actual snap and a step taken down a path that neither one of them will be able to erase.
Perhaps it’s Father’s plan all along. I’d never know. He never let me in.
But if he ever found out about my deal with Arden?—
“I think you will say whatever it takes to calm my temper when I can assure you, it’s not your job. I am also fully capable of dealing with being talked down to.” Nicola stops in her frantic pace and draws in a deep breath, holding it in her lungs to the count of five before she exhales slowly. “It’s nothing new for me. Sometimes, it just feels like too much.”
“You’re not the only one who has to deal with shit like that,” I assure her.
She glances at my cheek and the throbbing skin that has surely turned the mottled colors of a bruise at this point.
“I also think,” she adds, turning her face to the sun, “that if things blow up between our families, it will ruin all of us. What can we do to make sure it won’t happen?”
Threads weave together in a tapestry of brilliance, and I narrowly resist reaching over my shoulder to pat myself on my back. “I’ll help you clear your father,” I offer. “We’ll find the painting together.”
Fuck the painting. If the old man says it’s missing, it’s missing, but I highly doubt it’s stashed away somewhere in the mansion.
Arden is a drunk, but he’s got money. He doesn’t need the painting.
The search , however, will be a great help to me personally. On multiple levels.
I fully expect her to laugh at the suggestion. I don’t expect it to hurt as much as it does.
“You?”
I bristle. “Anyone better?”
“I’d rather handcuff myself to a clown in the circus than rely on you for anything. Sorry, Eddie,” she finishes. “The answer is no . There’s no painting. And there is no we .”