16. Bianca
Bianca
The saying is true. It is more difficult to create something than to break it.
I’ve spent years carefully cultivating my reputation, sowing fear into my name and persona, all so that the people in that dining room would take me seriously. Now, that hard work could amount to less than nothing.
Stumbling into the bathroom, I press my hand against my bare throat. I feel like I’m suffocating, like someone—Nicola, probably—sucked all the oxygen from the room. Elio’s mother is right. I took advantage of his love by destroying him in the most savage way possible.
My breath saws in and out of me, burning my lungs and scraping my throat raw. I never wanted to kill him. He was the first man I ever loved. The marriage was Aldo’s idea from the beginning, but I didn’t mind the thought of escaping my father’s clutches by marrying kindhearted and genuine Elio.
Only, I wasn’t free because Aldo had ulterior motives. I could have stood up to him, but I had just turned twenty, and defying Aldo Conti seemed impossible at that age.
I still remember what he hissed through the phone that sent me over the edge.
“I can only tolerate one useless daughter, Bianca. One. I won’t suffer the shame of having fathered two.”
In the end, my choice boiled down to murdering Elio or sacrificing Livia. So, of course, I chose my sister.
I’ve always chosen her, because if I don’t, who will? It’s been that way since I was a teen and Mother ran off and left us behind. Livia has me to fight for her, to protect her, and I…I have no one.
My sob echoes strangely in the bathroom, and I slap a palm over my mouth. Racing the length of the room, I shove open door after door, steeling myself in case I actually come across anyone. To my relief, the bathroom is empty save for me.
Rushing to the sink, I splash cold water on my face.
Elio lies at my feet convulsing, and I stumble back in horror, the vial of powdered foxglove dropping from my limp fingers as I watch Elio’s heart give out right before my eyes.
For a moment, memory overlays the present, and I fumble for the paper towel dispenser, my reflection swimming before me.
My own heart hurts so much that I can almost imagine what it would feel like if it simply stopped.
I had to kill him. Otherwise, if Father had found him during the raid, he would have tortured him. It was the only way to make his already inevitable death quick and painless.
I remove my smeared makeup with a paper towel as I relive the nightmare.
I practiced my speech countless times in case I ran into Nicola again.
I promised myself I would admit my sins to her and her alone and atone for what I did however she saw fit.
But my husband stole even that possibility from me.
My hands tighten on the porcelain sink, and I grit my teeth with such vigor that I’m sure my jaw will break.
Behind me, the door of the bathroom bursts open and Marco enters. His eyes are heated pools of olive oil, his muscles tense. I whip around, my mouth dropping open in shock. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
The edge of the sink digs into my lower back, where Father twisted the skin over my spine, and I wince. “Get out.” My voice sounds like a stranger’s.
Marco ignores me, which only incenses me more.
“Did it feel good?” Derision coats my every word. “Watching me fall? Was it just the way you planned?”
I refuse to acknowledge the ache in my chest.
His potent silence threatens to choke me. Deciding not to wait for his snide, sarcastic retort, I dash into the first bathroom stall.
As I spin to slam the door, he forces his way inside the narrow space behind me, snatching the lock in place. His massive frame offers no escape, so I punch his stomach and collapse into his body until my ragged breaths crash against his even ones.
I hit him a second time, and he captures my wrists, jerking my hands to the small of my back and shackling them in place with his own. He tugs me closer, erasing the last of the space between his body and mine while I struggle to breathe past the rising devastation within.
“Was it you? Did you arrange for Nicola’s guest appearance?”
His eyes flicker with guilt and a subtler emotion. Regret, maybe.
I scoff. His remorse won’t rewind the last ten minutes.
Tonight is my worst nightmare come to life. One of my deepest, most painful secrets laid bare for everyone, for Father, to gawk at and judge. And it’s all this man’s fault. A man who touches me more intimately than anyone ever has, who leaves me feeling untethered at every turn.
“All you’ve done since we got married is screw with me. If you’d spend half as much time taking your role as don seriously, you’d be one of the best to ever do it. You could run this city. But no, you’d rather waste any shred of potential you might have had on petty games.”
I’ve sacrificed and killed for my title, and I’m still looked down on.
Yet here Marco is, the womanizing party boy, with everything I’ve ever wanted arranged at his feet on a silver platter.
He didn’t have to work to get it, and he won’t have to fight to keep it.
What’s the point of putting so much effort into my responsibilities when someone like him can breeze through life without a care in the world and still claim the things I’ve only ever dreamed of?
“It’s easier to shirk your responsibilities than it is to be compared to your brother and labeled a loser, isn’t it, Argento? What a sad excuse of a man you are.” I struggle to break free, but he’s as steady as a boulder beneath crashing waves.
The rage hollows me out. A long moment passes where I wait for him to loosen his grip, to let me collapse onto the marble at his feet, but his fingers only tighten.
When I peer up into his eyes, a wry, rough smile tilts his lips, though his eyes continue to gleam with dark intent. “Is that how you talk to your only ticket back to the big leagues?”
My thoughts race until, with a rush of shame, I admit that he’s right.
Everyone in the Council respects Dante’s screwed-up little brother more than they do me.
If he vouches for me before the correct people, then the same man who destroyed my reputation could be my fastest way to regaining the respect I lost in the eyes of the other mafia families tonight.
To be honest, the Argento don wouldn’t even have to speak on my behalf. As long as his reputation grows, mine will grow alongside it simply because we’re married.
