12. Sicily
SICILY
I thought I might die when Milan pulled up to the address I gave him. In fact, I hoped I died.
He was about to see years of artwork.
Naked, sexual artwork.
Who knew, maybe my new husband would be into it, but by the way he ruined Matteo’s face at the Gioffres’, I highly doubted the paintings of him balls-deep in Elena would really tickle his fancy.
I stepped out of the car when we arrived, my tall heels clacking against the sidewalk as I led Milan toward the front door of my happy place. It wasn’t just a building; this was my whole heart and soul, and this was opening a door to me.
The shadowed street was empty, all for the light drizzle of rain. The equally battered stores sandwiching my studio were closed, their windows dark and locked tight. It was a discreet, quiet place, but that meant nobody cared to exist here, that I would be alone with my killer of a husband.
“After you,” Milan said in a neutral, bored tone as we stopped before the door.
He shoved on his random pair of black sunglasses despite it being pitch-black and us going inside. I’d noticed them before at the Bonafede’s yacht; I wondered if they were a coping strategy.
“How kind,” I mumbled, stepping in front of him to give the door a generous shove open with my shoulder.
The door had been broken for five years, or rather, the door had never worked, and I hadn’t known how to fix it.
Milan ran his fingers over the peeling doorframe on his way in. “This is incredibly unsafe.”
“People aren’t interested in breaking into my small, unsuspecting art studio, trust me.”
It was dark as I fumbled for the lights, but I could feel the weight of his scowl behind those glasses. “They might if they knew you were inside.”
Something bloomed in my chest, a stupid, wild burst of warmth. It spread to my stomach, only to die at the scrunch of his brows when the lights turned on and he came face-to-face with my life before him, before the marriage, before this was taken away.
Milan didn’t blink. He became some kind of lizard fixated on the close-up painting of Matteo thrusting into Elena on the couch. His gaze flickered between the painting and the chaise, clearly connecting that the couch was indeed the one covered in cum in the painting.
I swallowed roughly, doing more damage to my throat than soothing it. “So…do you love it?”
He gave me an incredulous look, one that said, obviously the fuck not.
“Okay, look, I know it’s crude and not what women are supposed to be painting, but I’ve done some sunsets and shit too.” I gestured to the pile of discarded canvases on the counter in the corner.
He recovered his expression as he strolled toward them, spreading them out with an attention that indicated he did care to some degree. He stared at them with the same judgment as an art critic, but soon reverted back to the ones of the sex.
“I think you are exceptionally talented,” he said, pointing to the most recent one of Elena and Matt. “It is like Matteo’s cock is truly in this room with me.”
The laughter that tumbled out of me was loud and bright, everything that Milan didn’t like, but when I looked back at him, wiping my eyes with the back of his jacket sleeve, he was looking at me in a way that was lighter than his usual expression.
I wondered if, just for once, just for now, he might let go a little in the discomfort of something truly out of his comfort zone.
“Do you believe me now?”
He nodded once. “I believed you without the Matteo and Elena pornography.”
“You did?” I exhaled, my lungs remembering how to breathe. “So, why did we even come here?”
“I was…intrigued, and I am glad I came.” He picked up a palette of paint that had dried in blotchy patches of pastels and paired it with a well-used paintbrush. “You are the talent, but have you ever been the art?”
“Me?” I echoed instantly, my brows pulling together. “Fuck no—I mean…” I blushed, remembering his rule about the word. “I mean, absolutely the hell not.”
Milan’s lips twitched as he set the items down and slowly turned toward the couch.
He took up so much space in my tiny studio that all of my furniture started to feel dwarfed, but it was his fixation on every single corner and crevice that made my stomach flutter.
My brows rose as he sat on the edge of the couch, looking up and down the windows and walls with a genuine curiosity that had me both confused and a little appreciative.
“You like sex,” he said suddenly.
I wasn’t sure if that was a question or a statement, but I was certain it was time for Milan Lucca to get out. A noise left my throat, like a gasp and a crackle at once. I cleared it as I said, “I think it’s time to go home.”
His head tilted. “Why?”
“We’re not talking about this. Can we please go?”
“Do you believe me to be mocking you? I assure you, I take no pleasure in making you uncomfortable.”
That was the biggest load of shit I’d ever heard. Milan did nothing but make me uncomfortable. He was the walking embodiment of uncomfortable. Wasn’t that his entire job? Could he even feel pleasure?
I buried my head in my hands with a long groan. My nails tugged at the roots of my hair that now felt more like straw after the air-drying speed Adriano’s car had given it. In Milan’s jacket, in this state, I looked like I was doing the walk of shame which was fitting considering where we were.
Milan stood from the couch, his over six-foot-tall frame like a giant in this room. “Sicily—”
“Okay, fine!” I blurted. “Yes, I like their sex, not everyone’s. Elena and Matteo are my muses; I’ve never painted anyone else. Happy?”
A growl rumbled from his chest, and I rolled my eyes. He was so controlling over someone he didn’t even like, but he was a man, and I was his wife, his property. Men who worshipped their women rarely existed, and it was no secret that Milan was not one of them. I didn’t need him to be.
“No,” he snarled. “Knowing that Bonafede is your muse does not make me happy. I cannot experience happiness, but if I could, that would be the very last thing that would bring me joy.”
There was something so incredibly sad about that.
“He’s my only male model and even that happened by chance.” I looked away, toward the paintings that I’d poured my soul into. “He doesn’t even matter; it’s her. He’s the one serving her, and that’s what my paintings are about.”
All of my anger lived in that paint, and everything women couldn’t have shone from Elena’s face. Whatever a painter painted couldn’t die, and that included the pain of every woman in the Famiglia. Nobody would take it from us if it was here, painted as evidence of our rebellion.
