18. Carina
CHAPTER 18
Carina
C uriosity.
I tell myself it’s mere curiosity that caused me to take his hand and lead me to the unknown.
Curiosity.
It’s a lie I try to tell myself, the bitter pill I am not being able to swallow.
The truth is, the maddening frustrating damning truth is complexity.
Bearing witness to the complexity of Don Constantine Donati has my hand placed in his. A perfect fit, as if our hands were made to be intertwined with one another’s.
His natural olive tone against my fairer Sicilian complexion. Hands, despite being a Don, are rough and calloused against my scarred skin.
In my bones I cannot deny how right his hand feels in mine.
Our hands have still not parted, even in the confines of his car with Pietro behind the wheel and a partition for privacy.
His thumb traces over the jagged scar on the outside of my hand. Beginning at the knuckle to my pinky and ending diagonally at the bone of my wrist.
Even I cannot even touch my own scars. I always become nauseous when I do. So for him to not only touch my scar, but to run his thumb continuously back and forth in a soothing manner, it has me choking back cries as I’m about to come undone.
“I would ask,” his voice is a soft caress, so pleasing to my ears, “but I am afraid I’ll be met with one of your beautiful lies.”
My lips twist to hide my teasing smile. “I thought those were your favorite.”
My eyes meet his and I shouldn’t be stunned by what I see, not from what his character has shown me thus far. But when you have been surrounded by those who do not show affection nor protection it’s jarring to see it in someone else.
And Constantine’s eyes are burning with a fierce protectiveness. “Never when someone harms you.”
It’s the physical reaction that always betrays me. The shiver of delight that races down my spine. Those unkillable flutters swarming with a vengeance. The heat ignites my blood and my damn heart gallops.
For as much as my mind rebels, my body yearns to be united with his.
“Would you?” Small. My voice comes out so small, and I wish it didn’t. A vulnerability. A crack in the facade. Life coming from the supposed dead.
His eyes leave mine to look upon the scar on my hand. He stares intensely at it. As if he’s thinking of all the ways possible for the man responsible to perish.
My breath catches in my throat when he raises my hand to his supple lips and with his eyes never leaving mine traces the scar with his tongue.
The heat isn’t only in my blood, it unfurls in my lower abdomen with a blazing desire.
And just like Eve I’m ready to take a bite of the forbidden fruit.
My lips part. His eyes catch it. With his own pupils blown he controls his desire whereas I feel like I’m detonating.
He then places the most tender kiss on the center of my hand. “Never.”
Feeling too much I snatch my hand away from him.
He allows me.
He even gives me the space my mind is desperate for. And although the space is small it feels as if an ocean is placed between us. My body immediately wants to close it.
To feel close to him again. To feel the heat of his skin and the comfort of his body. To hear his words sink deep in the marrow of my bones and have me feel safe.
But I don’t.
My mind is the rock holding strong against the violent crashing tides.
Only now I don’t know how long the rock will stand.
And so I do as I always do when my body betrays me; I retaliate with the lash of my tongue. “Aren’t you the same man who threatened me on our first dance?” I allow a smirk to grace my lips. “If I am to betray you, you will lay a hand on me.”
Considering this for a moment he parrots, “Would you?”
My eyes flee to look out the window before they return back to him. “I loathe you.”
“Si, I know. But that doesn’t answer my question, does it?”
“Admit you would harm me if I betrayed you. Tell me the truth.”
Closing the distance between us he pinches my chin between his fingers. I feel his breath upon my face. I see the intensity in his eyes. And still I don’t cower. Not to him. Never to him. Instead, my body reacts with a pulsing need that only he can satisfy.
He licks his lips and my eyes follow his tongue. “How about I tell you a beautiful lie, mia leonessa.” Any space between us is lost now. His lips a hairbreadth away from my own. “If you were to betray me I wouldn’t only harm you, I would make you wish you were dead.”
Breathless.
His declaration of a beautiful lie leaves me breathless and burning.
My eyes flicker to his lips as I trace my tongue with my own. I feel his breath, hot and heavy, on my skin and damn if I don’t want to feel it cover every inch of me.
But the jarring stop of the car dispels the magic he has casted in the air and with it so do I.
Breaking free of his hold and wanting free from the suddenly suffocating confines of this car I go for the door handle.
