Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
LUIGI
The loss of control rattled me. My hands shook as my feet moved, eating up cobblestones to tar as I rushed through street after street.
The pounding of my pulse was all I heard as the noise of cars and people melted into nothing.
My vision was shrouded in rage and despair until it cleared.
I noticed dried grass and sand beneath my dust-covered shoes.
When I finally looked up, I was standing on the hills on the outskirts of Corleone.
Below me, the city spread out in a cloud of brown foliage and rooftops.
I’d walked for miles, but my chest still ached, heaving for my next breath.
It felt like she’d taken a jagged piece of glass to it and scraped through it to force me to an early death.
Not a single day passed without her hurting me.
Today, it had been the t-shirt, yesterday, it was calling my dead mother a whore, and tomorrow, she’d find another way of hurting me. Again.
This was what she did. I should have known, and some part of me had.
Yet I had done nothing, just like I never did.
Because somewhere inside me, I had to hold on to hope.
That hurting me would bring her some kind of relief.
But nothing ever did. She revelled in her pain far too much for anything to penetrate the thick walls she’d put up.
She was trapped in a cycle of negativity that she couldn’t see, and she’d sucked me into it too.
The worst part was that I couldn’t walk away.
Even though I knew I could. Not without her.
I’d only ever known her like this. My piccolo porcospino.
I’d seen her months before she ever saw me.
Fresh out of prison, and the first woman to make my eyes linger was Carlo Di Matteo’s eldest daughter.
So beautiful. So mean. So made for me. She caught my weary eyes with her pale skin and dark black hair.
Her tiny waist that begged for a man’s embrace, and her legs practiced to hug a man’s hips.
That was blatant when she walked. She was a woman who loved the attention of men, and she made no secret of it.
But I didn’t care for the crude talk of the soldiers.
To say their stories about how she picked the men around her father to fuck pissed me off was putting it mildly.
I didn’t want her looked at in any other way than the Mafia Princess that she was.
Even if I secretly wanted to be another one of her quests.
Her final quest, because with me, she’d stay and not drift off for another fuck.
She was a man’s wildest dream. Mine, to be sure.
Watching her strut around the house with her lips painted ruby red made me ache to have them wrapped around my cock.
In the night, I jerked off to visions of her doing just that.
But when the sun came up, and with it, reality, I knew I couldn’t allow it.
I was a poor man of no standing. Carlo Di Matteo had taken pity on me and brought me into his team.
He’d found me when I was fifteen. My mother had just died, and with a sister to look after, I’d gladly taken the opportunity.
He gave me work. Kept my mind and body occupied, and in the night, I could go home with enough money to get through another day, to give my sister a better life.
I worked hard, and in the Di Matteo famiglia, you got rewarded for it.
I was grateful. My loyalty was far too strong to do anything to jeopardise my standing in the family.
Besides, I knew well enough that touching the women in the family was one sure way of getting your brains blown out.
Even if I’d helped Carlo Di Matteo out of a sticky situation.
Nothing new for the don, except this time, the woman’s husband was a fucking cop, and he’d put a target on the famiglia.
I’d stepped in to help. Sent my sister out of town, killed the pig, and took the fall for it.
They’d given me a life sentence, and Carlo had promised to look after my sister.
Since she was out of town, I knew it would only entail financial support and not his groping hands and willing dick.
I had resigned to dying in prison. Then one day, the door latch clicked, and I walked out.
Carlo Di Matteo hadn’t forgotten about me.
He’d found a way out. After fifteen years and two months, I was a free man again.
I had expected to rejoin where I’d left off as the lowest level among the soldiers, but I’d been promoted.
For some, it would have felt like a demotion.
Guarding the don’s pink-fluffed second daughter made a man want to fucking kill someone.
But Carlo trusted me, and he wanted me to lie low and not get into trouble.
I wasn’t a fool. I knew Carlo did nothing for anyone.
But I took it as a positive because that’s what you do when you’ve crawled out of poverty.
But it became worse when Orietta’s eyes landed on me one fine day.
Her presence was magnetic. Her gaze was electric.
She was a work of art from a distance. Up close, she was a sculpture of perfection, and with her gaze on me, she was a force to reckon with.
Her mind clicked into place, and it told her I was her new target.
A blessing and a curse. She didn’t have to utter a single word for me to know she was jealous of my presence around her sister.
She didn’t have to be, but I wasn’t letting her in on my secret.
I’d underestimated her determination. She hounded me.
My lame attempts to let her down only strengthened her pursuit.
Years in prison should have hardened me, yet my resistance wavered.
I was only a man. The realisation crashed into me one night when I turned to find her in front of me.
Buck naked. I froze. My dick thickened. Before I knew it, she was on her knees, my cock deep in her throat.
My fucking wet dream wasn’t a dream anymore.
I lost control. I put lust before duty, and I was fucking her mouth and shooting my cum down her throat in a matter of minutes.
I could have stopped after. I didn’t. I pinned her against the nearest tree and fucked her.
If anyone had walked out, they would have seen us.
