Chapter Fifteen
Bianca
I smiled and stretched. My body felt achy in ways it had never felt before, but it was also an amazing feeling.
Lorenzo. I sighed his name with a sappy smile, and a soft, masculine chuckle had me opening my eyes to see him sitting beside me on the bed.
His fingers were gently stroking the side of my neck.
“How often do you dream about me, Princess?” he teased, and I shivered at the sexual caress in his voice. The man was positively lethal to the female hormones, and what was worse was that he knew it.
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I rolled my eyes sleepily and let out a large yawn. “How long have I been out?”
“A couple of hours. It’s time to start getting up and getting ready so we can get married before the couple finds out we’ve hijacked their wedding.”
“I feel bad about that. We can seriously just bring the preacher up here and get married in the suite.” I shrugged. “It’s not like it’s real.”
I watched Lorenzo carefully. Every time I alluded to our wedding and marriage being anything but real, he got this look on his face that confused me.
He almost seemed angry or determined, but I didn’t know what it was about.
Did he want it to be real? I did, but it was not something I would ever say to him out loud.
Hell, it was something I would barely admit to myself since I’d been focused on getting out of this world for the majority of my life and dancing career.
“You have an hour to get dressed, Bea. Don’t waste it because we have to get this done before the staff and wedding party start arriving for the couple’s wedding.”
“You don’t feel at all bad that we are going to use their wedding?”
He grinned. “Who’s going to know. Us, Kozlov, Alek, and the preacher?
It’s not like we are going to trash their wedding venue, Bea.
We are simply going to stand at the front, say our vows for our small party, and then I’ll kiss you before we sign the documents and leave.
” He smirked. “We’ll be done in a matter of 20 minutes or less. ”
I sighed, he was right. Nobody would ever know.
Heck, our own families, for the most part, didn’t know.
The only person who knew what we were up to was Romeo.
Giana and Nicoletta had no clue what was going on.
They thought I was away for a wedding of one of my friends from dance.
I still couldn’t believe they didn’t question that.
I didn’t have friends, choosing to live mostly in isolation.
“Time to get up, Sleeping Beauty,” he said again, while he pulled the covers back to reveal me curled up in the robe that was now slightly askew.
I stretched one more time and groaned at the ache between my legs.
Lorenzo was insatiable, but I couldn’t blame him.
I could become addicted really fast to the feeling of him inside me.
He clasped my hands gently and helped me up.
I thought the ache of dance was satisfying, but the ache of sex was even better.
My core clenched at the memories of being in his arms.
I’d told him no sex or kissing when I’d agreed to marry him, but the second he got me away from my father, I’d succumbed to the desires I’d always felt for him. It felt inevitable.
“I want you to do me a favor,” I said, glancing up into his deep brown eyes.
“I want you to get ready in the living room and wait for me in the ballroom.” He was already shaking his head, but I placed my hand on his hard, muscular chest. “You can have Alek escort me down to the ballroom. I just want to have my entrance moment, even if it’s small.
” I could tell he wanted to deny my request, so I pleaded with him, “Please, Lorenzo. We are being forced into all of this. I just want one slice of normalcy for my first wedding.”
“You’re asking me to put my trust in the Grave Digger, Bianca. Alek isn’t the giant teddy bear you seem to think he is.” The look he gave me was one of pure exasperation.
“He’s kept me safe so far when you weren’t with me. You said yourself the Russians seem to want us together, so why would they kill me now? It wouldn’t make sense.”
He grasped my upper arms. “I don’t know what their endgame is, Bianca. That’s what worries me. Men in our world don’t do anything without getting something in return for it. Kozlov is footing a hefty bill to see us married, why? What does he gain from it?”
“I don’t know. I try to stay out of the family business.
” He was right and very wrong. Alek wasn’t a teddy bear–a blind person could see that–but I also trusted him.
Call it gut instinct or women’s intuition, I didn’t know.
I trusted Alek to keep me safe. A lifetime living in this world with my father and men just like him gave me a hairpin trigger when something didn’t feel right.
With Alek, I didn’t feel that trigger switch.
