Chapter Twelve #2
To the way her blue eyes had looked up at me while I buried myself to the hilt and ordered her to come.
To the soft, broken cry she made when the orgasm tore through her.
To the way her sweet pussy had milked me in long, helpless waves while the cream kept every sensation sharpened to the edge of pain.
To the thick, filthy mess I had left between her thighs.
To the collar locked around her throat and the knowledge that she was in my penthouse, waiting for the next time I decided to use what I had paid to own.
I wanted her throat under my hand. I wanted her eyes on me while I pushed back inside that tight, creamy heat and reminded her exactly who she belonged to. I wanted her to feel every inch while I told her the truth she knew.
You’re mine. Every hole. Every orgasm. Every breath. And the entire underworld watched me prove it.
When the formal portion of the meeting finally ended I stood, shook the hands that were offered, and ignored the ones that were not.
Leo remained seated until most of the room had cleared.
When he finally stood he crossed the space between us with the unhurried calm of a man who had never needed to rush in his life. He stopped a few feet away.
“Careful,” he said. The word was neutral. The warning underneath it was not.
“I am always careful.”
Leo’s mouth moved in something that was not quite a smile. Then he turned and left without another word. Santino caught up with me near the elevators.
“You handled that cleanly,” he said.
“I handled it the way it needed to be handled.”
He studied me for a long moment. The silence had weight. “Dario is a problem with a simple solution. You know that. Why is he breathing?”
I met his eyes and let a fraction of the truth show through. “Because the girl I bought begged me not to kill him. Until I know why that request matters to her, removing him creates a different problem. I do not leave loose ends I have not fully mapped out.”
Santino’s expression did not change, but something unreadable moved behind his eyes. He did not press. He simply nodded once and stepped back as the elevator doors opened. I rode down alone.
The driver was waiting. I gave no destination at first. The car simply moved through the city while I sat in the back seat and the image of Dario’s face burned behind my eyes.
The man was a liability. He had touched what was mine. He had spoken about my wife’s body like he had rights to it. He had stood in a room full of the Five Families and pointed at the exact cracks in the official Vernizzi story.
The clean solution for Dario was a bullet and a quiet disappearance. The only thing stopping me was the look on Morena’s face when she realized the last piece of her old life had been erased without her permission.
She was hiding something.
The secret sat between us like a third person in every room.
She had begged for Dario’s life. She had chosen a supervised call instead of a letter.
She had written two hundred lines of ownership while tears dripped onto the page and refused to explain why the scumbag who sold her was worth keeping alive.
I would have the answer eventually. Every secret. Every reason. Until then Dario stayed breathing because I allowed it.
The car eventually turned toward the docks.
I had the driver stop two blocks from the warehouse that no longer existed in any official record.
I walked the rest of the way alone. The building had been cleaned.
The blood was gone. The spent casings had never been found.
The official story held. But standing in the same cold air where the Vernizzi sons had stopped breathing made my heart pulse harder.
I had killed three men to open a seat for myself. If that didn’t make me a villain...
I told myself it was power that made me dizzy.
But really, it was the thought of any other man touching Morena.
It made something violent and permanent open inside my chest. The memory of her blue eyes going blind with forced pleasure while the cream and my cock forced her to come sat in my blood like a brand.
The sound of her sobbing after I left the room, raw, helpless, the most beautiful girl in the city breaking on my sheets, lived under my skin.
Finally, I gave the address of the penthouse. The drive took fourteen minutes. I counted every one of them.
Fourteen minutes of forcing the colder parts of myself back into place.
Fourteen minutes of deciding exactly how Dario would be handled without removing the only leverage that kept Morena compliant.
Fourteen minutes of admitting, quietly and without mercy, that the girl collared in my apartment was no longer only a means to an end.
My mind stayed on her the entire way.
On the soft weight of her body against my chest when I carried her out of After Dark.
On the way her naked skin had felt under the expensive wool of my coat.
On the wet heat of my own release seeping out of her and soaking into the fabric.
On the heavy gold ring on her finger that looked like a brand more than a promise.
On the exact moment her lips had parted against mine in front of every man who had just bid on her body and she had made that small, broken sound like she was starting to understand she would never be free of me.
I wanted her again. I wanted her on her back with the collar tight and the cream working and my cock buried so deep she forgot every name except her husband’s.
The doors of the penthouse later opened onto darkness and floor-to-ceiling glass. The city glittered beyond them like something conquered. The wall of her photographs waited under the low light. That hollow expression she had worn for weeks. Now there was only a wall separating us.
Dario would stay alive for now.
He would stay alive because the secret she was protecting was the only thing that could make me hesitate. He would stay alive until I knew the full shape of that secret and decided what to do with it.
And when the time came, when the Families demanded living proof and the seat required more than public consummation and a pregnancy, I would remove every obstacle between me and the girl who had started as a tool and become something I was no longer willing to name.
I dropped my keys on the marble console and loosened my tie as I walked toward the door. She was awake.
Blue eyes lifted to mine in the grey afternoon light.
The white clothes I had chosen were slightly wrinkled from sleep or from the way she had curled on the bed.
The diary lay open beside her. One page filled in the same careful handwriting.
She did not speak. She simply watched me the way she had watched me from the secondary stage months ago.
Fear and something else, something that was not quite surrender, living in the same breath.
My voice stayed level, the same tone I used when giving orders that ended lives. “Dario remains breathing for now. The Families are watching. And you have not told me the only thing that matters.”
She swallowed. I stepped closer.
“You will tell me eventually,” I said, quieter now. “Every secret. Every reason you protect the man who sold you. Until then you remain mine in every way.”