19. ~Emilio~
19
~Emilio~
Caterina was caught up in a bad situation.
An extremely brutal and twisted situation.
I couldn’t get Angelo Simone’s vile words from the pre-meeting Nico had attended with him and the Bosses several days ago out of my head.
“Her humiliation and shattering is her punishment for turning her back on the Family, as well as a wake-up call that she is to fall in line going forward. She will do her duty and with a true monster like you bound to her by marriage, Nico, she’ll suffer as she deserves.”
While I’d been watching Nico’s back, I’d also been listening in to ensure I knew when to step in should that have been proven necessary. With that sort of thing, the conversation was key more than the actions, because everybody had their reactions shutdown until it was too late, the split-second before they drew a fucking weapon.
So, before Nico had left, I’d tagged him so I could listen in on his conversation.
I didn’t like keeping secrets between us, so I’d told him afterward and he’d smiled and said that he’d expected nothing less, given how tense and worrying that situation had been.
But now the entire exchange about the coming marriage and Caterina had been haunting me.
With my focus on protecting our brotherhood, I hadn’t really considered just how bad the entire thing was for her, or what she’d really be facing by being pulled back into the Leone Family—those sick fucks. I mean, they hid that shit really well.
I guess having the brutal truth of her situation rammed home to me from what I’d overheard that day had been nagging at me so much because of Julian. There were similarities there to what he’d gone through with his abusive father. That sick bastard had put his son through hell, undermining him, systematically trying to crush his self-esteem, all in a bid to control and use him for his own benefit. To use his brilliance for his own gain.
Watching Caterina for the last couple of weeks had made it irrevocably apparent that she shared that brilliance, although in a different way. She used it in a different way. While building her own empire, she was also on a mission to turn the extreme misogyny she’d experienced from her father and his domain as a whole on its head, to work the awfulness of what she’d suffered through into something positive. With her all-female lounges, Mirage and Mystique, the facilities, safe spaces, networking opportunities, and programs she had set up there worked to embolden and empower other women in business.
She worked around the clock too. From the crack of dawn until past midnight, she was hustling and busting her ass.
Nico had told me that her father had liquidated her trust when she’d left and taken it for himself, so Caterina had literally started with nothing, yet managed to build so much.
I mean, fuck, she was a year younger than us, only twenty-four, and she’d already accomplished a great deal.
She really was something and now that I wasn’t allowing my reservations and worry about her being brought into our brotherhood to throw up a wall against that, I could see it clearly.
The moment she’d had my back that night of the takedown, it had served to open me up to it.
And as unsettling as it still was, I was glad it had, because I’d been missing so much when it came to her.
Although Nico had given her space, in true Nico Marchetti fashion, it hadn’t been black and white where that was concerned, and he hadn’t been able to leave her entirely. So he’d enlisted me to keep the connection by watching over her and ensuring she was well.
At a distance, of course.
He was trying his best not to seem overbearing, or as going back on his word in any way, not even through this loophole of having her watched but not actually making contact. But from what I’d seen, I didn’t think she’d actually mind.
One night, I’d tailed her as she’d made her way to Nocturne. She’d clearly wanted to see us, to make contact. But at the last moment, just as she’d been about to pull into the rear parking lot, she’d turned back around.
Another time, when I’d been watching across the street with binoculars as she’d been out on a patio waiting for her architect to show up for a lunch meeting at a fancy eatery, I’d seen her write several texts to Nico and Julian, but then delete them before sending them.
Something had twisted in me when my name hadn’t been in the mix.
But what could I really expect with how I’d been toward her? Terse, cold-hearted, determined to tame her?
Knowing what she was up against now and discovering exactly what the Leone Family had planned for her, I felt sick about that last part. Wanting to tame a woman who’d suffered under that years prior before she’d managed to escape by severing all ties with them? And now she was about to be forced back into that hell which she’d liberated herself from? Goddammit. Sometimes my fierce determination to protect us gave me tunnel vision, and that had certainly been the case here.
Now, though, I was out of that tunnel.
Even as I watched her from several blocks away, leaning against my parked Harley Sportster, I wasn’t just checking for physical wellness, or to ensure she was moving more fluidly with her injury healing well over the course of many days. I wasn’t only watching over her at Nico’s request, out of duty.
