22. Niccolò
Niccolò
The party was supposed to be a fucking victory lap, a statement to the Chicago outfit and the rest of the eastern seaboard that the Severato syndicate hadn't skipped a beat since I ripped the crown from my father’s head.
Instead, it became the exact moment I felt my woman slip right through my bloody fingers.
Livia walked down the grand staircase in that silver silk gown, smiling for the men who kissed my ring, but the light in her eyes had completely burned out.
She played the perfect, devoted queen for the rest of the evening, letting me pull her against my side and press kisses to her jaw, yet she felt like a ghost haunting my own ballroom.
In the weeks that followed the celebration, her emotional withdrawal has mutated into a suffocating paranoia that gnaws relentlessly at the edges of my sanity.
She still sleeps in my bed, yielding to my touch whenever I reach for her in the middle of the night, but her compliance feels hollow.
She is retreating behind the same impenetrable titanium wall she built when she was just a maid scrubbing my floors, hiding whatever the fuck is running through her head.
My twisted, possessive mind supplies the only logical answer: she regrets submitting to a monster, and the reality of being tied to a violent mobster is finally making her sick to her stomach.
I am standing by the sprawling bay windows of the war room, staring out at the manicured grounds of the estate, when Enzo walks in and shuts the oak doors behind him.
He doesn't carry his usual stack of ledgers, he carries a tablet displaying the latest surveillance photos from the northern shipping routes, dropping the device onto the center of the conference table with a sharp clack.
"The Falco family is moving weapons through the narrows," Enzo states, his icy blue eyes fixing on my back.
"They are mobilizing their soldiers, Niccolò. Roberto’s exile and the broken engagement humiliated them, and they are preparing a massive retaliation to reclaim their honor.
We need to strike the northern warehouses before they get the chance to flank us. "
"Then send Alessio with a strike team and burn the fucking warehouses to the ground," I snap, turning away from the window to glare at my Consigliere. "I don't need to micromanage a simple arson job, Enzo. Handle it."
Enzo doesn't flinch at my tone. He simply crosses his arms over his tailored suit, refusing to back down from the frustration rolling off my shoulders.
"I will handle it, but I cannot handle the massive fucking blind spot you are developing right inside your own house.
You are distracted, Niccolò. You are missing shipment reports, ignoring calls from the Chicago bosses, and pacing the hallways like a caged animal because you are too busy watching the security feeds to see what your woman is doing. "
"Watch your fucking mouth," I warn him, closing the distance between us until I am looming over him. "Livia is none of your business."
"She is my business when she makes the Don weak," Enzo counters ruthlessly.
"The men see it. They see you losing your grip on the operations because you are obsessed with a girl who looks like she wants to jump out of a moving window to get away from you.
The Falcos will use that distraction to slip a knife right between your ribs, and if you don't snap the fuck out of this pathetic paranoia, you are going to get us all killed. "
I grab Enzo by the lapels of his suit jacket, slamming him backward against the edge of the conference table.
The violent urge to break his jaw sings through my veins, but the objective truth in his eyes forces me to freeze.
He is right. I am losing my mind over a woman who treats my affection like a prison sentence, and my enemies are sharpening their knives while I stare at her on the surveillance monitors.
"Nobody touches her," I growl, releasing his jacket with a violent shove. "You double the perimeter security. Put two armed guards on her at all times, even inside the house. Track her every fucking move. She doesn't take a breath without me knowing about it."
Enzo adjusts his lapels, his expression completely unimpressed. "Suffocating her will only make her hate you more."
"I don't give a shit if she hates me, as long as she is safe and she stays exactly where I put her," I bite out, turning my back on him to pour a glass of bourbon from the crystal decanter. "Get the men in place. Now."
My command backfires with spectacular precision.
The moment the extra guards materialize at the end of the hallways, shadowing Livia's steps through the estate gardens and standing outside the kitchen while she makes her tea, her withdrawal accelerates into a frantic, barely concealed panic.
I watch her from the balcony overlooking the courtyard, nursing a glass of liquor while she paces the stone pathways of the greenhouse.
She looks over her shoulder every few seconds, her hands trembling as she pulls her cashmere cardigan tight against her chest, treating the men meant to protect her like executioners waiting for the order to strike.
I wanted to build an impenetrable fortress around the woman I love, but I have inadvertently locked her in a maximum-security prison, accelerating her desperate need to flee my suffocating orbit.
It is past two in the morning when the boiling frustration finally explodes.
