Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
RAFE
Gripping the butt of my gun, I willed my twitchy finger away from the trigger and my pulse to slow.
We weren’t in the desert.
Sas was not a war enemy. In fact, if he knew half of what he should know in order to lead a tight team of brothers, he could easily pull rank on me at any time. Thankfully, he was ignorant in the way of both organized crime—as he showed with the cartel—and leadership skills. He had passion for the club, and that could be crafted into something powerful. But it would take time.
Too many soldiers came in raw like him. Guns swinging. Proud of their gym-earned muscles. And cocks flashing at the first sign of pussy... or even the hint that there might be one in the room. And of all those young and dumb soldiers, I’d held too many dying hands as none of the gusto or pride could save them from a well-placed bullet. Or solidly designed IED.
The door to the rooms on the east side of the warehouse snicked shut.
She’s safe, I told myself. Adelina is safe and sound. Away from the loose cannon.
I might not be worthy of Adelina—or someone like her—but she also didn’t deserve such violence.
As I breathed, a sense of calm and control washed over me. The red haze over my vision dissipated as Graff crossed the room to Sas’s side. He shouldn’t stand so close to my target, but he wasn’t part of my team. So, let him fall with his brother.
“Explain.” I tightened my grip on my gun handle, forcing my finger to rest alongside the barrel. Mass would have my head if I didn’t work to see this deal go through. And even though I hated him for bartering Adelina, he was blood. The only family I had.
Sas lit up a joint, inhaled, and leaned back against the wall. “Explain what?” His voice was tight, holding in the smoke, as he passed the joint to Graff.
“What’s your game? What are you doing with Adelina?”
Sas shrugged and exhaled. “She started it.”
“Yeah, she starts a lot of shit. She’s a kid,” I said. Twenty-two, while technically an adult, was still young enough that her inner brat liked to rear her ugly head.
Sas snorted. “Have you seen those tits and that ass? That woman hasn’t been a kid for years.”
I wanted to shoot off his balls one at a time, so it was a fucking chore to keep my finger off the trigger. “Man up, asshole.”
Sas rolled his head over to look at me with bloodshot eyes. The pot clearly had him calmer than he should be when facing my barely caged fury. He’d be slow now, so I flipped the safety back into place.
Graff slipped away and grabbed the sketchpad from the sofa table nearby. He brushed by my shoulder and said in passing, “Adelina got under his skin.”
“She’s good at that,” I said, having seen it before while watching over her at the Vegas nightclubs. None of those boys, though, had been half as dangerous as her future husband.
“I noticed,” mumbled Sas, balling his hands into fists.
He might throw a punch at me, but he would be slow with intoxication. No threat whatsoever. Plus, I had already proven that I didn’t need a gun to win a fight with him. I tucked into the waistband of my pants at the small of my back—the way everyone else here wore their pieces.
“She’ll keep trying to get a rise out of you,” I warned Sas.
“Challenge accepted,” he drawled as he scratched at his beard.
“She’s winning.”
He shook his head against the wall, then slurred, “She isn’t.”
Graff looked up from the pad he’d started sketching on again. “Open your eyes, Veep. She’s got an edge on you, and you’re the one looking like an idiot.”
Sas lurched off the wall and pointed at his biker brother, swaying slightly. “Shut the fuck up!”
Graff cocked a brow, but he let Sas stumble away. We exchanged a knowing look before following.
At the fridge, Sas swiped two longnecks from the top shelf. “You can both fuck off.”
He sat on the counter.
At the island, the same place where the artist sat during the meeting earlier, Graff slid out a barstool. The wooden legs scraped against the floorboards, then he plopped down. He pulled a pencil from inside of his cut and dragged it across the page.
“You need to get your shit together, Sas, before the others notice.” Graff said the words as though he were talking about the weather, but they were laced with something unlike I’d seen in the man.
It was the kind of brotherly warning and bond I had only seen formed after two people had gone to war and returned whole. Or almost whole. I still couldn’t fathom how that was possible when Sas was a walking piece of shit, but it piqued my interest about their relationship and how Sas rose to his position in the MC.
Sas downed half his beer, then sighed. “Adelina’s the one who needs to learn her place.”
He wasn’t about to get anywhere with her if he thought she’d sit down, shut up, and suck his cock like one of the bunnies out back.
“Her place?” I scowled.
The man leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, holding the bottle between them and shaking his head. Then, he flashed his gaze to me. “Never asked to be tied to one cunt for the rest of my life.”
Graff scoffed. “This can’t be about Kaos?”
Sas let out a long breath. “Nah, man. I’m just not built for relationships.”
“What’s chaos?” I asked.
“Who,” Graff corrected.
“She’s a sweetbutt,” said Sas dismissively. “One of the many eager bunnies to choose from.” He toasted me with his beer and guzzled the rest, then launched the empty bottle basketball style into a trashcan at the end of the counter. “Maybe you should try one to loosen up your tight ass!”
