2. VIN
VIN
The MacCuinn mansion is huge, sprawling, a lot of stone and green grass and a shit ton of Irish.
They’re not old money like us, status earned through centuries of blood, generational wealth and traditions passed down. They’re newer, louder, more ostentatious. I like it. They don’t give a fuck, and they fucking want it bad.
They’re good partners, and Ronan MacCuinn, the oldest son of the boss of the family, is like a brother to me.
Tonight, the main room of the MacCuinn estate is packed with Irish: cousins and brothers, sisters and soldiers for the MacCuinn Clan.
A fire blazes in a hearth the size of a small car.
Someone’s playing guitar in the corner, badly, and nobody’s told him to stop because nobody cares.
Pretty much everyone is wasted, and I intend to join them starting now.
Ronan presses a glass in my hand before I’ve had time to shrug off my coat.
“Vin.” Ronan grins at me and holds up his own glass in salute. He’s red-haired, about as big as me, and built like a fucking door. “You actually came.”
“I said I’d come.”
“You say a lot of things.”
I drink. The whiskey is good. It always is here. “I keep my word.”
He studies me a moment, something sharp under his easy smile, then claps me on the shoulder hard. “Good man. Come. Declan’s been asking for you.”
The room parts for us as we move through it, or it parts for Ronan, and I move in his wake. Declan is one of Ronan’s cousin, but he speaks with a thick Irish brogue that I oddly only understand when I’m fucking trashed.
Flanking him is another cousin, Luca. Big as I am, broad shouldered, and largely silent, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk, but then he seems to come and go.
“Vin fucking Demonio.” Declan stands, offers his hand. “Ronan said you’d show.”
“Ronan was right.”
“First time for everything.” He laughs at his own joke. “Sit. Drink. Christ, you look like your dog died.”
“Don’t have a dog.”
“That explains it. A man needs something soft to come home to.”
I say nothing and swallow what’s left of my drink, and he signals Luca to refill my glass.
The party moves around me and I stand and watch.
It’s a skill I’ve honed over the past year: check the temperature of a room without giving away that I’m even paying attention.
Luca pours two inches of brown liquor into my glass and settles on one of the many couches clustered around fire pits, watching me the same way I’m watching him.
Ashlyn MacCuinn is across the room, laughing at something a woman beside her is saying.
She’s beautiful in a brittle, upper class way.
Or maybe her smile’s brittle. I don’t fucking know.
She’s hourglass curvy, long red wavy hair, big tits—the kind of chick that any red blooded straight male would want to fuck. Except me.
She catches me looking and holds my gaze longer than I want her to. I look away before the slow smile she gives me reaches her eyes.
“She’s been waiting for you to get here,” Ronan says, low, beside me.
“Is that right.”
He nods, takes a long pull of his drink. “You know, I respect what I’ve seen this past year, Vin.”
“Not sure what you’re talking about.”
“You were unexpectedly… single.”
“I’m always single.”
Ronan gives a throaty laugh and shakes his head. “I wasn’t sure what to expect from you. My father is sure that you’re going to break the contract, keep philandering. I have to stop him from putting safeguards in place to protect the alliance, if you know what I mean.
I know what he means. His father is a mean bastard and loves to fuck with people. It’s why he and Aurelio worked so well together. And he doesn’t like me as much as I don’t like him. “Your father’s a douche.”
Declan guffaws. “That’s true. And he was wrong about you, wasn’t he.” Declan tips his glass at me slightly. “No women. No one on the side.”
Ronan chimes in, “Not that my people could find, anyway. And believe me, my people looked.”
My jaw tightens, but I keep my expression neutral. “Your people have too much time on their hands.”
“My people protect my sister. It’s their job.”
“Ronan.” I try to keep the threat out of my voice because we’ve been friends for a long time but I don’t fucking like people in my business.
“I’m serious.” He turns to face me. “The waiting period’s almost done. My father’s been patient. I’ve been patient, too, but the ports are locked until the marriage is consummated. That’s the deal. That’s always been the deal.”
Declan grabs the bottle from Luca and spills some into his glass and then fills Luca’s. Luca doesn’t drink it. “You know that, Vinny. He knows that, Ronan.”
“I know it,” I confirm.
“And you’ll honor your commitments.”
It isn’t a question, but I answer it anyway. “I always fucking do, Ronan.”
He nods slowly. “Good. Then I want to ask you something and I want you to answer me honestly, because we’re brothers, you and I. Before any contract, before any ports or alliances—we’re brothers.”
“Ask.”
“Is there a woman? Because for a minute there last year it looked like you and the Italian woman, the one with the big—”
He mimes a big round ass and I cut him off. “There’s no woman,” I say.
The fire pops in the hearth, and the conversations around me go from a low buzz to a roar.
Ronan watches me like we’re playing poker, like he’s looking for a tell. I’ve been hiding my tells since I was 12 years old. He won’t find one.
“All right,” he says finally, easy again.
He hooks his arm around my neck and steers me away from Declan and Luca.
“All right. Then there’s something I want to suggest. The wedding date is set, and Ashlyn has planned it down to the minute.
She’s ready, Vin. And I thought, given that you’ve been with no one this past year, that maybe—” He stops, then starts again.
“If you wanted to be with her now, I would consider it a consummation of the marriage, and maybe we can get these port deals going sooner than later.”
I stare at him. “You want me to fuck your sister.”
He doesn’t flinch. “I want you to begin your life with her so that we can begin our partnership. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“She’s a virgin, Vin.” He says it quietly, like I’m supposed to care about that shit.
“She’s been saving herself. More accurately, we’ve been saving her for you.
The point is, she’s yours and has been for 12 years, technically, even if neither of you knew it.
