9. ~Emilio~
9
~Emilio~
Caterina Leone was dangerous.
It was a big part of my job to anticipate threats and to do it ahead of time, often before anybody else. Then to decimate those threats before they could come close to harming Nico, our soldiers and associates, or even the family as a whole.
And I’d most definitely identified Caterina as one such threat.
But Nico and Julian weren’t viewing her that way.
Julian had become enamored with her because he’d never met somebody like her before who wasn’t immediately taken with him and instantly receptive to his charms. I was sure it also had something to do with the kinship he’d recognized in her from her having awful issues with her father, just like he had with his.
For Nico, it was complicated. Too goddamn complicated.
Honestly, the best thing to do was to have him fuck her as soon as possible so he could hopefully get it out of his system. His weird mating dance with her had been going on for a ridiculous amount of time, so now she was high up on a pedestal for him, like some sort of an untouchable goddess that he’d built up so much in his mind. Just like Julian wasn’t used to somebody not succumbing to him immediately, Nico wasn’t used to being challenged, especially not by a hot piece like the Leone princess. He’d been paired with socialites all his life, fake dating, playing a role. He’d never been able to be himself. But he had with Caterina and he’d become obsessed with the fact that he actually could be.
So, yeah, something needed to give, so he could see straighter when it came to her.
And the way I saw it, it was to break the sexual tension between them, to smash through all that buildup. He needed to fuck her, and he needed to do it as soon as possible.
It was something I’d just relayed to Julian.
He leaned back in his hot tub on his balcony, sipping from his Belvedere vodka, savoring the velvety texture he always credited it with. “What am I? Nico’s pimp now?”
I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. “More along the lines of his wingman in this situation.”
“So you wanted me to stop him from fucking her and now you want me to push for it to happen?”
“Goddammit, yes.”
“Well, I didn’t just stop him because he was in his fucked-up state, it was because he hadn’t told her the truth about the whole ridiculous forced marriage shit, and we knew he would have regretted doing it dishonestly like that—at least with her.”
“What’s your point?”
He took his time taking another sip from his glass, making me wait and holding power over me in any way he could, as he so loved doing. It was a game we played and normally I was fine with it and oftentimes it turned me on something fierce. Just not right now. Not with this.
It had me snapping, “Julian!”
He jolted, some of his vodka spilling over his glass and into the water. He cursed and glared out at me. He downed the rest of it, then slammed it down on the white tile surrounding the hot tub. “Fine,” he muttered. “My point is that I think the best way to make it happen is to actually let him go full feral. ”
“What?”
“You should’ve seen her with him. She was into it. Big time. I think that’s what he wants from her, the root of his obsession. He thinks she can take him like that.”
“And if she can’t?”
“Then we’ll be there to stop him.” He sank back against the tub. “Mmm, honestly, though, I bet she can take a hell of a lot.”
I walked to him and slapped him up the back of the head. “Keep your dick in check, Whore-of-the-Century.”
He grinned. “That just means she likes me. Or, more likely, that she wants a piece of this.” I rolled my eyes as he ran his hands the length of himself.
“How could she not?” I uttered with dripping sarcasm.
“Sounds like you could do with some. I can feel the stress radiating off you and fucking with my chilling tub time.”
“Oh, I’m fucking sorry that this extremely serious and volatile situation is cutting into your relaxation time,” I bit back.
“See? Stressed out. You need a piece of me, all right.”
“Aren’t you saving that piece for her now?”
“I’ve got a lot of pieces to go around, big boy,” he said, smirking out at me. “ You know that.”
I glared back at him.
His smirk slipped. “Your jealously is showing. Again.”
He was challenging me.
He didn’t like me expressing jealously or getting possessive of him. Especially when I did have my girls every now and then, fair-weather girlfriends, really. It was all I could handle when my whole life was the Family. Or it was supposed to be. Until things had started going south in the worst ways. Until Nico had started becoming so disillusioned.