Except my hand never makes it there.
He grabs ahold of my hand gently, forcing it back to my lap. I look from my hand in his to him with a cool raised brow.
“Pietro always clears the surroundings before we make our exit.”
I remove my hand from his. I immediately miss the warmth of it. The comfort. Damn him. “Don’t you mean your exit?”
He cocks his head to the side with those eyes examining me better than any scientist. “I knew you to be stubborn, Carina, but never this blind.”
I narrow my eyes on him. “Is that an insult?”
“Take it as you wish.” He simply shrugs with what I do believe is a dash of disappointment. And I absolutely loathe how it makes me feel. “We both know you will take my words and manipulate them to what you think you want to hear.”
Before I can make a rebuttal a sharp three raps of knuckles against the window happen behind me.
Constantine opens his side of the door and buttons his suit jacket when he comes to a stand. He then does the very same action he did the first night we arrived at his home.
An outstretched hand awaits me.
A choice.
Constantine Donati always gives me a choice.
And despite the loathing I say I have for him, the loathing that dies little by little every time I’m in his presence, I accept his hand so easily.
When I come to a stand beside him he pulls me closer. Close enough to where my breasts press up against his chest. Close enough to where he can angle his head down and whisper something for only me to hear. And he does. “Trust me, Carina.”
It’s the second time he’s asked this of me.
Trust.
As if it can be given so freely.
Except with him, I’m finding it that easy to give.
Not trusting my voice I nod my head. He nods back before addressing Pietro. “Is he here?”
With my hand still intertwined with Constantine’s and practically glued to his hip we join Pietro on the other side of the car.
Pietro smiles at our union, eyes lighting with glee. I’m realizing this man’s spirit, despite the dark world we live in, is like a golden retriever. He’s always jovial. Energetic. Playful.
Complexity.
I wonder if I tell Rico he’s right about the people in this world if he’ll actually experience an emotion such as smugness. But something tells me he’ll just stare at me vacantly and without thought make his exit.
I have little knowledge of him but confidently expect the latter.
“I was hoping to have some fun with him,” Pietro says with a feign pout.
Constantine merely shakes his head at his most trusted soldiers' antics. “It’s not yours to have, Pietro.”
Pietro looks at me for a moment. I try to decipher the meaning behind the acceptance in his eyes before he gives his attention back to Constantine. “I know,” he agrees. “Think I will be let in on the action, though?” He hopes.
Constantine sighs heavily. I would expect a father to have the same reaction with his over eager child. “We’ll see.”
Pietro smiles triumphantly. He even winks at me which earns him a lethal stare from Constantine. And that glare, which I’m sure has intimidated even the best of men, doesn’t faze Pietro.
He comes up on the other side of me, cups his hand around his mouth and says directly to me as if we’re trading secrets, “He really knows how to kill the fun, doesn’t he?”
“I heard that, Pietro,” Constantine says from the opposite side of me. He then releases my hand to anchor his arm around my waist. His hand lays firmly on the flare of my hip. He pulls me closer to him, putting space between Pietro and I. “And do not come that close to my fiancé again.”
Pietro takes a healthy step away from me with both hands up in a sign of surrender. It’s the second time I’ve seen him do this with Constantine. I’m sure it won’t be the last.
“I’m right, aren’t I, Carina?” His tone is playful.
However, Constantine’s is not. “Pietro,” he says his name in warning.
Pietro chuckles before he sobers. “Si, Constantine. I understand.” He falls behind us as Constantine takes the lead. And as I look back at him he mouths to me, I’m right. I push my lips inward to hide the smile that wants to break free.
“I fear you work with a child,” I say to Constantine.
He smirks down at me. “Yes, but he’s our child.” There’s affection there. I see it so clearly in his eyes. It’s such a drastic difference between my papa and his soldiers, and Luca with his. There is no affection in The Fiore Famiglia. Only fear and loyalty.
The Fiore Famiglia could learn many things from The Donati Famiglia.
“Any reason why we are about to enter a nightclub in the heart of Queens during this hour of the morning?” If he’s about to respond, trust me, I might just take my Louis Vuitton pumps and stab him with it.
“We are here to conduct business with a client of ours.” I notice how he says that word again. Ours. I’ve never seen a man of his stature to share. Least of all with a woman. Made Men never hold their women as equals, only trophies. And yet this man, the man everyone claims to be the Devil, is treating me as his equal.
