Chapter 24
I pretend to be busy- Preoccupied with anything other than Damiano’s meeting. Ears tuning in, I focus hard with the intent to hear what is being said but not react. It’s been proving difficult due to how long he’s repeated the same thing, but I’m sure he’s aware that the book I’m flipping through isn’t as amusing as I’m making it seem.
Yet, I’m not about to put it down at this point.
Even a book in French won’t stop me from being here– A book I obviously don’t understand.
I know that before we left, he met with the mayor so we could enjoy our honeymoon without any interruptions. But as expected, something came up that he couldn’t delay. The rushed call from Gio quickly turned into him calling the mayor directly.
Something regarding a project with a new housing district in an area undergoing gentrification.
“Yes, yes.”
Damiano’s sharp, business-like tone stirs something inside me. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but I would guess it’s the no-nonsense bite behind it, even when he’s simply talking. “All of the permits have been secured. Before I left, plans were left with your secretary. Check with him and verify.”
I chance glancing at him. He’s nodding, listening to whatever is being said to him. I can’t hear what the mayor is saying, but I assume there is some problem with what they are working on. My body steps back from the bookshelf, and I go around his desk to look down at his computer screen displaying plans he must be discussing.
From my view, it looks like nothing but chicken scratch. I can’t make heads or tails of the blueprints for the building, which will be immense, and I don’t want to. I lean down, my palms flat on the desk, and move in closer to view the little notes that seem to be typed out around.
Damiano looks at me. An apologetic smile ghosts his face, and then he returns to the task. He listens a little longer. The quiet allows me to catch pieces of what the mayor is saying. At the wedding, he was loud and boisterous and seems to be the same over the phone. I quickly put together that there's a delay with a shipment of materials and that a contractor is having a problem getting a permit for something.
Boring businesspeople stuff.
In my head, I chuckle. I had never imagined that the legit side of being in the Mafia could be so mundane. From what I’ve gathered, many of these men became smart about illegal activities and found ways to shield them within legal ones– Businesses, shipping ports, and politicians.
As squeaky clean as the mayor is on paper, he’s just as dirty behind closed, soundproof doors. All men placed in his positions are. It’s a well-known thing. You don’t reach any position held in esteem without doing shady things or having gray morals.
Something similar to not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing or vice versa.
A few more minutes pass by before Damiano hangs up. When his eyes meet mine, he chuckles. I see the exhaustion that has come over him from the call. He blows out a deep breath and then groans. “The mayor is like a child. I have to hold his hand in every manner for this project.”
“I bet,”
I respond nonchalantly. “He probably has a million assistants but still prefers to handle things independently.”
“Or he has to.”
I don’t say that it sounds like something suspicious is going on. Instead, I look at Damiano over my shoulder. “Does he know about your family business?”
“Family business?”
After a moment, Damiano chuckles. “Of course, he does. The mayor has his family ties. He is like me, however. He wants better than what our families provided us with and their families before them.”
Makes sense.
I nod. Taking my bottom lip between my teeth, I tease a piece of skin that feels chapped until it comes off, and the slight taste of blood floods my buds. “So, you want a better life for your children?”
“Our children.”
He casually corrects me.
After our first morning here, I don’t dare to dispute it. While I doubt that I’m pregnant just yet, I can’t help but feel like all of the fucking we’ve been doing has been for nothing– Mind-blowing and glorifying but for nothing.
“Our children.”
I echo, and even though I don’t fully believe I will get there with Damiano, the gorgeous, genuine smile that blooms across his face makes me wish our lives were different. To distract myself, I look back at the computer. “Are these blueprints for a resort?”
“No.”
A moment later, I feel his warmth behind me. He reaches to my right and moves his mouse to highlight an area of the print I don’t understand. “It’s a hospital.”
A hospital?
I frown. “It says Bianchi Resorts and Enterprises.”
“Si.”
He leans down more, his chest covering my back as he forces me to inch forward some. “It’s a watermark, my business name,”
he explains. It doesn’t stop him from pressing against me more, the hint of his length impressing itself on me. I control my weak moan by clearing my throat.
“That makes sense. Where are you building the hospital?”
“Grayson.”
My heart skips a beat, and I’m unsure I heard him. “Grayson?”
“Yes,”
Damiano scrolls on the screen, and I see notes for a neonatal and perinatal ward. “We can’t change the past, Bellissima, but if we can help the future, we should. Your son, with the right equipment ten years ago, should have survived, but the hospital you were sent to couldn’t– They didn’t have the funding or proper technology.”
He looks at me, and beneath the calculated exterior, I see emotions I don’t need verbal confirmation of.
My eyes shift back to the screen. “This will ensure other families get the care they need? How, Damiano?”
He frowns, and I’m aware I’ve ruined something. “Not that this isn’t going to help my old neighborhood. But the problem was also that they couldn’t afford care.”