The estate is silent, and the guards patrolling the outer walls, but I am wide awake in my study, staring blindly at a stack of syndicate contracts.
The door clicks open, and Livia slips inside, wearing a thin silk robe over a pair of cotton shorts.
She doesn't look at me, her gaze fixed firmly on the floorboards as she walks toward the bookshelves to grab a novel, acting as though the massive man sitting behind the desk is completely invisible.
"Why are you pulling away from me?" I demand through the quiet room.
Livia freezes, her hand hovering over a leather-bound spine. She slowly turns to face me, her expression is a flawless mask of blank indifference that makes my blood boil. "I don't know what you are talking about, Niccolò. I am just looking for a book."
"Cut the bullshit," I snarl, throwing my pen onto the mahogany wood and surging to my feet.
I stalk around the edge of the desk, backing her up against the towering shelves until my chest brushes against her soft curves.
"You have been treating me like a stranger for weeks.
You flinch when I touch you, you stare at the walls when I fuck you, and you look at my guards like they are going to put a bullet in your head.
What is going on in that stubborn head of yours? "
"You surrounded me with armed men inside the house!" she scoffs. "I can't walk to the kitchen without two mobsters staring at my back. You promised me freedom, and then you strapped a fucking leash around my neck because you can't stand the thought of me breathing without your permission!"
"I put those men there to keep you alive!
" I roar right back, grabbing her waist to haul her flush against my body.
"The Falcos want to butcher my entire family, and you are the most glaring vulnerability I possess.
Do you think I want to watch you pace the greenhouse like a caged bird?
I am trying to stop my enemies from sending you back to me in fucking pieces! "
"I am not your vulnerability!" she screams, shoving her hands against my chest in a futile attempt to break my iron grip. "I am just a girl you bought out of a jail cell! If they want to hurt you, they will aim for your syndicate, not the maid you fuck on the side!"
The insult obliterates the last shred of my sanity.
I grip the back of her thighs, lifting her completely off the floor, and carry her the few steps to my massive mahogany desk.
I sweep my arm across the surface, sending files, crystal tumblers, and brass paperweights crashing to the hardwood floor, before slamming her down onto the polished wood.
She gasps, her legs instinctively wrapping around my hips as I crowd into the V of her thighs, pinning her wrists to the desk above her head with one massive hand.
"You are going to stop calling yourself a maid," I growl, leaning down until my mouth is hovering a fraction of an inch from her swollen lips.
"You are my woman. You are the only fucking thing in this miserable world that matters to me, and I will rip out the throat of any man who tries to tell you otherwise. "
Livia’s chest heaves beneath her silk robe, her brown eyes are wide and swimming with a chaotic mix of terror and feral lust. We are both operating on adrenaline, using the explosive physical connection to mask the paralyzing fears tearing us apart from the inside.
She hates the cage I put her in, and I am terrified that the woman I love is slipping away from me, so we do the only thing we know how to do. We fuck.
"Then prove it," she challenges, her voice a breathless, venomous whisper that shoots a spike of liquid fire straight to my groin. "Show me I'm yours."
I tear the silk robe off her shoulders, tossing the expensive fabric onto the ruined floor, and drag her cotton shorts down her legs with impatient efficiency.
She is already slick, her body weeping for the aggressive dominance she claims to hate, and the sight of her wet, swollen pussy shatters my control.
I undo my trousers, freeing my aching length, and drive into her tight, slick heat with a savage, unrelenting thrust that forces a beautiful, high-pitched scream from her throat.
I don't give her a chance to recover, and set a punishing pace that shakes the mahogany desk against the floorboards.
Livia thrashes beneath me, her nails biting viciously into the muscles of my back as she arches her spine, chasing the ruthless friction with a desperate hunger that matches my own.
We are completely unhinged, trading biting kisses and bruised lips, punishing each other for the emotional chasm growing between us.
"Tell me you belong to me," I command, my thumb finding the swollen bundle of nerves at her center, pressing hard to push her over the precipice.
"I'm yours, I'm yours, please, Niccolò," she sobs uncontrollably, her hips bucking wildly against my hand.
She sobs and shatters with a magnificent, helpless cry, her inner muscles clamping around my cock with agonizing force.
The intense sensation tips me right over the edge, and I roar her name, emptying my release inside her with a violent, shuddering climax that leaves us both gasping for oxygen in the study.
I collapse over her chest, burying my face in her fragrant hair, pretending that the explosive sex fixed the broken pieces of our relationship, even as I feel her slowly retreating back behind her impenetrable walls.
Fuck!