No, now I was registering the emotions that flitted across her face, whether she looked happy, upset, stressed, and wanting to know the reasons behind each. Wanting to know more about her in general, from a personal standpoint. With Nico’s stalking of her over the years, I’d kept out of it because it was his business and he’d also played it close to his vest for the most part. But now he’d brought her in with me and Julian, it was a whole different ball game. Now I was seeing and wanting to explore much more beyond the security aspect of things, of safeguarding the three of us with respect to her. I was even fucking noticing what she was wearing and how goddamn well she was wearing it.
Just like at this particular moment in time as I watched her through the large window front of a coffee shop while she ate a lemon muffin and sipped from her go-to black coffee every now and then, while she typed on her phone and also kept an eye on the street in between all of that. She was a multitasker, even with that. Tonight was a lot colder, so she was inside, unlike usual, where she preferred to be out on patios, which I figured had something to do with her claustrophobia that Nico had told me about. Even in her lounges, she met with people in the largest room in the place. And at her nightclub, Luster, she either kept to her large office space or up on the wraparound balcony that overlooked the entire club below. When I’d snuck inside while she’d been there several nights to supervise and manage in person because she was clearly a control freak, she hadn’t once headed down onto the crowded floor, neither in the booths nor on the dance floor.
I sucked in a breath as I studied her again tonight. Her silky auburn hair cascaded in waves about the turquoise satin blazer she was wearing, the thing sporting some fringe too. It was done up with a black lace bralette beneath. My focus had been dropping to her thighs often too, with the perfect blend of a black mini-skirt and leather knee-high boots doing them amazing justice.
It wasn’t the first time that I’d felt myself stir as I’d started with the whole checking her out thing a few days ago halfway into this assignment. I actually found myself having to shift my weight and adjust my jeans a little, then force myself to focus on scrutinizing everybody in her immediate surroundings instead. Get a grip, asshole.
I could just imagine Julian smirking his ass off at this and Nico giving me a well-deserved I-told-you-so.
God-fucking-dammit.
One of the cars whizzing by slowed to a crawl, then pulled up outside the coffee shop, a beat-up old Mustang that had seen better days. A shame, given what a beauty it could have still been if the owner had taken care of it.
The driver got out, a pretty big guy with some muscle on him, although it was clear to me that he’d let it go a little. He was wearing a worn beater and a pair of ripped jeans, but not the stylish kind, just a pair that was in disarray. As I watched him waver a little, I grabbed my phone and zoomed in with my camera app, and sure enough, he looked fucking stoned.
I tensed as I watched him make his way into the coffee shop.
It got a whole lot worse, a shit-ton of adrenaline flooding my system as he went right up to Caterina’s table.
She didn’t so much as flinch as she took him in, meaning she’d already picked him up in her peripheral vision, and had been prepared. More than that, as a conversation began to take place, it looked like he was there to meet with her; it had been arranged.
What was going on?
I took a photo and sent it to Nico.
He was at Charon Manor right now, so he had immediate access to the facial recognition software on my desktop that I kept in my room.
Milo: Need an ID fast. Suspicious fuck meeting with Caterina.
Nico: Don’t need your software. That’s Nova Henderson’s ex-husband, Tommy Lowrey. Get in there now. They split up years back because of his abusive behavior. Why Caterina’s meeting with him, I have no fucking idea. But she fucking shouldn’t be.
Milo: Taking care of it.
By the time we finished the exchange, the situation had progressed all too fast, and they were exiting the coffee shop, Caterina leading the way.
Really? Talk about escalating in a bad way.
As if it wasn’t already bad enough, they turned down an alley, then disappeared around the corner of it out of sight. Hell fucking no.
I shoved my phone in the pocket of my brown suede jacket, then hightailed it across the street, following their path.
The darkness swallowed me as I stepped down the alley.
That adrenaline surge from earlier that had prepared me to act surged like a bitch of a thing as thuds and crashes sounded.
I was close to rounding the corner when a male scream rang out, followed by Caterina’s voice growling, “You had the fucking audacity to come here for a payoff? There’s nothing here for you but punishment!”