Behind me, he seems overbearing and dominating, but Damiano’s tone is soothing. “No good deed goes unpunished, Echo. It’s a hospital that is geared toward low-income families. It assists them based on what they make annually, or we find ways to help them pay their bill. Some grants and other funding make it possible to do this, but having people on our side with the right connections helps, too. We can’t entirely go in and offer free care, but we can give some people a head start. We can offer babies that are born prematurely a fighting chance.”
I love him for this.
I nod, making sure that he can see my face. I offer a smile. “It’s a start– Better than what I had.”
It’s true.
The hospital where I had delivered was considered one of the worst at that time. Dirty, dingy, and full of people who had no choice but to crowd the emergency rooms because some could barely afford to pay a doctor, I had initially thought that I was safe. There was no way at that time I had felt Aldo and Tommaso would send men or come in there to retrieve us. Only they had, and cops on their take had given me away willingly.
Or they would have if the detective on my case hadn’t stepped in. He’d risked his own life by making sure I arrived at a safe house until my WITSEC guardians could get me. I learned later on that he’d been murdered in a burglary– A burglary that happened to have nothing missing.
“I know it won’t happen for a while, but could we build a youth community center and maybe a job resource office?”
Damiano regards me. His eyes look deeply into mine for a second, then return to the screen. “A community center?”
I can’t resist the anxiety that courses through me at what I’m about to divulge to him. “Our community center wasn’t in the best shape. I’m surprised that a better one hasn’t been built.”
He nods, calculative. “Did you spend a lot of time there?”
Did I?
I scoff. “It’s where I used to take Gaia when my mother began her affair with Tommaso. I was still a kid, and my father didn’t want us to lose the apartment key.”
I shake my head at the memory, the same old wounds from my past being uprooted.
Damiano frowns. “So, he made you take your sister to the moldy community center?”
The confusion is evident on his face and in his tone. “Many things my parents did make no sense to me now. He complained that we were too loud.”
“You were kids.”
I love that he’s defending us. It won’t make a difference, but it’s adorable. “We were, but when I think about it now, my father’s shop was his solace. He knew my mom was unfaithful. Tommaso wasn’t her first affair, and I guess he figured if he stayed away as long as possible-“
“No excuse,”
Damiano says quickly, cutting me off.
I chuckle. “My mom was supposed to pick us up, or at least let us in the apartment, but she stopped showing up one day. At one point, we would go to the neighbor’s apartment. Until she started to complain.”
I see the sharp look of displeasure on Damiano’s face. “She was an older lady, but Gaia always cried and fussed and was always hungry. So, our neighbor talked to my mother. She told her that if she watched, fed, and cared for us, my parents would have to start paying her.”
“Rightfully so. And your mother told you to take your sister to the community center instead?”
Instinctively, I offer a mix between nodding and shaking my head. “She told me to take Gaia to my father’s shop. Driving was maybe ten minutes, but walking that distance with an asthmatic kindergartener as an overwhelmed fifth grader would have been impossible.”
Strangely, the only other person who knows this and precisely what happened is the one I hate the most in the world.
Damiano kisses the side of my neck just below my ear as if he can hear my thoughts. The tenderness behind it is almost my undoing until I hear. “This is where you met Aldo?”
Every fiber in my core wants to pull away from him, but I exhale. “I knew him already. I met him at the office, and sometimes, if my mom had to work weekends, she would take us with her.”
I don’t want to start venting. “Aldo did become an integral part of my daily life after that.”
I hate recalling these broken parts of my life. I hate having to relive them with someone I want to rebuild with.
“You met him as a child and fell madly in love with him?”
The teasing way Damiano mocks me is annoying. It’s most likely because it’s true. I was enamored with Aldo from the moment he noticed me. “I got my first period at the center. I knew what a period was, but I wasn’t marginally prepared for the cramps that came with them. So, I am, what I would have considered at that time, dying. The personnel aren’t trying to help due to being understaffed and just stuck me in the office to call my mom.”
The memories feel fresh, as if they just happened. I can almost see everything take place before me, my youth rewinding itself in my face. My heart seems to constrict, my breathing catches, and my following words are strained through the heartbreak I felt all those years ago.
“I must have called her a million times– A million and one, maybe. So, I tried my dad at his shop.”
The realization of how shitty my parents were settles within me. “He asked me to hold out for another hour or two. He had some hot shit that was coming through to look at one of his comic books that was worth a lot more than my discomfort. I’m a bloody mess, so I call Tommaso’s cell, and Aldo picks up.”
I recall the vulnerable young girl I was. Crying on the floor, hidden behind the desk in the community center’s office. My pants had been partially stained with blood. I hadn’t even known that my period had come until Gaia asked me if I had sat in ketchup. Her question had confused me, but the instant that I had swiped the back of my pants, that weird, wet-like warm sensation of blood staining my fingers, I’d known instantly. On cue, my cramps started.
