25. Gio
GIO
Inever should’ve kissed her.
Fuck, it wasn’t even a real kiss. More like a ghost of one. But now I know what her lips feel like, I’m obsessed.
I’m thinking about them as Vampa gives the update on the package that Padre Luigi Santoro has been looking after since the night Vivi arrived on the island.
Status quo unchanged.
I’m thinking about them when Vampa confirms that Pazzi’s doctors have started to wean him from the sedatives. The exact timeline is impossible to predict, but the old bastard is expected to wake in the next few days.
Fuck.
I’m thinking about them when Elio joins us on my suite’s terrace, buzzing with tension as he confirms something I’ve been expecting since the night Vivi was poisoned. “You were right, capo. The Romanos have vanished.”
Expecting, but still really fucking pissed about it. “They can’t fucking vanish, Castiglione. They’re not magicians.”
Vampa’s jaw ticks. We’re getting on each other’s last nerve.
“They’ve gone underground, Signore. No one has seen them at their house in town, or their condo in Rome.
They haven’t been spotted at any of their business.
Edoardo hasn’t even been fucking his mistress.
He visits her like clockwork, on a schedule.
The woman has confirmed he’s missed their last two dates. ”
I look between the men. “Hospitals? Morgues? Local waste incinerators?”
They shake their heads. “No sign of them.”
Double fuck.
I run through my mental inventory of everywhere Edoardo might be hiding. Or decomposing. “Romano’s boat?”
“Still docked,” Vampa confirms. “Hasn’t been used in months. No sign of either Edoardo or Lucia on the security footage at the marina.”
“Their cars haven’t been driven, either,” Elio adds. He pulls out his phone, swiping through images until he finds what he’s looking for. “But—I did find this.” He places the device screen up on the terrace table.
Vampa and I look at the image. It’s mostly shadows and sharp edges. “What are we looking at?” I grumble.
“This.” Elio points to the far side of the image, zooming in until a car’s number plate comes into view. “This is from the night Signora Marchetti was attacked at the club. Pulled from security footage from a residential neighborhood roughly fifteen blocks away.”
“Who is the car registered to?” Vampa asks.
“It’s a short-term lease,” Elio answers. “It took a lot of digging, but eventually I got to a name. A shell company. Aeterna Holding S.r.l.”
Vampa and I exchange a look. “The Romanos,” I confirm. “Fuck, kid. You found them.”
Elio’s expression stays grim. “Found them, past tense. This is from over a week ago. The car hasn’t been moved since.
It doesn’t help us determine where the Romanos have gone, only that they were near Alba Dorata and Eclipse on the night of the club’s opening.
And it doesn’t prove they had anything to do with the poisoning. ”
“No, but it’s enough to make them look really fucking suspicious.” I clamp my hand on his shoulder. “I knew they were a liability, but it takes a certain type of stupid to actually attack my wife, and at the club of all places. Stay on it, Castiglione. Let us know when you find them.”
Elio acknowledges the order. He’s about to leave when I stop him. “The message I sent last night—any luck tracking down the death certificates?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
“Va bene.” I wave him out.
Vampa stays, watching me pace the length of my private terrace. Tonight’s updates are circling around my brain, and I still can’t get the vision of Vivi’s pink, bow-shaped lips out of my head.
“Have you come to a conclusion?”
“About?”
“Don’t.” Vampa sits. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Be more specific.”
“Your doubts about the Salviati woman.”
My wife. I choke it back. Vampa and I are butting heads in a way we never have before. It’s fractious and, if I’m being honest, unnerving. We’ve disagreed countless times in the past, but never like this.
“Someone tried to murder her,” I say, avoiding his question.
“Probably because she deserved it,” he says without inflection. “Killers are often killed, Gio. You know that.”
I clench my jaw so tight I swear a tooth cracks. Vivi’s story about Milli and Theresa Russo echoes in my head.
I drop into the seat next to him. “The file the nuns kept on her is wrong. Vivi never killed anyone in Chicago. Two people died in a car crash, but it was an accident. Vivi was ten when it happened. Those are two kills we can strike from her record.”
Vampa braces his arms on his legs. “And the third? The one that started this whole fucking mess?”
“I’m going to ask her.”
The man next to me is silent for what feels like a solid minute. “When?”
“Tomorrow. We leave the island at six. You’re coming too.”
Vampa stands, his expression going from combative to vaguely paternal. He approves.