What the—
I made it around the corner to see the guy I now knew to be Lowrey pushing off the wall in a dazed state to take a run at her, only to be met by her swiping a metal garbage can lid straight at his face. It tore a vicious gash down his cheek and had him slamming back against the dirty brick wall with a grunt. As he went to grab onto it, I noticed his left arm was hanging at an abnormal angle. Dislocated. That accounted for the scream a moment ago.
“Your place in her life ended with your divorce. Thinking you could come here now that she’s supremely successful without anything to do with you was a pathetic move!”
“You think I’m gonna stop just because—”
Caterina wrenched on his hair and used it to slam the back of his skull against the wall, severely disorientating him, before thrusting her knee into his gut. The combo had him dropping to his knees with a hefty thud.
“I wasn’t done talking,” she spat at him.
As she reached into her blazer pocket and pulled her phone out, our gazes clashed.
There was a glint in her eye and a sly smile, letting me know she’d picked up my presence prior to acknowledging it.
“All good here, friend,” she told me with a devious little curl of her lips that had my fucking body reacting again. And, damn, it was a whole lot more intense now I was in her space instead of literally standing at a distance.
It was similar to how I got around Julian. And that was fucking rare for me.
The violence I was witnessing from her had to be upping the intensity for me. I didn’t like dealing it out in the sense that I didn’t get off on it like Nico did and to some extent Julian either, but it did give me a nice kick when I saw it being done in the name of justice or honor. The way it used to be done by the Marchetti Syndicate in the old days when my father had been alive and operated as Underboss. Things were different now, though, and it had made me lose my taste for it. Except when it came to violence with Nico and Julian—and now Caterina, as had just been made clear to me. All right, it might have been made clear before tonight—the night of our takedown, really.
I liked seeing people take their power and own it. I figured that was part of what I got off on when Julian brought his Dom side out all over me. Although, a lot of that was also because it enabled me to shut out all my worries and overactive mind and just be in the moment, just feel and enjoy.
Caterina’s voice jolted me back to the moment, and I watched as she spun her phone so Lowrey could see, then told him, “Just to be clear, this beating—mild by my standards—isn’t your punishment. This is.”
“Is that… you’re in my bank account?” he rasped, staring up at the phone with wide eyes. Wide glazed and reddened eyes because the fuck was definitely strung out.
“That I am. Watch that amount carefully.”
He was roaring in the next moment and lunging at her, but she thrust her sexy boot into his face, knocking him onto his back with the sheer brutality of it. Blood sprayed from his mouth and he spluttered.
“Twenty grand down. Oof, that’s a big hit, huh?” She pocketed her phone and stood over him. “You know what else it is? The exact amount you extorted out of Nova last time you came around for a payday.”
“You fucking bitch!”
She smirked. “I’m sure it seems that way to you. But what I really am is justice .”
Goddammit, yes. Right up my fucking alley—literally, in fact.
“I can do this anytime. I can drain the rest of your account. I considered beating you into a coma to get you off her back, but this is where it really hurts for you, isn’t it? The money. That’s what drives you. And it will be what you fall by if you so much as set foot back in this fucking city again, let alone contact her in any way. To be clear, I will know. You see, I’m always watching. Watching and waiting in the shadows. The monster you never see coming. Push me, test me, bother her again, and I will ruin you.” She leaned down and wrenched his head up by his hair. “Are. We. Clear?”
There was true fear in his eyes as he looked up at her. She was correct, she’d hit right down to the bedrock with him.
“Y-yes.”
“You’ll leave tonight. You have two hours to drive across the city border. You don’t and I’ve made it clear what I’ll do. And I have no mercy when it comes to abusive shits like you, so I won’t even hesitate.”
As she released his hair roughly and stepped back, I saw her wince and falter a little in her step.
Before he could notice the same, I strode into the fray and yanked him up to his feet with my brute strength. “Get gone,” I snarled before tossing him away.
He stumbled and just managed to catch his balance, before limping away, holding his fucked-up shoulder.
Once he was out of sight and I was certain he was gone, I turned my full attention to Caterina and walked to her, gesturing at her right side. “Let me see.”