I couldn’t say that in my own house with my father or with his right-hand man, Gino.
“Good, you don’t belong there, Bianca.” His gruff words irritated me.
I’d fought my way to get out of my father’s house and his world, but I was being pulled further into it.
Lorenzo’s statement hurt more than I’d anticipated.
I stayed out of everything with the family because I didn’t want a part of it.
I wanted out, but it also meant I didn’t belong.
His words were accurate, but also caused a spear of pain to hit me right in the chest.
“I don’t belong anywhere, Lorenzo.” I broke out of his hold on my arms and stepped away from him, but he didn’t let me go far.
“Yes, you do, Princess. You belong with me, and in less than an hour, you’ll belong to me.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me against his hard body. I fell into his embrace easily and accepted the kiss he slammed on my lips.
It was hard and brutal, filled with both irritation and longing. His tongue pierced the barrier of my lips and dove in to slide against my own. I felt his hand bracing my jaw, hard enough to control the kiss, but not hard enough to actually cause pain.
He pulled back from the kiss, but not before taking a gentle nip of my bottom lip.
The small bite of pain had my breath hitching and my knees weakening.
He could control me so easily with just a kiss, but that was nothing new.
When I put up a fight against him, it was always for show.
Always to mask how much I wanted him, how much I wanted to please him.
Lorenzo stole my heart a long time ago, and I’d been fighting him ever since.
“Promise me something.” I couldn’t keep the plea out of my voice.
“What?”
“Promise me that you will take my father out before he takes you out. Because he will. We both know it. I could be marrying anyone, and no matter how close they are to my family, he would take them out for disrupting his plans.”
Lorenzo smirked and reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear. “Is this your way of telling me that you’d miss me if he killed me?”
I closed my eyes and bit back a sob. “It’s not a joke, Lorenzo. Promise me that no matter what yours and my brother’s plans are for him, if he comes at you, you will take him down first.”
He lifted my chin and placed a tender kiss on my forehead. “I can promise that I’ll try to take him down with me if he comes after me.”
It was as good as he was going to answer.
If I knew one thing about Lorenzo, he wouldn’t break his word.
He couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t be taken out by this scheme, but he could promise to try.
That was truly all I could ask for, so I nodded and gave him a kiss.
“Thank you,” I whispered before pulling out of his arms.
I had less than an hour to get ready for my wedding. My hair and makeup were going to take the longest time, so I went into the bathroom and got to work, leaving Lorenzo behind to get dressed on his own.
***
“Lorenzo, I’m—” My words faded as I looked into the suite’s living room and saw it empty except for Alek standing there.
He let out a low whistle as his eyes took me in wearing the white formal gown I’d been trying on earlier. It wasn’t a wedding dress, but as close to one as you could get in a casino resort’s boutique.
“Vitale is one lucky man.” Alek gave me a confident smirk. “If you’re unsure about wanting to marry him, I can sneak you out the back or kill him, and I could marry you instead.”
I snickered. “I think that may be one of the reasons he was worried when I asked him earlier to let you see me down to the ballroom. Maybe he was afraid I would get cold feet.”
“Are your feet cold?” he questioned, his humor fading quickly.
“About Lorenzo?” I questioned. “No. I know what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.
Are my feet cold because I’m worried about what this will all mean later on?
Yes.” I sighed. “I never thought I would be forced to marry a man who didn’t love me or choose me because he wanted me, but because my father wanted to sell me off like a prized brood mare, and he was forced to protect me. ”
Alek didn’t smile, but sat thoughtfully on the arm of the couch and studied me. “You sure that Lorenzo doesn’t love you, Bianca?”
“He hasn’t said he does. I know he likes me and cares for me a little, and I know it’s different than how he sees my sisters.
If Giana or Nicoletta were being sold off like this, I think he would have done the same thing.
I think he would have married them, but–” I swallowed hard.
“I don’t think he would have had a problem keeping the no sex rule and keeping the marriage in name only if it were them. ”
Alek chuckled softly. “I think you’re right on that one, but I don’t know that he would have gone so far as to marry your sisters either, Bianca. He would have found another way to protect them. I think the fact that it was you on the other end of this forced him into action.”