Milan faced the couch again, surveying it for a few silent seconds, before he looked over his shoulder and said, “That is unacceptable.”
The unmistakable sound of a zipper pinged through the air, and it froze me to the spot.
Milan shrugged out of his pants and black boxer shorts, revealing an ass that was sculpted and masculine, but it was when he lounged on the chaise, his neck resting over the back of the seat, his hand fisting his cock, that I truly couldn’t look away.
He was huge with thick pulsing veins, and though he was as big as I’d expected, he was much bigger than Matteo. Milan stroked himself casually from base to tip in one smooth flick of his wrist until it stood achingly tall and hard.
My mouth went dry.
“What do you require me to do with my shirt?” he asked casually, unbuttoning the white fabric until he paused at the top button.
I snapped back into the moment, blinking my focus from his cock to his eyes. “Uh—For what?”
“I am your model.” He frowned. “You will paint me.”
Obviously, because he wasn’t about to fuck me in my studio, and I definitely didn’t want that.
Instantly, I sprang into motion, gathering paints and a blank canvas, a pencil, and my stool. I set it down before the chaise, eyeing my new model in the impossible task of trying to map out his body without thinking of it anywhere near my own.
This was crazy, the worst idea of my life, but I’d never had another model other than Matteo, and that sent a thrill through me that I’d not felt for a long time. My passion for painting had always dipped and peaked, but right now, it was peaking.
“These can go,” I said, stepping forward to lift the sunglasses from his nose and setting them atop my own head. My fingers moved to the top button of his shirt, unlocking it to reveal his toned body. “Can you stay like that?”
His Famiglia tattoo sat proudly on his chest, glaring at me like a reminder of exactly who he was. There was no denying that this man was built to cause destruction, but he was also just sitting there, letting me rearrange him like a doll.
He answered with a nod, staring up at me for a moment before settling into his seat with his hand firmly wrapped around his dick.
Milan remained silent as I returned to my stool, and only when I pressed the pencil to the canvas did he ask, “Why were you at the Gioffres tonight?”
“My sister was there, and I didn’t want her to be. I called Matteo to come help, that’s all.” I sighed, not looking up.
“And you did not think it wise to inform me or Adriano?”
My hand paused against the canvas. “No, I didn’t. I was handling it myself.”
“But you contacted Matteo.”
“Because I didn’t want you to punish her!” I snapped, almost breaking the pencil in half. “You’re her Capo.”
I contemplated drawing his dick the size of my pinky finger, but I’d never had another model and the opportunity to detail a new body, new shapes and lines, was one I wasn’t going to let go just because my new model infuriated the hell out of me.
Milan stayed quiet for too long, and when I peered over the canvas, his eyes were narrowed as if I’d just spoken gibberish.
“I am also your Capo dei Capi, and you ran from my house, stole my Consigliere’s car, and retained damaging information about Elena and Matteo.
Surely, I should punish you, not your sister? ”
Trying to escape the boss was obviously always going to end badly and with some kind of punishment. My knees drew closer at that thought, squeezing together, and it took me a moment to understand that my brain was conjuring images of him spanking me, not murdering me for a punishment.
I cleared my throat, banishing the images with a shake of my head. “What are you gonna do, Milan? Kill me?”
His body tensed, and I watched the moment his pupils shifted from being Milan with honey brown eyes to the Capo with eyes as dark as the sins he’d committed. He stared at me, forcing my heart to stutter like a predator hunting his prey.
Still, I didn’t miss how his dick twitched in his hand.
“If I killed you,” he said slowly, each word rumbling around the room, “who would paint Matteo’s cock in such detail? I assume this would cause his ego to malfunction as you have obviously exaggerated quite a bit.”
My brain pleaded with me not to laugh, to never give him the satisfaction of fixing the tension in the room, but it wasn’t long before it burst out of me and his lips twitched, not quite smiling but trying to.
Damn Milan fucking Lucca.
“Shut up.” I smiled, hiding my face behind the easel. “Or I’ll paint your dick limp and tiny.”
“I am wounded, Sicily,” Milan said, so plainly that I laughed again.
What the hell was wrong with me? This man was an animal, one capable of murder in the most heinous of ways, though right now he wasn’t.
A beat of silence passed as I began to mix paints, forming just the right combination for his skin tone. His sarcasm stuck in my mind, ruminating there until I blurted, "Do you actually feel upset?”
He raised a brow. “Not about having a tiny limp penis, no. I am aware this is not the truth.”
My cheeks heated. “I mean… Do you feel upset…ever?”
“No. I do not experience emotion in the way others do. Each action I take is programmed; I am aware that if I act in a specific way, it will have a logically beneficial reaction, but…” He frowned up at the ceiling, his eyes flickering between different points as if there were answers there.
“Occasionally, there are situations that remove my ability to act within my expected parameters, and I am overtaken by basic instinct. This is incredibly unacceptable, but I cannot control it.”
A life without feeling was unimaginable. I felt everything, even what wasn’t mine to feel, and I was certain that what I’d felt within me was Milan’s pain over his brothers at the wedding, his anger at Matteo.
Milan did feel, I’d seen it on his face, so why did he believe he couldn’t?
“Were you always this way?” I probed.
He shook his head. “I used to smile a lot. And laugh. I always required repetition and order, and I never enjoyed many social situations, but I was aware that what I was experiencing was unhappiness or anxiety. Over time, my ability to recognize these emotions within myself worsened, and now I cannot identify them easily within others. It changed… I changed.”
“What changed?” I didn’t want to ask the question because I was certain I didn’t want to know the answer, but he was distracted for once, and I needed the information.
“I cannot tell you.”
I paused. “Why not?”
“It would result in my death.”