I saw her tense and her usual reaction that the three of us had noticed from her to automatically assure us that everything was fine seemed right there.
But then she sighed and actually went the better way and gave a nod. “Okay.”
She sank against the wall and opened her blazer, revealing just the bralette beneath.
I swallowed hard at the sight of all that silky skin and just the thin barrier of lace containing her breasts. Her amazing breasts that Nico had called stunning , that I’d seen for the first time during the scene at Nocturne . There was a major difference between witnessing it on video and being up close now. With my perspective, opinion, and approach to her having shifted too, it certainly put a lot of things in a whole new light.
And, as such, with all of that working to fuck with me, it took a whole lot more effort than should have been needed to focus on the task at hand.
Shifting my weight and crouching down so I could peer closer, I studied the site of her wound.
“This is looking good. The edges of the wound are softening, the stitches fading, starting to dissolve. It’s healing well. You just put some strain on it with those bursts of violence.”
“Controlled and planned violence, not bursts,” she corrected me.
I looked up at her, my lips lifting at her take on it. “Seems we have the control freak thing in common, hmm?”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She gestured at the way Lowrey had headed. “You didn’t need to do that. I had it handled.” I was about to rebut, until she laid her hand on my shoulder and added, “ But it was appreciated. Thank you.”
“Any time.” I rose back to my full height, and she started doing up her blazer, and my attention was abnormally drawn to her fingers working the golden buttons. I cleared my throat. “Least I could do, really, with you saving my life.”
“You don’t owe me, so don’t take it there. I’m just glad it served to tone down the hostility between us.”
“You mean the hostility solely coming off me?”
“I was trying to be diplomatic.”
“No need. Just call it like it is with me. I was being a shit.”
“It was coming from a place of protection for your brotherhood. I get it and I don’t hold it against you. How could I? What the three of you have is special and extremely rare, like I said. It absolutely needs to be protected at all costs.”
She wasn’t just saying all the right words to somebody like me, knowing how much the brotherhood meant to me, I could see without a sliver of a doubt that she meant them too.
“Now you’re included under that banner of protection.”
She smiled. “So I noticed over the last several days.”
I flinched. “You saw me before tonight?”
“Sure did.”
“I don’t—that can’t be. I’m damned good.”
“Then you’ve met your match.” She winked. “ Mio fratello.”
She was really pushing all my buttons tonight. In damned amazing ways.
The whole thing crashed into me in an overwhelming way and, the next thing I knew, I was pushing into her, then sliding my hand to her cheek, stroking the soft and warm skin back and forth as our gazes clashed, and I watched her emerald eyes swimming with the same intensity flowing through my veins.
“You’re not what I thought,” I uttered.
She smiled, her gaze burning smoking-hot, then she reached up and grasped my nape, guiding me down to her.
Her lips brushed against mine, a tentative and cautious nearly kiss on both our ends, until my building attraction to so much about her had me smashing through the last couple of barriers remaining, snagging her arms and essentially holding her to me as I deepened the whole fucking thing.
A little moan escaped her that just served to add fuel to the fire, and she responded, kissing me back and sinking into it wholly.
She tasted of sin and absolution all at the same time.
Sweet and fierce.
Putty in my hands right now, yet with the ability to kill a man in the most brutal ways imaginable.
Could there be better combinations than that?
Hell to the fucking no.
Not when it came to this.
And especially not when it came to this moment in time.
An unexpected perfect moment that neither of us had seen coming set against the backdrop of an imperfect and majorly fucked-up world around us.
It was a revelation.
Damnation.
Salvation.
A whole lot of things.
And right now I wanted to do what I rarely ever allowed myself to and savor every single one of them.
While holding her to me and growling with unadulterated desire and need, I released my right hand and fisted it in her silky hair, angling her and thrusting my tongue into her mouth, tasting, exploring, and damn near laying claim in the process. A little moan escaped her that sent a jolt straight to my dick and she hooked hers around mine, giving as good as she got and meeting my sensual, yet aggressive motions with a determination that set my blood ablaze.
An aggravating buzzing started to nag at me and it took me several moments to realize that it was my phone.