“How long have you known Lorenzo?” I asked curiously.
I couldn’t believe that Alek and Lorenzo were close enough to know each other this well.
It was a mystery to me how long they had known each other because I never knew my father to mention Kozlov or his organization.
I’d never seen Alek come to the house, and neither Romeo nor Lorenzo ever mentioned the Russians.
“Probably four years now.”
“How did you two meet? Do you know my brother, too?” How did this massive enigma of a man fit into my family’s world without me knowing?
“I was taking care of some business in Manhattan and keeping an eye on a certain situation. One night, while I was following a mark to a seedy strip joint, I was jumped and bashed over the head. There were five, maybe six guys. There were too many for me to take on. I took a blow to the head and woke up with your brother and Lorenzo loading me into the back of an SUV.” He subconsciously rubbed the back of his head where he’d been hit and continued his story, “I started to fight them, but they were able to calm me down enough to load me into the SUV after they showed me two bodies on the ground.”
“They killed them?” I questioned, astonished. I knew what my brother and Lorenzo were capable of, but there was a difference between knowing and knowing.
“Yeah. Two of them, anyway. They belonged to the new cartel that was making a pipeline up from Jersey into Manhattan. Apparently, Lorenzo took both guys down simultaneously. Once they were down, the other three fled, and he called your brother to help drag my ass into the car and to safety.”
“Did they know who you were then?” I asked, shocked that Lorenzo killed two guys to protect Alek.
“Yeah, but turns out they were also watching the cartel, and that’s why Lorenzo was there that night.
” He shrugged. “They took me to Lussuria and bandaged me up. I stayed the night in one of the rooms there, while we shared some of the intel that we had acquired about the cartel. They were more than just getting a pipeline of drugs through the cities, which was bad enough, but they were also dealing in the flesh trade. I thought your family was involved in that as well, so I kept a lot of information to myself.” He shrugged.
“I found out later that your brother and Lorenzo were unaware of what was happening under their noses.”
“I’m glad Lorenzo was there that night.” I offered him a small smile.
“I think we’d better go before Lorenzo storms up here thinking you stole me away.
He’d be ready to finish the job he stopped that night,” I teased.
I meant what I said earlier. I liked Alek.
He may be the Grave Digger, but he had a code.
Alek offered me his arm and led me out of the suite and through the hallway. “Why do they call you the Grave Digger?” I whispered to him so we wouldn’t be overheard.
“Because that’s what I do, Bianca. If someone needs to be taken care of, I do it.”
I bit my lip, wanting to ask how many bodies, but also not really wanting to know. I was, after all, hanging on his arm as he walked me through a damn hotel. “You don’t want to know, Bianca. Enough to give me the moniker.”
“How did you know what I was going to ask?”
“You’re easy to read. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Lorenzo.” I nodded and gave him a small smile.
He grinned as we exited the elevator, and he walked me through the buzzing floor of the casino toward the ballroom where the wedding would be held.
“Can I ask you something?” I hesitated outside the ballroom door.
He cocked a brow, amusement clearly showing on his face. “Haven’t you already been asking me questions?”
I blushed a little and nodded. “Why are you pushing for this marriage as much as my brother and Lorenzo? I understand their motivations, but I don’t understand yours or Kozlov’s.”
“We don’t want a war with the Morellis, Bianca.
Especially with Romeo, but if the Morellis end up in bed permanently with the cartel, then a war would be on the horizon.
They are a cancer with too much heat, and they deal in enterprises that both your family and mine have never wanted to be a part of.
There’s dirty money, and then there’s blood money.
I don’t mind dirty money, but I don’t deal in blood money enterprises, even more so when that blood is spilt from innocent women and children.
” He sighed. “Your father is trying to enter that market, which will bring a spotlight to all other organizations in this area, including mine. Your marrying Lorenzo keeps you from the cartel and keeps the Morelli family from having a blood tie to the Arias cartel. To put it plainly, we are giving your brother time.”
“Time for what?”
Alek reached for the doors and looked back at me. “Time to get his house in order before a war is declared.”