I wonder if he’d feel the same way if he knew how much I want to be wrong about everything I saw.
“I’ll be on the helipad at five-thirty,” he confirms. “And, Gio?”
“What?”
“After tomorrow, you let her go. Mentally, emotionally…however she’s tricked you into giving a shit about her, you stop. You move on.”
I don’t look up. Don’t move.
“You know you have to. Because no matter what Viviana says tomorrow, she was the one who did it. You saw her. Only her. She’s the one who killed Matteo. She’s the one Pazzi wants. Giving her to him is the only way to keep Aurora safe.”
The old man moves inside, pausing at the terrace threshold. “We go to the mainland tomorrow, you ask your questions, we hear what she has to say. And then we stick to the plan, because that’s what’s required. And you always do what’s required.”
Then he’s gone, my suite door closing behind him.
I’m alone, again. I down several glasses of whisky in rapid succession.
Vaffanculo!
Between Vampa’s conviction, Viviana’s confession, and my ever-increasing doubt, I’m stuck in a three-way mental tug of war. Coming apart at the seams in a way I never have before.
In all the time I’ve been capo, no matter how hard things have gotten, I’ve never lost my head.
I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to keep everything running as it needed to.
Control. Power. That’s what’s gotten me through. What’s gotten me and Aurora and Francesca and the rest of my family to this point.
Not longing. Or obsession. Or this insanity that consumes me every time I think about Vivi, catch a whiff of her shampoo, wake with my cock in my hand because I can’t forget what her lips felt like.
And absolutely not the all-consuming ferocity that grips me when I think about someone trying to take her from me.
The urge is uncontrollable, rendering me damn near powerless, and I have to make it stop.
Somehow, I have to fucking stop.
The sparring with Vampa isn’t cutting it anymore, volatility constantly crackling throughout my system. So tonight I’m taking a different approach. Drinking until the thoughts lapping my head are too drunk to move. It’s not wise or healthy, but so far it’s the only thing I’ve come up with.
I’m nearing the bottom of glass number four when there’s a tap on my door.
I’m hearing things. No one knocks on my door.
I tip back the last few drops. Pour another.
The tap comes again. Louder, a series in rapid succession. Che cazzo. Someone is definitely knocking.
Hair disheveled, feet bare, I pad to my door in nothing but a pair of dark gray trousers and a white dress shirt, the buttons only fastened as high as my ribs and the sleeves savagely rolled to my elbows.
It’s late. I’ve switched my contacts for glasses.
I haven’t looked this disheveled since the morning after my first cellar lock-in when I was a fresher at Cambridge.
That might be the last time I was this drunk, too. Drunk and careless.
I don’t tell the person in the hall to fuck off. I don’t even ask who it is. I just swing open the door—and almost swallow my tongue when I see who is standing on the other side.
When my tongue finally catches up to my eyes, the only thing I manage to say is, “I told you not to come here again.”
My wife’s perfect brow furrows. “I wasn’t planning to, but I had something I needed to stay. And…” Her eyes hit the floor, her teeth catching her bottom lip. Fuck, I want to be the one biting it.
“And you stopped coming to see me,” she says in a rush, “so you left me no choice.”
I block the entryway, grip crushing the frame as I take in what she’s wearing. It’s a nightgown. An honest-to-God, white linen nightgown. It covers her from neck to toes, and I’m sure that when I picked it out prior to her arrival on the island, I thought it was the least sexy thing on the planet.
I was so fucking wrong.
The fabric is thin, delicate, light enough to breathe in the warm summer nights, and it does nothing to hide Vivi’s body—and the fact that she’s entirely naked underneath.
Every time she shifts nervously, the gown plays across her dips and curves. Teasing. Tormenting. The rosy tips of her nipples. The shadowed line of her cleavage. The swell of her stomach and soft indent of her belly button. The dark red curls at the apex of her plush thighs.
My throat is painfully dry and my dick achingly hard as I glare at my sexy as sin wife. “What did you need to say?”
She blinks, like she’s seeing me for the first time. “You’re wearing glasses.”
“Yes. I do that sometimes.”
Her head tilts to one side, like she’s not sure what to make of it. An absolutely ridiculous thought crosses my mind. A juvenile insecurity that she might not like how I look in glasses.
Get a fucking grip, Marchetti. What do you care?
I grip the doorframe harder, the muscles in my chest flexing under the force. Vivi’s eyes drift to my exposed skin. She licks her lips.
Guess that answers that question.