“Go on.”
Damiano urges me softly. “Aldo picked you up. Where did he take you?”
“Home.”
“Did he?”
The unsaid words bring to light what Damiano is worried about. Did Aldo touch me? I scoff. “No. Honestly, I made the first move on him.”
I don’t add that he made me want him, beg for him. He would play this mental torrential game of push and pull that would leave me craving the slightest acknowledgment from him. But he never touched me until I initiated it.
He claimed he gave me the power to choose him.
He’d just been grooming me for years.
Aldo had shown up like a knight in shining armor, stormed into the community center, and asked for me and Gaia. Who got us didn't matter because we hadn’t been in the after-school program. Aside from that, the community center staff couldn’t care less. More than anything, they had been happy to get rid of us.
Even being the second to the youngest person in the room, I could sense the energy shift the instant he entered. Voices felt more hushed. Everyone seemed more subdued, more compliant. It could have been that he had stepped in and taken charge instantly, or nobody had thought to question him. I had been drawn to him then. It had felt more like he’d protected me. Before we’d crossed all lines, I had gravitated towards him as a child craving love.
“He took Gaia and me home, ran me a shower, told me to get cleaned up, and then cooked for us. After he ensured we were good to go, he left me his cell phone number and told me to call him whenever my mother didn’t answer.”
Damiano scoffs behind me, and I’m uncertain if it’s because of Aldo or my mother. “I’m sure that she didn’t answer often.”
“Not that it excuses the things she did, but I think Tommaso made my mother feel wanted. He offered her happiness, no matter how false, and she grasped it.”
I look at Damiano over my shoulder. The unreadable expression that greets me is familiar. “She was a good mother. She loved us, but she was human, too.”
“Do you worry about what type of mother you will be?”
The question catches me off guard. For a moment, I think about it. Since Sean, I haven’t given much thought to becoming a mother until now. I accepted that entering this agreement with Damiano meant children would be a factor… If I can have any.
“I guess I will now,”
I say in a lighter voice than I expected to come out.
“You will be a great mother.”
Damiano gently leans in and kisses the exposed area behind my ear. When his arms snake around my waist and he turns me around to look at him, I don’t look away from him as he reads my expression.
For a moment, I allow myself the false hope that I will be. I allow myself the naivete to imagine I could be better than my mother.
It's not that hard when I think about it.
She went from being a caring, loving mother to an inconsiderate danger.
Looking at Damiano, I smile at him. “I like it here.”
It takes some time- Longer than I expect, but he steps back from me, giving me space, and I turn around to face him. When I look up at him, I can see words forming in his mind that I’m unsure even he wants to articulate.
He momentarily looks lost. Like he was expecting me to say this, but hearing it is another story. “I see that.”
His response is short and sweet. I watch his eyes scan my face for some hint that I’m lying. When he doesn’t get one, he sighs. Gently and reassuringly, my hand runs up the front of his shirt, stopping on his chest. I don’t want to live here, but I like it.”
My fingers curl into his button-up, opening the first one adeptly. “But, I mean, visiting here a few times a year would be great.”
Damiano watches me work on his buttons. “A few times, huh?”
I shrug. “Yeah, you know? Just to get a sense of adventure.”
Pausing what I’m doing, I look around at the office’s beautiful, modest décor. “Something about this place is so peaceful. Aside from whatever bug I’ve caught, I love it here. I’ve never slept better.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Softly, Damiano places his hands on my hips, and the heat from his palms spreads warmth throughout me. “I like you here.”
Surprising.
At times like this, I’m reminded that despite our agreement, Damiano has reached a point where he can relax more around me. Sure, it’s not all the time, and there are moments when I can look at him and see that he’s holding back from telling me how he feels. I know a good part of it is because he knows I’m hiding things, but I know they are for good reasons.
We’re all to blame for something.
Smiling up at him, I lean closer and touch my lips to his collarbone before pulling away. “Would you consider making this a home we could return to?”
“It is a home we will come back to, Bellissima.”
He’s called me Bellissima a million times, and it always does the same thing to me. As far as I’m concerned, he can call me that for infinity.
“Don’t promise me things you can’t fulfill, Damiano.”
His brow furrows, and I sense the tension rise inside him. “I didn’t have relationships before you- Couldn’t have them. I, uh, get easily attached in repetitive situations.”
For the longest time, my husband stares at me. I know it would be an insult to his intelligence to believe that he didn’t understand me when I see that he does. He’s fully aware of how I will fold if I allow myself to fall in love with him.
But I can’t allow that to happen. I won’t.
As redundant as it sounds.
“Like Blaine?”