I had no illusions as to who it was.
There was no way I could ignore it.
Not under any circumstances.
It had me breaking the kiss and easing back with a groan.
“Sorry,” I uttered, pulling my phone out, then finding a couple of texts there.
Nico: Update.
Nico: Did you determine why she was meeting with that trash?
“It’s Nico,” I told her.
“Asking you to report in for a status update?”
“The deal wasn’t for me to report at all, unless something happened that required intervention. Like this shithead tonight.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, Nico didn’t want me telling him what was happening with you, so long as there were no issues, because he’s trying to keep his word to give you space. Knowing what’s going on with every detail of your life doesn’t exactly see to that, or help him to keep to the promise. But he also couldn’t just leave you without some sort of watchful eye.”
“A loophole.”
I winced. “Yeah.”
“I’m fine with it.” She chuckled. “This is actually a big improvement for Nico, a huge step forward. And I know it’s hard for him to step back like this after we connected.”
“Missed us, hmm?” I said, reading between the lines.
A coy smile spread over her luscious lips, the imprint of which I could still feel on mine. “Could be.”
I chuckled. “Good to know.”
She pushed off the wall and straightened out her blazer and skirt. “Well, I should get going. I need to be at Luster in twenty minutes.”
“Right, you have some up-and-coming rock band playing there tonight.”
“Alt-rock, but yeah.”
“I don’t really think of live rock where a nightclub’s concerned.”
“I’m mixing things up a little to broaden the club’s current clientele, doing a test, rolling out a few of these as theme nights at first.”
“Innovative.”
“To an extent. Can’t afford for things to get stale.”
Her whole life was basically turning the tables on the status quo, just like she had done when she’d shed the shackles of the Leone Family and gone out on her own. Subverting expectations all over the place. And, damn, she was even doing that with me and I was somebody who didn’t change much, nor care for it. Except in the case of our plans against the three families, where it was most definitely needed. I preferred to remain entrenched in routine and cemented procedure, set in my ways.
My phone buzzed in my hand. “That’s my cue to get going, too.”
“Gonna follow me when you think I’m not looking?”
“Count on it, bellezza ,” I said, grinning. “Deep in the shadows for the rest of the night.”
“Sounds good.” She shifted her weight a little awkwardly. “Tonight turned out to be a lot more interesting than I’d imagined.” She gestured between us. “This part in a very good way.”
“ Interesting doesn’t begin to cover it.” I reached out and stroked her hair. “Call me Milo from now on, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, her eyes bright.
I leaned in and kissed the top of her head in an intimate gesture that took me aback.
Other than Julian, I’d never gone there like that with anyone. I swallowed hard as I drew back and managed to tell her steadily, “Have a good night at Luster.”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling out at me, her eyes sparkling, obviously having liked that.
With that, I watched her make her way out of the alley.
While keeping an eye on her, I checked the latest text that had come in from Nico.
Nico: Despite public perception, you know better than to believe that my patience is infinite.
I grimaced. Goddammit.
Milo: Your principessa is fine. It’s Lowrey who wasn’t. It was a takedown.
Nico: Elaborate on the takedown aspect.
Milo: Don’t worry, no damage control is needed. Wasn’t public. He’s still breathing and was able to walk away. Has to leave the city tonight, though, and his bank account took a big hit too.
Nico: Why the delay in reporting this?
Milo: I was getting more closely acquainted with Caterina.
Nico: Kissed her, I take it?
He knew me far too well, exactly how I operated with every little thing. Although tonight had surprised me, so he wouldn’t be able to figure out much beyond that part. I’d tell him the whole deal when I got back to the mansion once Caterina was finished work and back inside her apartment.
As I made it out of the alley and back to the street, I watched her climb into her Lamborghini, that was parked in the lot of a high-end restaurant.
Milo: Yeah.
Nico: Good.
Milo: I expected an “I told you so”. Or several.
Nico: No need. It’s a welcome development.
Milo: Talk more when I head back.
I stowed my phone away as I strode back toward my Harley across the street.
“You’re not what I thought.”
Major understatement there.
I had little doubt that things were going to be much more than interesting in the coming weeks. And for once, I was actually down with it.