“I needed to thank you. For taking care of Little Bird while I was recovering. And for this.” She holds out her palm. In it is a little rock. Her Petoskey stone. “Where did you find it?”
“It was in the room next to yours. The one you broke into. You must’ve lost it the night of the storm.”
Her mouth shapes a perfect, fuckable ‘O’.
Vaffanculo.
“Yeah, the night I found Little Bird,” she says, seemingly oblivious to the fact that my erection is getting more insistent by the second.
“A few days ago, I woke up, and it was on my table, and I thought I was imagining it, but it was you, wasn’t it…
?” She’s rambling and blushing, and it’s adorable.
And that word has never been a part of my vocabulary until now.
Fuck. Just, fuck.
“I found it when the workmen were fixing the wall,” I say. “I forgot about it until you told me about Mille. Then I realized what it was. That you’d want it back.”
Vivi’s cheeks have gone a delicious pink. She looks more edible than ever. “Thank you.” Her breath is heavy, her breasts pushing against her nightgown.
“You’re welcome.” It comes out curt, perfunctory. She has to go. Now. Before I suck a nipple into my mouth and see if they taste as good as they look. I start to close the door. “You need your rest, passerota. Good night.”
She stops it with one hand. Casts her eyes up through those impossibly long lashes. Her cheeks have gotten even redder. “There’s something else…another question I, um, need to ask.”
I grimace, smother a groan. “What is it?”
“Can I come in first? I don’t want to talk about it out here.”
I can see where her toes dance nervously against the floor. The hypnotizing way her braid sways as she rocks her hips, unable to keep still.
I wonder if she’d still want to come in if she knew the things I’ve fantasized about doing to her with that braid wrapped around my fist…
Using it to guide her perfectly pouty mouth down my shaft, holding her captive as I come down her throat.
Feeling it brush my stomach as she rides face, her pillowy thighs gripping my head as she drowns me in her sweetness.
Using it to anchor her in front of me, on her hands and knees, as I take her luscious ass for the very first time.
What’s left of my blood races to my cock, already painfully hard, and my brain calls it quits.
I say yes when I should say no, waving her into my suite and closing her in.
I make a beeline for the terrace and the whisky I left there. Let another swallow burn my throat and settle into my belly before I turn to her.
Vivi is standing on the threshold of the terrace, her body backlit, her silhouette clearly visible through the fine linen of her gown.
No. Don’t look at her.
I pivot hard, giving her my back as I force myself to stare out into the darkness blanketing the island. “What do you want, Vivi? You shouldn’t be in here. I don’t want you here. So ask the fucking question so we can get this over with and you can go.”
I’m being an asshole. I know I am. But with each audible breath she’s fraying my composure, and I don’t trust myself near her.
Not when my fingers are itching to trace her delicate skin and my mouth is watering with the need to kiss her, and my cock is so painfully fucking hard I’m worried a stiff breeze is going to make me come in my pants.
I’ve never been so weak for a woman in my life. So obsessed with what she’ll sound like when she comes for the first time. Or how she’d react if I drop to my knees and drive my tongue between her thighs. Or how her virgin body will feel when I slowly push into her for the first time…
Not fucking helpful, Gio. My dick throbs, a drop of precome leaking from the tip.
I take another gulp of whisky. I’ve been celibate too long. Depriving myself too long. It’s why I’ve gone mad.
That’s why I turn and drink up the sight of my wife in her infuriatingly sexy, prim and proper gown, my jaw locked and the rocks glass threatening to crack within my grip. “Say what you want to say then get the fuck out.”
Vivi blinks at my language but doesn’t run away.
No. Not her.
Instead, she steps closer, her bare feet practically silent on the terrace’s tile floor.
“I don’t have anyone to talk to,” she confesses.
“I did try to ask Francesca, but that kinda backfired. And you and I are married, so it makes sense I should be able to talk about this with you, especially since you won’t let me have a computer or phone, so I can’t look it up online.
I think I understand the basics, but I’m really fuzzy on the details, and for something like this I think the details are probably pretty important and... ”
Despite the shadows, I can see the blush climbing her neck, her cheeks. She’s embarrassed. Brave, but adorably embarrassed.
Fuck, there’s that word again.
I slam my glass on the table, the shattering sound reverberating through the air. “Stop rambling, Vivi, and ask your fucking question!”
And she does, so fast I don’t have time to brace myself before she says, “How, exactly, would you get me pregnant with your baby?”