Chapter Twelve #2
He wraps his arm around my waist, puts a protective palm on my stomach and bites my neck gently.
“Look at the city below you. All of this is yours. You’ve made it.
You don’t have to fight anymore. You don’t have to work anymore.
Whatever you do from here on out, that’s all your decision, Lindsay, but you don’t have to worry about money anymore. ”
I wish it didn’t make me want to cry, but it does.
I wish that I could say money doesn’t mean much to me, but money has been the primary driver for all of my life.
Yes, it’s complicated by the fact that I decided to pursue a dream job rather than a job job, but I’ve been scrapping and saving for so long, working my ass off just to live.
To hear that that part of my life is over…
But it pales in comparison to the possessive hold he has on me. I don’t want him to know that. I don’t want to admit that the thing I like the most right in this moment is that I’m his.
That he wants me. That I’m someone that matters, and that he desires me.
He takes hold of the zipper on the back of my dress, draws it down, and the dress falls down to my waist. I’m sure that the windows up here are highly mirrored, but still, my heart begins to beat faster. The idea that we are right there exposed like this, even if it isn’t quite true, is thrilling.
Everyone looking at me. Up here in this beautiful tower. Everyone looking at this beautiful man, desiring me, holding me.
He’s dangerous. He’s as messed up as I am in so many ways, and yet, that’s really the only way it would ever work.
I can’t imagine falling for some man who grew up on a normal street, in a normal house. Some man who can’t understand where my sharp edges come from, and will find them shocking.
Ciro isn’t that man. He’s even harder than I am. And that’s what makes him safe. Secure to lean against. To lean into. Because when he says that he wants me, I know that he means it.
When he first took me, he told me that he wasn’t going to hurt me. That his word was like iron. I understand that now.
His word is singularly important.
And I have it.
He undoes my bra, lets it fall to the floor. Then he cups my breasts, those strong calloused hands glorious against my skin.
I let my head fall back against him.
Then he pushes one hand down the front of my underwear, finding me slick and ready for him. He teases me like that, with the city below, and I feel him getting hard against my rear.
I arch against him, a wordless plea for him to take me. Claim me.
He takes his hand away from my breast, and I hear him undoing his belt, the zipper on his pants.
Then he lifts me, impales me on his hard length as he bends me at the waist, my hands braced on the window.
He growls, thrusting inside me slow and deep.
He fucks me like I’m precious, and I never thought such a thing was possible.
He claims me, over and over again, and I cry out his name. A prayer, a song in my heart that feels as if I’ve known it all along.
We both come in a rush, and he pulls my limp body back against his, taking us down onto the couch. He brushes my hair back off my face, still inside of me as I sit there on his lap. “That was quite the welcome home,” he whispers against my ear.
I smile.
“Yes,” I say. “It was.”
Maybe someday we’ll make it to a bed more times than we don’t. I wonder if we’ll share one here. Or if we could only ever have that in our bubble.
Will I still have my own room? The idea of sharing a room with him makes me feel… I’m not quite ready for that.
Maybe sometimes we’ll share a bed.
“Do I have my own room?”
“Yes,” he says, like the question is quite silly.
“Good. I just… I don’t really know how to share.”
“Neither do I,” he says.
Neither of us really knows how to do anything. But I don’t want to say that. We don’t know how to be with another person. We don’t know how to parent. We don’t know what a functional family looks like. But I have the tiniest glimmer of a dream. This hope that it can happen.
“Did you ever think you’d be a father?” I ask.
He shifts, pulls me away from him, and tucks me against his body there on the couch. I curve into him, wearing just my underwear, completely comfortable with him mostly clothed.
I don’t know how to explain the way it makes me feel. Like I’m special. Like he’s Ciro. In that black, tailored-suit look that I’m so fond of on him.
“No,” he says. “I’ve been too focused on destroying my father’s empire.”
“And you didn’t think about what your life would look like when you were finished with that?”
“No. Because the mission had to be the most important thing, not anything that might happen after. I knew that I had to be willing to die to see it come to fruition. And I was. So I haven’t spent that much time thinking about what my life would look like in the years after.”
I can relate to that, oddly enough. I’ve always had this image of myself working hard, fighting to the next thing, leveling up, getting to the next position in life, but I’ve never paused to think about what I wanted to do when all of that was done.
Or what the pinnacle of success would actually be for me.
It’s more of a feeling than a list of actual goals. Something to keep me moving, always moving, and never allowing myself to be content.
“We have to actually think about it now,” I say. “What it looks like for us to have a child. What that child’s life will look like.”
“We need to make you a doctor’s appointment.”
“Oh. Yes. I was going to a doctor regularly in Rome. I guess it was your father who arranged all of that.”
“I imagine so. I wouldn’t want his potential bargaining chip to be potentially unhealthy.”
His scathing words make my stomach go sour.
“I guess not.” It makes me think of Vittoria. “I know you’re really angry at your friend, the one who got your sister pregnant.”
He growls. “Renzo.”
“Yes. I know you’re really angry at him. But I’m wondering if I could talk to Vittoria.”
He looks at me speculatively. “Why do you wish to speak to her?”
“Because what she did to me was wrong. Scary, even. What she did to me put me in grave danger. And also because I want to know what she was thinking. You know, she’s the only friend I’ve ever had.
Her leaving, betraying me, that really hurt.
But now she’s pregnant, and our babies are related.
They’re going to be cousins. It’s part of this…
It’s part of what I’m talking about. We get to make a future now. We get to decide what it is.”
He looks at me, speculative. “If you insist. I’ll get you in touch with Vittoria, and tomorrow I will arrange a doctor’s visit and a scan.”
I nod, and my stomach goes tight. I have good, consistent movement, so I’m not worried about the baby’s health, but the idea of seeing the baby, of it becoming even more real to me, that makes me feel nervous, not in a bad way, but I feel something.
Maybe it’s just fear of all this becoming more and more real. Even as it becomes more and more dear to me.
“You might want to get dressed.”
I get up off the couch, and go collect my clothes, and he takes his phone out at the same time as he adjusts himself, tucks himself back into his pants and closes them.
“I’ll call now.”
Of course he will. That’s extremely mob boss of him. The phone rings, and is answered quickly. “The favor is appreciated,” he says. “Now I’ve taken Lindsay to London. Where she and the baby are safe.”
I can’t hear what’s being said on the other end. But then Ciro speaks again. “Lindsay wishes to speak to Vittoria.”
“Only if she wants to speak to me,” he says, clearly in response to something that Renzo has said.
There’s a pause. And I hear the lilt of a feminine voice on the other end of the phone. “Are you safe?… Are you happy?”
He pauses. “Do you need me to come and get you?”
He laughs, a low, sardonic sound. “I would expect nothing less from a Corretti daughter… I’m here with Lindsay. She wishes to speak to you… It’s your mess, Vittoria. If you have something to say for yourself, then it’s a good time for you to say it.”
He hands the phone to me, and I put it up to my ear. “Hello, Vittoria,” I say.
I hear her indrawn breath on the other end of the line. “Lindsay. Are you all right?”