I rolled my eyes. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I was going to fuck any of the women out back. “They’re not my type.”
“And what is your type, brother ?” Sas spat the last word my way and cracked open the second beer.
That had me pinching my lips together, because I would never have the person who was my type. With my past and the sinful thoughts in my head, I could never hope to be worthy of her.
“That’s what I thought,” said Sas. Then he waved the bottle toward the door to where Adelina had gone. “This sick deal with your brother, Rafe... it’s a business deal. Nothing says I can’t fuck whoever I want.”
Thankfully, Graff spoke up. “Marriage says you can’t, asshole.”
Sas scoffed, and I clenched and released my fists at my side.
Graff tucked his chin, glaring up at him. “Not saying it has to be monogamous, but it’s a fucking vow. You stand behind whatever you say.”
“Right, you are, brother.” The Veep chuckled. “So, I’ll vow this: I fuck who I want, when I want, and how I want.”
I balled my fists so tightly my knuckles ached. Adelina could be hot headed, and obviously, she was working out her bratty tendencies with Sas, but she deserved more than that. I didn’t care when she did it with Massimo because my brother would never hurt her, but I didn’t trust Sas. Words wouldn’t form to argue, so I stalked toward him.
He sat up straighter as I came near and then I rammed my forearm into his throat, slamming his head back against the upper cabinets. He barely even flinched and didn’t fight me off.
Raising onto my toes, I came into his face and tapped my pointer finger against his forehead. “You need to start thinking with whatever’s in here. Assuming there is something.”
Sas gave me a lazy smirk.
The bastard.
Through his jeans, I latched on to his cock and balls. His beer crashed to the floor, shattering. Despite the fact that he was drunk and high, his eyes went round.
“If you keep thinking with this, you’re going to get yourself fucking killed,” I growled.
“Is that a threat?” Spittle leaped from his mouth.
“No need for a motherfucking seer to predict where you’ll end up if you keep acting like a toddler,” I said. “Kids make easy targets.”
“What? You think Adelina will kill me?” Sas laughed, holding his stomach like it was such a funny concept.
“Nah, brother ,” I spat back at him like he’d hurled the word at me. “You’re asking to see what I can do to you without boxing gloves and without a ring.”
Sas had already seen part of my Marines training, but I had more tricks than what I learned at base and bootcamp. I had grown up in the Mafia, played devilish games with capos, and been on the front lines of war. I had killed without mercy or discrimination, and slowly murdering someone who meant to betray my niece, well, that would be so fucking satisfying.
“My father,” I said in a low tone, stopping anyone from eavesdropping, “had a penchant for stripping the skin from a person’s bones while they were still breathing.”
Graff took a sharp intake of breath, but Sas said nothing. Did nothing. He was thinking, but the wheels turning in his mind didn’t move fast enough. It would get him killed.
“You threatening me?” he asked again, missing the vibrato he had before.
“No, I’m enlightening you as to some of the lessons my father taught me and Massimo,” I said. “My brother was the enforcer to Tommy Gambino, his righthand man until Massimo staged his little coup. But we learned everything from our father, who was a Gambino enforcer too. You could say it runs in our blood.”
Sas chuckled like he didn’t believe the awful things we learned, and I pressed my weight into him.
These weren’t idle threats, and I wasn’t letting up. “We had special soundproofed rooms in our house with drains in the floor. The first time I saw my father interrogate someone, I was eight. Ivo”—because my calling him Papà had earned more than one hungry night from his wife—“narrated every cut he made. The man begged to die long before it was done.”
My breath turned to a wheeze as I remembered those horrible times when I was a child, everything red and sticky. My eyes no longer saw them man I had pinned or if fear had finally crept into his eyes. All I could see was the past.
My boyhood.
The war.
The gore.
Bloody red across a stone floor washed through my sight, but I didn’t need to see Sas to put out the final warning. “If you fuck over his daughter, you’ll have both Massimo and me to make sure your slow death will last for days. Maybe weeks.”
I wouldn’t regret what Mass and I would do to Sas if he hurt Adelina.
“You think I’m scared of your brother when I have the Rojas brothers on my ass?” Sas scoffed.
The statement brought me back to the present, and I blinked. Maybe he had two brain cells knocking around up there. I didn’t know how with how drunk and high he seemed, but it still took me aback.
“Yeah, that’s right. They’ll get to me long before your brother will.”
At least he was aware. I dropped my arm from his throat and leaned back against the island counter, nodding. “I talked to Wilde.”
Sas balled his hands into fists. “You shouldn’t have done that. That’s none of your fucking business.”
“He’s riding up tomorrow for church,” I continued. “He knows about the Parisi money. He’s thinking about it.”