I think about Blaine for a moment and acknowledge that a small part of me did like him, but that he wouldn’t have been able to handle me all day, every day. He was gentle and dominating when I needed him to be, but that was only in the short spurts that we were together. It would have become too much if he had to be that way all day, and I had to direct him.
We would have eventually grown to hate each other.
Like my mother and father, it would have been poetic justice in its own way.
Gently, my fingers trace the tattoos across Damiano’s chest. Through the swirls, clouds, and intricate designs that cover him, I see the faded tattoo that spells out his mother’s name over his left pec. “I liked Blaine, yes, but he could never be what I know we could.”
“Which is?”
I shrug nonchalantly. “I don’t think you’ll believe me no matter how often I say Blaine was a means to an end. I did like him. He was sweet, caring, and passionate-“ I see Damiano inhale deeply and don’t miss the jealousy in his eyes, “but he was young.”
Damiano chuckles. “He’s three years older than you, Bellissima.”
Knowing he’s looked into Blaine’s past so thoroughly turns me on.
Without permission, I trail my hand down his chest, past his chiseled stomach, and beneath the waistband of his suit pants. When the tailored pants don’t let me go any lower, I angle my hand inwards and rake my sharp nails over the apex of his manhood, careful not to scratch too hard.
His sudden intake of breath that doesn’t meet with retaliation spurs me on further. My free hand unbuttons his pants, and his zipper lowers on its own. Both of our eyes lower to see the apparent arousal he can’t contain despite this odd conversation.
I take my bottom lip between my teeth and look up at him. My hand caresses the junction between his cock and the space above before I encircle him with my fingers and begin to stroke him.
Instinctively, he lowers his lips towards mine, and I continue to tease him, inching my lips away from his. “What can I say?”
My tongue lashes out against his lips that beg me to meet them with my own. “Men born in the same decade as me are boys.”
“Problemi di papa?”
I nod. “Big ones.”
Our breaths mingle in the intense heat of the moment, but our mouths still don’t meet. My hand continues with the onslaught of his erection, moving up and down against the solid muscle that’s pliant in my grip. My body leans into his, using his broader chest as support. I move back each time Damiano tries to take charge with a kiss.
“So?”
I ask him, returning to what I originally started this conversation for.
It’s going sideways.
“So?”
Damiano hisses when I move up, rubbing against him harder. His brown eyes fall back on me, and I see all he would do to me if he weren’t relinquishing power. It makes me want him naked under me all the more.
The last few days have been difficult with whatever bug I got, and if I’m not gagging over a toilet, I’m asleep.
Our beautiful, inseparable honeymoon has become his working oasis and my sleep oasis, but fucking has never been a barrier for us.
Call it the honeymoon phase.
I know it will die down eventually, but I’ll accept what I can get while I can get it.
Giving in, I lean in. My lips touch Damiano’s, and it feels like sparks we haven’t felt ignite between us. I hate how much his touch comforts me, but I feed into it. I allow him to consume me. His full lips cover mine hungrily. His tongue pushes into my mouth without asking and plays against my own, teasing me more.
“I want to stay here,”
I mumble against his lips, “with you.”
I lose control of my body when he squeezes my extra sensitive breast. “Just us.”
For a second, Damiano falters. “Here? In this house?”
He seems surprised.
I’m barely able to answer him as our mouths meld to one another. His tongue invades my senses, and I let him. For a second time, I bite him. “Yes, just us.”
“Whatever you want.”
My frown does nothing to assuage my emotions or Damiano’s promising lies in the throes of whatever we’re doing. Even then, I don’t learn my lesson. I know that giving in to Damiano will only hurt or anger me, but I allow it because we’re in a great spot right now. Since coming here, it feels like we’ve created this perfect bubble in which we can coexist. There are still rules, and we don’t go anywhere without protection and men. Damiano carries here more than he does at home, but it’s not alarming. I like that he’s prepared to defend us versus waiting for Gio or Vlad to hand him an extra gun.
As if he senses the change in my demeanor, Damiano pulls back to look at me. Worried, his eyes search mine. “Are you okay?”
I nod. “Yeah, just had a moment.”
He smiles at me. “Well, you haven’t eaten much today, and it’s time for dinner.”
“Good idea.”
My stomach chooses to revolt and growl after his words. I look down at my hand still inside Damiano’s pants, and a smile spreads. “Are you going to be able to walk around with this thing?”
His smug expression highlights how handsome he is. “I’ll be just fine. It’s not the first time you’ve left me with a hard-on, Bellissima.”
Remembering the bar where we had our first physical encounter, I laugh. The sound is foreign enough, even for me, but I love it. “You’re right, you’ll survive.”
I give him one last stroke, then pull my hand out and start towards his office door, where he calls after me. “Where are you going?”
“The bathroom to wash my hands. I know where your penis has been.”