Julian needed sex and a lot of it. He was a thrill-seeker, a trauma response to what he’d gone through with his brutal shit of a father. It was sex, us riding our motorcycles and stunting down the back roads at the edge of the city; him signing up for a whole lot of skydiving, rock climbing, even getting into tight-rope walking wherein he’d gone to higher and higher heights, even once walking across two office buildings a couple of years back with thousands of onlookers cheering him on.
And I couldn’t give him that much fucking. I didn’t have time and more than that, I only got the urge once in a while. I had trouble shutting my mind off and Julian was one of the only people who could help me do that, who could get me to that headspace with the whole Dom thing he brought to the table. So, I guess, whenever he was with anybody else, it worried me that he’d replace me and find somebody like me who could be more of a permanent fixture for him. And, yeah, maybe it bothered me too that I couldn’t actually be a constant for him.
Now, in Caterina, there was yet another potential person to fuck who’d caught his eye.
And the thing with her was that with the marriage directive and Nico’s obsession, she was going to be around all the time, not just a flash-in-the-pan fuck for him.
“Did you hear me?”
I blinked out of my thoughts to see him holding up his phone screen to me. His phone that was covered in a cobalt-blue—his favorite color—glittering case.
I peered closer and saw his IG page was up. He’d just posted a photo of himself in the hot tub, showing his pierced nipples with the gold hoops through them and running his hand through his currently wild hair.
The caption read: Who wouldn’t want a piece of this, right? Tell my asshole friend, Carver Babes.
His phone started pinging wildly within the next few seconds and I watched tons of comments come in, telling him how hot he was, how much they wanted him, all that.
That was his other thing—being constantly on social media, documenting so much about his life and teasing his hundreds of thousands of followers. He liked the attention and needed the affirmations.
And more than that, it kept him constantly busy. Between this and his work and his fuck sessions at Nocturne, along with his other thrill-seeking activities, he barely ever stopped. Just the way he needed it. He didn’t like it when things stood still, when there was quiet.
It was another result of what his father had put him through.
“You’re a real shit sometimes, you know that?”
“Only when I need to be,” he said, far too pointedly.
And then he suddenly stood up in the hot tub, water cascading all over his very naked body.
“You’re not wearing trunks,” I choked at the sight of his hard dick, the piercings glinting against the fairy lights set up everywhere. He’d put a whole scene together, along with a champagne bucket, some teddy bears holding flowers, no doubt for his IG followers and the tons of pictures he’d posted before I’d unexpectedly shown up here.
“I don’t like the restriction in the hot tub. Remember?”
I spotted his white cotton robe nearby and snatched it up, then tossed it at him as he stepped on out.
“I thought that was only when you were fooling around in there.”
“Nah, always. That’s just usually the only time you actually come over.”
I started. “That’s what you think?”
He pulled on his robe and tied it, covering himself. “It’s what I know.”
“That we only spend time together when it involves fucking?”
“It’s how it is, Milo.”
Huh. “That’s not what I intended. But isn’t that how you want it, anyway?”
“Not with you, no,” he said, looking away, then brushing past me into his apartment.
It was always a lot to take in when I stepped inside his place with the rich jewel tones of emerald, sapphire, and gold accents, and animal print everywhere.
There was a black velvet sectional with gold trim over by the balcony doors, zebra-print cushions arranged on the seats. Beside it was a leopard-print chaise lounge. A tiger-print rug with jagged edges was beneath a black and gold sleek metal coffee table.
Opposite the seating area was a built-in bar with top shelf liquor with crystal decanters and that sat beside a massive top-of-the-line entertainment unit. Above it hung a neon sign written in cursive script— Carver Kingdom.
There were two crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling that gave off multicolored light.
It was really something.
Really him.
I grasped his arm, pulling him up short as he made it into the living room. “Hold up. What does that mean?”