The girl in me who was raised under her papa does not understand it. The woman in me now desperately wants to.
“Ours?”
“Yes, mia leonessa, ours.” He brings my hand up to his lips and kisses the scarred skin.
Flustered, I clear my throat. “And who are we conducting business with?”
“Marquise,” he answers as we enter through the nightclub at the secured back door. As it’s morning the club doesn’t have the same appearance as it would at opening.
Performance lights of red and blue are traded for white. Workers are carrying rags and boxes instead of trays and drinks. It’s like seeing Oz behind the curtain. Still, the beauty and the allure of the nightclub is there. The glamorous chandeliers that shine without light. The plush ivory booths and crystal glass tables. This isn’t just a nightclub. This is luxury. “He runs the drugs for us in Queens and Brooklynn. Operates right beneath your feet.”
My brows furrow. “He runs his operation so close to his place of business?”
“No better place than right under their nose. Ain’t that right, Don Donati.” A smooth voice with more charm than a voice has a right to says from across the club.
My head turns to the sound and my eyes find more than a pleasing sight.
He walks across the club with swagger. A rhythm that no man can replicate. He’s hypnotic. The confidence he exudes alluring in its own right.
Dressed in a three piece emerald green suit that was made for him, donning two thin bright gold chains and a watch that would make a weak man’s arm heavy he stops before us with a bright smile.
And while dashes of silver are spread across his facial hair he doesn’t look a day over forty. Genetics have certainly blessed him.
“My, my,” he sings as his eyes rake over me. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
I feel Constantine tuck me closer to him. His hand is now possessive on the flare of my hip.
And it’s wrong, sinful, I know, but the possessiveness in Constantine affects me in a way that would have feminists screaming in horror.
“Marquise,” Constantine addresses him with warmth in his tone. “Allow me to introduce my fiancé, Carina.” Will my heart ever not miss a beat when he says my name?
“Carina Fiore? Daughter of Don Savio Fiore? I wouldn’t know such a beautiful creature to come from such a hideous man.”
“She’s an astonishing copy of her mamma,” Constantine replies, shocking me. My eyes widen slightly as I find him already staring down at me.
I have always thought of my mamma as a beautiful woman. Stunning, even in her despair. Striking, even when shrouded by fear.
Papa had fallen in love with her beauty and innocence. And while he succeeded in ruining her innocence no one could take her beauty.
Even in death.
May her god rest her kind tortured soul.
Throat clogged with unknown emotions I muster up the strength to say to him, “Thank you.”
With his free hand he runs his knuckles lovingly across my cheekbone. And for the moment I allow myself to sink into his touch. “But I much prefer your eyes, mia leonessa. They come alive only for me.”
My lips part with a sharp inhale. And I feel it. The gravitational pull. The tether that ties us. I feel myself succumbing to him.
How very dangerous but oh so intoxicating.
His eyes cut away from mine and leave me feeling bereft and hollow. “Stare at her longer than necessary and you won’t be able to see again.”
Marquise laughs. “God has given us eyes to appreciate beauty, Constantine.”
He replies coolly, “And I can just as easily take them away.”
Marquise rubs his jaw, eyeing up Constantine in a playful yet assessing way. In the end white flags of surrender wave in his eyes. “I have a Queen of my own, Constantine. Baby girl would have my eyes before you could.”
Constantine smirks and Pietro snorts. “She’s quite the hellcat.”
His smile widens. “Wouldn’t have her any other way.” He then claps his hands together and rubs them as if he’s getting warmed up. “So, when is he arriving?”
My brows pull together in confusion. “When is who arriving?” I ask no one in particular but hope one of them answers.
A heavy silence falls in the room. One where tension builds and panic has its hold on your throat.
And suddenly I feel like an outsider. As if Constantine has been controlling the lens. The same way papa had controlled the lens with me.
All of his pleas to trust him. . .
Who would it be for him to warrant that of me blindly?
My eyes remain on him but I can hear the sound of footsteps in the distance. Loud and foreboding they come closer. My eyes plead with him to tell me who we are meeting with. His eyes plead for me to trust him.
And then I hear his voice. His sinister and calculative voice that has my entire body tense. “Mia cara sorella.”