Hatred of Marco is a banked fire rather than a blazing inferno these days. Ingrained and draining, like a festering wound that throbs with a dull, constant ache that never truly heals. “What are you offering?”
After he set me up to fall tonight, I’m wary of his true intentions, but what other choice do I have?
He shrugs, his fingers stroking my trapped wrists. “Nothing much. A few words in the right ears. You took down the Bonuccis. It doesn’t matter how you pulled it off, only that no one else could have. You deserve the same trust and respect as any other high-ranked family in our world.”
I gape, certain I misheard. It’s one thing to believe it myself and another thing entirely to hear the sentiment from Marco of all people.
At my silence, he continues. “I vouch for you in my circles, and in return, you leave my shipments alone. Permanently.”
My nose wrinkles in consternation. So, he did suspect me.
Technically, he and his family gained those guns after raiding a Conti storage facility about fifteen years ago, which means those shipments are just as much mine as they are his, but I drop the topic.
Pushing the issue will solve nothing, and it’s not like I have the necessary connections to sell them on my own.
I yank my shoulders back and tilt my chin. “Fine. It’s a truce. Now let me go.”
Did the version of me that always has everything under control go up in smoke the second I said I do?
I won’t knock Marco’s help just because he’s the reason for my slow downward spiral, but I need to restore discipline in my own way as well.
An upside to this fiasco is that since we’ve reached an agreement, I can concentrate on locating the book without petty squabbles derailing me.
When I pull at my arms, Marco releases me. I reach around him to unlock the stall door and, as if by habit, he smooths a loose curl behind my ear.
For the second time tonight, I find myself not wanting to shift away.
Once he’s adjusted my hair to his satisfaction, he licks his thumb and wipes the corner of my eye, erasing the last traces of my smeared eyeliner.
When he hooks the strap of my dress to straighten it, I curl my fingers around his wrist. I don’t know whether I want him to stop or continue, and I meet his eyes with my heart lodged somewhere in my stomach.
For a beat, I wonder how it would feel to simply let go and allow someone else to steer for a while.
Protecting Livia while juggling Aldo’s temper left little room for anything else, and no one ever had the time to care for me, not even my own mother.
She was always too focused on hiding her affair and planning her escape to bother.
Marco knows that my image and dignity are all I have.
His fingers remain between my skin and the shoulder of my dress. The light strokes burn, every nerve ending centered on that one point. On our proximity. Marco drags his finger down my collarbone and across the rise of my breasts, and my pulse flutters in my throat.
His eyes drop to my lips and, unwilling to let the softness and warmth just yet, I tug him down into a kiss. How long has it been since he’s put his lips on me?
Too long. My core still throbs from his game with the knife yesterday, unsatiated and eager for his touch again.
Marco backs me into the wall of the stall and braces my leg against his waist. Hitching my dress higher, he steps in between my thighs and slides my panties to the side.
My tongue entangles with his, and the world fades to black around me. In the background, the door to the bathroom opens and two women walk in chatting, but rather than stop, Marco deepens the kiss.
One of his hands unbuttons his pants and frees his cock. He recognizes what I want, what my hips so urgently seek, and he seems happy to comply.
The head slips inside me. He holds me up just high enough to prevent himself from entering me all the way, and that edge, that line of enough but not nearly enough, shreds me.
I bite at his lips, his tongue, rake my nails across his shoulders.
With my leg still hooked over his forearm, my hips arch repeatedly toward him in a wild dance.
He’s so thick, so hard, so hot that the more my hips buck over him, the wetter I become.
Marco captures my mouth, his tongue diving inside as if he’s feeding off my desperation. Just when I’m sure I can’t take anymore, he withdraws and replaces his cock with his fingers.
He starts with two, and then a third joins in.
He angles my hips, pumping his fingers quickly and brushing that sensitive spot with every thrust. The musky scent of my arousal coats the air while the wet sounds of his hands working between my legs drowns out all common sense.
The orgasm sneaks up on me, and before long, I’m coming, spilling pleasure onto his palm and crying my silent relief into his open mouth.
Whatever moans I can’t contain, Marco swallows, and my small, tortured gasps are drowned out by the women chatting by the sinks.
At some point, my entire body spasms, and my leg kicks out, striking the door. The women jump and whisper before hurrying from the room.
As soon as the door closes behind them, Marco sets me onto the ground and fixes the hem of my dress. “Ready?”
I blink, wavering on my feet. This man taunted me with the threat of blackmail for over a year and has just ruined my life. He also just gave me one of the best orgasms I’ve ever had and doesn’t seem inclined to ask for any kind of reciprocation.
I’ve always thought of him as selfish and self-centered, but for once, I question that.
The man I thought I married almost a month ago would have seen my pleasure as secondary.
A byproduct of his own rather than the goal.
It’s the second instance in twenty-four hours that he’s gotten me off without expecting me to return the favor.
If anything, Marco just seems content that I enjoyed myself.
Some parts of him I understand so well that it’s almost like looking into a mirror. Yet I continue to underestimate him about so much. What else have I gotten wrong?
We leave the stall and, too exhausted to think straight, I check my reflection once more while Marco puts himself back together. My reflection stares back, drained and wrung out.
“Head straight to the car.” Marco places a hand on the back of my neck, the motion too proprietary to ignore.
After everything that’s happened, I can handle the social faux pas of leaving before dessert.
I straighten to my full height, smooth my expression, and the two of us walk out of the bathroom together.
We may not be allies yet, but I don’t think we’re enemies anymore either.