He turned to face me with a sigh. “You’re not just a casual fuck to me. You’re my friend. You and Nico are my best friends. My brothers, really.”
“I didn’t realize about the casual fucking thing.”
“Of course not. Because your whole life revolves around Nico and worrying about all that la famiglia shit. You have major tunnel vision. You move so quickly from one mission and task to the other with no time in between to really notice or take in anything else.”
So him not taking well to my brief bursts of jealously and all that was about more than I thought then? It was because he didn’t think I had a right to be that way when I wasn’t giving him anything beyond fucking?
He was… hurt?
“Well, I didn’t come here for that tonight,” I told him.
“Yeah, because you and Nico had a fight and you needed to get that off your chest instead.”
“Where is this coming from all of a sudden?”
He shoved his wet hair out of his hazel eyes. “Things are changing. Nico’s getting married. The three of you will be living together in his mansion. And I guess it made me realize that I’ll still be here. Alone. You won’t be able to come out much because of your paranoia when it comes to Caterina, so you’ll no doubt be watching her like a hawk. Nico will be basking in having his obsession right up close, finally. You might even get the marriage bug when you see Nico and Caterina together, might want to make one of your girls a more permanent thing.”
“And you think you’ll be left behind, that this will impact our brotherhood?”
“Of course.”
“Julian—”
“You know, sorting the Reincourt Construction deal, I had it in my head that the three of us would actually do it. It became real for me when everything was sorted there and I thought we’d actually take off and move out there together, build a life without the three-family bullshit impacting us and weighing us down.”
Wow. “That’s a lovely thought.”
“A fantasy, though, right? It’s just a backup. An extreme backup. I guess, with Caterina involved now, it brought the brutal nature of it home to me—that we’re trapped from living our lives the way we want to. First with my dad doing that to me, now with me out on my own and free without him, and I find myself bound in another way against my will.”
“Because of Nico and me, because you’ve got so much tied up in the Marchetti Syndicate. If you want out, we can get you out.”
“Not without the two of you!” he yelled, kicking his couch in a rare burst of violence.
“I know things have taken a turn with what’s been forced upon Nico and I’m feeling the weight and worry of it too, but we’ll get through it, we’ll overcome it, just like we’ve overcome everything else.”
“You’ve never overcome the weight of the three families, Milo. It’s different. Like David-and-Goliath different.”
I moved to speak, but my phone rang, pulling me up short.
I grabbed it from the back pocket of my jeans and looked to see Nico calling.
I put it on speakerphone, answering, “I’m here with Julian.”
“Good. I’m done enforcing our properties and assets. It’s time to meet with Caterina.”
“We’re on our way,” I assured him.
“Don’t be late,” he answered tersely.
“Keep your dick in your pants until we get there,” Julian called.
Nico growled, then hung up.
“Thanks,” I said, knowing he’d said that to take some of the heat off me from Nico’s still pissed state after the difference of opinion we’d had earlier.
He’d even given me the slip again and taken off to reinforce everything with the Family being concerned about Benzino backlash without me. He’d been with his best soldiers in Rocco Barone and also Tony Amato who was growing well into his role too so I knew he’d be fine without me there, even though it had pissed me off that he’d done that in the first place. He’d had a meeting with the other two Capos—Cassio Quinto and Giovanni Guerra—right after too, which was a guard-free zone, anyway.
I’d figured a little time apart, some space, would have helped him to realize that me coming down so hard on him had been necessary. Well, it wasn’t that which had really pissed him off; it was me challenging him. Especially at a time when he needed me with him the most—the most he’d ever needed me, actually. But I’d been concerned, really fucking concerned, about this Caterina thing, so I hadn’t been able to just let it go or overlook it. It had needed to be addressed.
“No worries,” Julian told me, before he took off to get dressed quickly.
I watched him go, blowing out a breath.
Things were so fucking tense right now.
Our brotherhood was on edge.
And that worried me just as much as the volatile situation with the Marchetti Syndicate and the three families.