The bodyguard fucking the Mafia Princess was the most cliché way to get my limbs detached and a knife pierced through my heart.
The worst part was that after years and years of sacrificing everything for the famiglia, I couldn’t bring myself to stop.
Not the next day, the next week, or months later. She was the epitome of my dreams and my nightmares. We’d fuck everywhere. Including in her father’s office. She at least had a good reason. She wanted to get caught. Me? Dying buried in her pussy sounded like the best way to go.
Orietta had a strange energy about her. She thought of herself as the unseen daughter.
Hated how she looked different from her siblings when she should have celebrated it.
She only saw hate where there was love. She was mean.
She took joy in lashing out at her sisters.
But she was also broken. My piccolo porcospino.
Inside, she was hurting. But no amount of talking to her about it would make her see the logic.
Then Carlo got himself killed, and she burst apart into little pieces. She didn’t know how to handle it, and in typical Orietta style, she notched up hurting everyone around her to control her reaction to it.
I’d been torn apart when Vitale had arranged for her hand in marriage to the don of New York.
She refused. Told me I was the only dick she wanted to ride.
It was up to me to let her go. She had a chance at happiness with the don.
I pushed her into agreeing. At the very least, it would have done some good for her fragile self-image.
She was chosen to represent her family. But she refused to see it like that.
I told her I wasn’t putting her before the Cosa Nostra when, in reality, I would have killed Carlo had she asked me.
But I was all too good at hiding my feelings, and she was too good at burning her world.
And before I knew it, she’d manipulated her way out of it.
All along, I had missed one crucial point.
No one could handle her like I did. So I’d offered to marry her.
I’d told Vitale, the new don, it was to save face.
I’d expected a beheading or, at the very least, a lost limb or a tongue.
But Vitale Di Matteo wasn’t his father. He’d seen right through me, of course, but it didn’t matter.
He agreed to it. My Orietta may have acted like a porcupine, but finally, I could call her mine.
It took me hours to get my heart rate down.
When I got back home, a packed suitcase awaited me on our bed.
I didn’t need to open it to know it would be stuffed with my clothes, the shrunken t-shirt included.
Sometimes I knew her better than I knew myself.
She stood next to it, arms crossed, legs spread wide, defiance in her body and torment in her eyes.
When I flopped it open, the breath she’d been holding released in an angry huff. I carried all the clothes in one heap, kicked open the door of the closet, and chucked it in.
“What are you doing?” She was watching me with narrowed eyes.
“Putting everything where it belongs.” A few socks had fallen to the floor. I scooped them up and dumped them in the drawer. Until the next time she packed it all for me.
“Why?”
Her gaze followed my every move as I snapped the suitcase shut and put it back on top of the closet.
“Because I’m not leaving you. That’s why.”
“Yes, you are.”
I faced her, and frustration clawed at my insides. Will we keep at this game in our eighties, too? “I’m not.”
Her face fell apart in despair. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she wanted me to leave her. “Why not? You seemed angry enough.”
“Fucking furious. I wanted to kill you.”
She stalked up to me, and angry words burst out of her sweet mouth. “So kill me or leave me.”
Her tone was steady, but her body trembled. I shook my head silently. She rioted by gripping my arms in frustration. “Why the fuck not?”
I couldn’t bear to play her games anymore. Desperation propelled me to push her into the closet and kiss her. Hard. But she didn’t melt into my arms like she usually did and shoved me hard, making me stumble back a step. “Why?” She glared.
“Because that’s what married couples do. They stick to each other.” I stepped forward again and caged her within my arms. I was scared she was beyond her breaking point. Her gaze avoided mine and ran violently all over the room. Gripping her chin, I forced them to mine. “I love you.”
She scoffed at my words, like she always did. “You don’t love me. You love the fucking Cosa Nostra.”
Not this again. My hands rushed through my hair as a groan of irritation spilled from my lips. “You know I only said that, so you’d marry the don.”
“Because you don’t love me.”
“Because I wanted you to have a fucking better life,” I roared.
My anger shocked us both. Most days, I was patient with her, but some days she made a mockery of it by stripping me of it.
She couldn’t handle the change and shrank away from me.
She was going to shut down again. Fuck if I was going to allow that.
I gripped her neck and shoved my face in front of hers, refusing to let her sink into the numbness again.
“I wanted you to marry the don because your life would have been grand. You always think so little of yourself. I wanted you to have a husband with a standing who would lift you up. Instead of being married to a bodyguard. I am a fucking soldier, not a don.”
“Good thing I didn’t because the last I heard, the fucking don was too busy playing with my sister’s pussy,” she snarled.
“Stop it.” She struggled in my arms, fighting to hide from me. I wouldn’t allow it. “Stop setting yourself on fire. It wrecks me to watch you do it to yourself. You’re pushing away everyone who loves you. Can’t you see we want you in our lives? Your mother, your brother, your sisters. Me.”
Her breathing was harsh, and she shoved adamantly at my chest. I allowed her to have a gap of a few breaths. “You wouldn’t want me if you knew.”
I sighed. About fucking time. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but why not?”