Chapter 16 #2
I step in front of her so sharply the floor creaks beneath my heel.
‘Try it,’ I snarl, voice dropping to something ancient and carved out of bone. ‘I fucking dare you.’
* * *
Rafa moves first – rage and grief braided into something feral – and I don’t even wait for the swing.
My fist flies.
It cracks clean against his jaw, snapping his head to the side.
But he barely reacts.
He turns back to me slowly, jaw jutting, cheek twitching, but his eyes aren’t on me.
They’re on her.
Giada stiffens behind me as Rafa’s stare pins her like he’s nailing a criminal to a cross.
‘You’re going to fucking remember,’ he snarls, voice shredded and shaking. ‘If I have to pry it frame by frame from your mind with a crowbar.’
The room detonates.
Cesare curses as Maddie cries out.
Dante lunges forward.
Sofiya’s hand flies to her thigh, where she keeps her Glock.
I don’t give Rafa a chance to even breathe wrong. I slam another punch into his mouth. Blood spatters from his lip, bright and vivid and furious.
Rafa staggers an inch. Just an inch. But his eyes – Christ – they are pure hellfire.
And Giada is shaking like she’s witnessing the second coming of the devil.
‘I will end you,’ I snarl, stepping into Rafa’s space. ‘You don’t fucking threaten her.’
‘You want me to stop?’ Rafa growls right back. ‘Put her somewhere she can’t run from the truth.’
‘Enough,’ Cesare thunders.
But it’s Sofiya who shatters the next moment. She steps forward, eyes blazing, voice a lethal blade.
‘Rafa,’ she hisses. ‘I love you, but if you touch a hair on my sister’s head, I’ll finish what I started the night we met and put a bullet in your skull for real this time.’
Rafa freezes.
And then – the crazy bastard smiles.
Softly. Weirdly. Like the unhinged version of a man proposing marriage in a bloodstained tux.
‘I’ll die happy,’ he murmurs, ‘if you promise to wear the same catsuit, bella tigre.’
Dante barks out a shocked laugh.
Sofiya rolls her eyes so hard she nearly tips over. And Cesare pinches the bridge of his nose.
The temperature in the room drops just enough to breathe again.
Giada peeks over my shoulder, trembling, voice barely a whisper: ‘If I thought a crowbar would work… I would probably let you,’ she says to Rafa.
He lets out a dark, humourless huff as Cesare snorts and Dante whistles.
I touch her cheek, dragging her attention back to me.
‘For the last fucking time,’ I announce, loud enough to carry across continents, ‘nobody is touching my woman.’
Silence drops like a velvet guillotine.
Maddie inhales sharply and Rafa stiffens. Cesare’s eyebrow twitches, with approval or warning, I can’t tell.
But Sofiya nods once, very small, very sure.
Rafa frowns at her. ‘You knew about this?’ he rasps.
Sofiya stares at him and something passes between them I don’t even want to know. My brother may be unhinged but I’ll admit – under copious amounts of torture – that Sofiya Mancinelli freaks me the fuck out. Of the two, she’s the more deadly.
‘Rooms,’ Dante mutters finally. ‘Let’s all take a beat or six before someone pulls a weapon.’
Cesare nods. ‘Dinner at eight. Everyone will keep their distance until then.’
Rafa grumbles. Sofiya elbows him. Maddie looks like she’s barely breathing. But they all start filtering out, giving us space.
Giving us a small mercy.
I take Giada’s hand. It’s clammy, ice-cold and as fragile as a prayer whispered into the wind.
I clutch it tighter and stare at my family. ‘And I’m assuming you’ve all invited yourselves under my roof?’
The response is a smattering of snorts and chuckles.
‘Come,’ I murmur, guiding her towards the door. Breakfast is fucking ruined, but I can still hold her in my arms.
Her steps falter. Her gaze flickers back to the cluster of Salvatores like she’s afraid they’ll vanish – or devour her whole.
‘I don’t belong with them,’ she whispers.
‘You will. Give it time. But what’s more important is that you belong with me,’ I counter.
And I mean it with every bloodstained inch of my soul.
* * *
Giada
The suite door shuts behind us with a heavy, padded thunk.
My chest collapses.
I don’t know when I start crying – but suddenly my face is wet again, my breathing sharp, my hands fisted in the front of Renzo’s shirt.
‘I can’t do this,’ I choke out. ‘I can’t be in the middle of this. I can’t remember. I can’t forget. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know who they are – Maddie, Sofiya – my own family. And they all look at me like I’m a ghost. Or a… a toxic bomb.’
‘Angel…’ he murmurs.
‘I’m scared.’ The words tumble out of me. ‘I feel like my mind is full of holes and shadows and if I step wrong I’ll fall through. And you – you’re the only thing that feels solid but you’re also—’
He cups my jaw, forcing me to look at him.