Make her yours now, we count the alliance as official, and my father releases the ports within the week. ”
I look at Ashlyn across the room. She’s still laughing, but she’s watching me out of the corner of her eye.
Fuck me, all I see is Sophie. It’s been almost a mother fucking year, and I still fucking see her everywhere, compare everyone to her. Sophie’s easy laugh is nothing like Ashlyn’s. Ashlyn is curvy, but nobody has a bigger hotter ass than Sophie.
Would Ashlyn as easily scrub the blood off me?
Maybe. She’s grown up in this life. But would she beg for me to let her come while I fucked her ass with her panties stuffed inside her?
Wouldn’t matter if she did. She wouldn’t moan like Sophie, call me padrone like Sophie. Because she’s not fucking Sophie.
But none of that is relevant to what’s happening right now. The ports are a priority for the Demonio Brotherhood, and I’m the boss. That’s it and that’s all.
I down the rest of my whiskey. “Fine.”
The room Ashlyn takes me to isn’t hers. It’s flat, boring, no personal effects. I gesture to the generic art work on the walls. “Either you really like shitty motel art or this isn’t your room.”
She smiles. “I prefer it this way. Makes it a little less… personal. We’re basically just signing a contract, no?”
She closes the door and peels her shirt off over her head, baring large breasts in a silky black bra. Arching her back, she turns away and glances over her shoulder at me as she unclasps her bra.
I assess her with my hands in my pockets. She’s not nervous. She’s performing, and she’s good at it. There’s nothing wrong with that except that I feel absolutely nothing. And I don’t think she does either.
She flicks her bra on an empty chair and takes a step toward me. I step back.
“You’re not acting like a virgin,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “I’m 32 years old, hardly a blushing bloom.”
“So you’re not a virgin?”
She chooses her words carefully. “Technically, yes. There are ways around things.”
I nod. I’m not listening to her. I’m thinking about Sophie, playing out in my head the version of this conversation where I stop being such a fucking martyr and figure out a way to keep what I actually want.
Who I actually love.
FUCK. I love Sophie.
God DAMN it.
“You know,” Ashlyn says, studying me with her arms crossed over her bare chest, “if you don’t fuck me, they’ll kill you.”
I refocus. “How’s that?”
“If you break this contract, they’ll assume you’ll break any contract.” She tilts her head. “And if you try to get out of this on a technicality, tell them I’m not a virgin, they’ll kill me. So we’re rather stuck with each other.”
“What makes you think I give a shit about your life?”
She shrugs. “You give a shit about my brother. Your relationship with Ronan wouldn’t fare well if you’re the reason why I’m dead.”
She’s not wrong, but I don’t particularly care what happens to this woman. I know it shows on my face. I don’t try to hide it. She sighs when I don’t respond.
“I heard you have a woman. Or had one.” She says it simply, but she watches me closely.
“I didn’t believe it until someone told me you hadn’t been out fucking whatever trash came your way for almost a year now.
” She pauses and gestures down at her bare tits.
“I know that wasn’t out of respect for me. Is she why you won’t touch me?”
I say nothing.
She nods like I’ve confirmed something. “I’ve known you a long time, Vin. Years. And honestly? I’m surprised you didn’t try to fuck me the first night you found out we were engaged.” She looks me over with frank assessment. “It says something about what you feel for her.”
“Or it says I’m not attracted to you.” I almost call her princess, but I don’t. That name belongs to someone else now. ”Don’t assume you know what I want, Ashlyn. You don’t know shit about me.”
She shrugs her bare shoulders. “Maybe not. But I know men. I know that any man at that party would be inside me right now if he had half a chance regardless of any woman waiting at home, and not one stands to gain nearly as much as you do. So you’re offered a virgin, a fortune, and access to the most valuable ports on the eastern seaboard, and still you won’t touch me. ”
“What do you get out of it?” I ask. “Any of it.”
“My life,” she says simply. “My inheritance. A life where I make my own choices, eventually, once the family debt is paid.” Something dark passes across her face.
“Do you know what it takes to keep a woman like me a virgin for this many years? The guards. The restrictions. Years of being locked down, managed, controlled. I had no intention of being used as a bargaining chip. But marriage to you is a known quantity. A way out.”
I study her: 32 years old, beautiful, calculating, trapped. I’ve spent enough time with trapped things to recognize the look.
“Life with me is no picnic,” I say. “Ask any woman I’ve ever been with.”
“I’m aware.” She says it without blinking. “I don’t expect faithfulness from you. I hope you don’t expect it from me.”
She says it carefully, like she’s testing me. I shrug. “I could give a fuck who you spread your legs for, now or later.”
She looks relieved.
“Your woman,” she says. “What’s her name?”
I stare her down until she glances away.
“I have a man,” she says, after a moment. “He wants me, but he’d never cross my brothers. I thought, maybe, if you had your woman and I had him, it might be an arrangement that worked. For both of us.”
I hear her. A fake marriage holds the alliance, the family business continues, and behind closed doors we each live our actual lives. It should feel like a solution.
But it’s not a solution that allows me to fuck Sophie awake every morning, put babies inside her, watch her glow when I eat her food, and stare at her beautiful fat ass.
I scrub a hand over my face and stare at the ceiling.
“If we don’t do this tonight, they’ll start asking questions,” Ashlyn says quietly. She meets my eyes. “You don’t have a reputation for saying no to beautiful women, Vin. People will notice.”
No woman is more beautiful than Sophie Bellamorte, and I said no to her over and over again. I said no to the most best fucking thing I’ve ever had in my life. But I did it for my family, for duty. Do I have to say yes to Ashlyn for the same reason?
I don’t move when Ashlyn steps out of her skirt and comes to me. I don’t stop her when she straddles my lap.
“Thank you,” she whispers.