‘Tell me what you need, baby.’
The question cracks something open in me, because I know. I know exactly what I need. I know exactly where I feel anchored.
I half-sob, half-confess, ‘I need you.’
Something savage and soft blazes in his eyes.
He lifts me – just scoops me into his arms, ignoring the arm that’s still healing – and carries me to the bed like I weigh nothing.
My body moves before my mind can second-guess, and I straddle him, nightdress bunching around my thighs, his hands gripping my hips like he’s tasting ownership in his palms.
His gaze devours me. ‘Take what you need,’ he growls. ‘All of it.’
I rock my hips down, slow, trembling, needy over his thickening cock. Once, then again, whimpering as pleasure whistles through me.
His breath punches out of him. ‘Fuck. Giada—’
I slide again and the friction is electric, my core tightening, heat pooling low and fierce.
He groans, head tipping back, throat bared, a vein pulsing like a drum.
‘Touch me,’ I whisper.
His hands drag under the nightdress, thumbs brushing my inner thighs, then sliding higher, stroking my dampening clit, exactly where I’m aching.
I gasp, loud and broken and so damn needy.
‘Fuck,’ he breathes. ‘You’re soaked for me.’
My hips stutter.
His fingers tease, circle, press, slow enough to torment, firm enough to make my vision flicker white.
‘Renzo – oh—’
He watches every reaction, every tremble, every gasp like I’m scripture he intends to rewrite.
‘That’s it, baby,’ he murmurs. ‘Ride me. Put me inside that tight pussy. Take your comfort out on my cock. Use me until you forget the world.’
I grind down harder, desperate, clutching his shoulders as pleasure surges.
He groans deep in his chest, pulling one nipple into his mouth, sucking slow and filthy until I cry out.
‘Renzo – please—’
‘Please what?’
His voice is a sin on my skin.
‘Touch me more.’
He obliges, sliding two fingers inside me and curling just right, rubbing his thumb over my clit in firm little strokes that make my hips jerk helplessly.
‘Oh God, I’m so close—’
He removes his fingers, flips us over until I’m beneath him. Then he notches his broad crown at my wet entrance. Silver-grey eyes drill into mine, infusing ownership and near-manic dominance on me. ‘Say my name when you come.’
I barely have time to gasp a response before he slams inside. My muscles stretch to accommodate him as my head thrashes on the pillow, my hips chasing the rhythm, thighs trembling on either side of his lean thighs.
‘Renzo – Renzo—’
‘Yes, just like that, ragazza. More.’
One hand slides up my belly and torso to wrap around my neck, to keep me still as he pistons in and out of me. That same hand bears the remnants of his fight with his brother on his bruised and cracked knuckles. The fight he rushed into… over me.
I should be horrified by the violence, by the raw expression of feelings and pursuit, by the way two lethal men tried to tear each other apart downstairs like wolves defending territory.
But the truth slides through me like molten sin…
I wasn’t horrified. I wasn’t even frightened.
I remember standing there, heart hammering, not because they were bleeding… but because he was bleeding for me.
Renzo.
And instead of shrinking from it, instead of clutching for my rosary, I wanted – God help me, I wanted to wear that violent devotion like a second skin. Like a favourite coat I never want to take off.
I wanted to heap kisses and praise on him for defending me so ferociously.
My man.
My man.
The words echo through me, louder each time.
Dangerous.
Addictive.
Undeniably mine.
Do I really mean it? Is it real? Or is it residue, the imprint of watching Maddie and Sofiya with their Salvatores, seeing how wholly their men are theirs? How they move in unison, look obsessively at each other, how they love in ways that defy sense and gravity?
A whisper curls through me: Are you jealous?
The thought is sharp and stunning.
I was a noviciate a heartbeat ago. I was supposed to belong only to God. That path hasn’t vanished. It could still be mine.
But then another voice – lower, darker – threads into me.
Do you even want that path any more?
Another thrust, another helpless cry from my throat.
And somewhere inside, something crumbles, something remakes itself. And it most definitely isn’t something I want to examine right now. So I fling myself deeper into carnal emotion.
My climax hits like a break in the clouds, like light shattering through stained glass, drowning me in near-holy, mindless pleasure.
I cry out, gripping his shoulders, body arching, trembling as he kisses and strokes me through it, murmuring praise against my skin.
‘Good girl… angel… fucking perfection. Now, watch me come for you, baby. So hard. Oh shit, so fucking hard.’ He roars his own release and I feel it… him… flood me.
And when the waves ease, I slump against him, breathing hard. With my arms and legs, I hold him close.
He presses kisses down my neck, slow, reverent, hungry.
‘I’ve got you, baby,’ he murmurs. ‘Always.’
And somehow, despite the war outside these walls, despite the shadows in my mind, despite the fear creeping through my ribs…
I believe him.
I let myself believe him.