“We’re not accepting a fucking handout from a Mafia Don,” snapped Sas.
“Maybe he’s just being smart,” I said. “Unlike you.”
His upper lip twitched. “I am?—”
I shut down and turned my back to Sas. Whatever he had to say wasn’t important. He didn’t get the fact that Adelina had her own money, and if he didn’t want to put away his cock and temper for five minutes, we could just deal with it in church. The VP was in a big enough hole.
I would let him finish digging his own grave.
One thing he wouldn’t do was drag Adelina into it with him. She presented other problems, but those had nothing to do with a threesome of enforcer-type brothers from Colombia.
I busted through the door to the bunnies’ wing of the clubhouse and marched straight for my niece’s door. I didn’t knock as I walked in. Adelina sat on her bed, cell phone in her hands. She snapped her head to look up at me, startled by the invasion, but then she rolled her eyes and looked down at her cell phone again.
Not even a hello after I saved her ass.
“You good?” I asked, closing the door behind me and trying to erase the thought of her ass.
“Fine,” she mumbled, still looking down at the cell phone.
Her cheeks were swollen, and there was a tinge of red on the corner of her mouth. The white light of her cell phone illuminated her face, showing off her wet eyes, but she didn’t look at me. She wouldn’t tell me, and I wouldn’t ask about the tears.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Looking at rideshare apps,” she said.
“Adelina—”
“Don’t start, Rafe.”
“You can’t leave.”
“I can afford to do whatever I need to do to get the hell away from this shitshow.”
“They’ll come after you. Your father will have someone hunt you?—”
“Don’t you think I know that.” She slammed her cell phone down on the bed and flew to her feet. “That’s why I’m only looking. It’s why I didn’t just fucking walk out. It’s why I’m still here. In jail.” She held my eyes for a long second before adding, “Nothing more than a brood mare.”
I scowled at her. “Don’t be dramatic, Adelina. Mass isn’t breeding you.”
“Might as well be.” She returned to her phone and the rideshare app, supposedly.
Did she really think she could run from la Famiglia...? I tried but landed right back in the now-Parisi family.
“You can’t run, tesoro. Your father?—”
“Don’t you think I fucking know what my heartless father would do, Zio Rafaele?” She used our familial connection like a slur, and I flinched.
I shouldn’t be alone with her, because I was the last person in the world who could offer her any kind of comfort. She needed more than me, but there was no one else here to help her. Or me, for that matter. We were stuck in a game bigger than either of us.
“Is there something else?” I asked.
“Something else?” She furrowed her brows.
“You’re upset.”
“Your deduction skills are magical.” There was my favorite eye roll.
I gritted my teeth. “If this is about Sas and that sweetbutt, then I should tell you?—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she snapped. If I didn’t know her, I’d believe the words. But the faster her thumb swiped up that phone screen, the more agitated she was. It was almost her only tell.
“Then it is about them?” I stared at her, confused.
How was I supposed to make her believe what she should already know? The whore Sas apparently fucked was just that—a whore, but Adelina was a Parisi. She was a prize. It was what her grandmother had said to my mother many times... just before she told her how much she muddied the purity of their blood.
“No, Rafe.” She let out an exasperated huff, then admitted in a small voice, “It’s about me.” Red tinged in her cheeks, a reaction I so rarely saw in her. In all her bratty glory, her embarrassment broke through in bright red blotches.
I would admit there were many, many things I didn’t know or understand about women. Girls and older women alike had fawned over me when I was a teenage boy, and I had known they were after the Parisi fortune. Or the prestige that went with marrying into the family who was the right hand of the Gambino family. It was actually a bit repulsive.
Sex, yeah, there was that too. But the prostitutes sent by my father were also after a buck. In the military, I had also stayed away from any form of romantic entanglement, whether at home or abroad. That hadn’t changed since I separated.
But I would always be here for Adelina. No matter what.
“What do you mean?” I asked, “About you?”
She shook her head, like she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell me, but this was tearing her up inside.
“I’m just confused,” she said in a small, childlike voice. “About myself.”
“Because of Sas?”
“Yes, him.” She slumped on the bed.
“You definitely have nothing to be confused about with him, and you shouldn’t be letting his shit get to you.” I crossed over and sat next to her on the bed.
Her head fell. “He did something to me.”
“What?” My blood boiled and my first instinct was to palm my gun and blow his fucking head off. I thought I’d been in time to keep him from hurting her.
“He made me, um, feel something,” she said sheepishly.
I stilled, watching her for more. What could she feel for that unpredictable, philandering—Adelina placed a hand on my forearm, calming me like only the touch of her small hand could do.
“Rafe, my body wants”—she pulled away, shaking her head—“I guess I don’t know what my body wants, but... I must be fucked up.”
I cupped her chin and turned her eyes back to meet mine. She could be strong and sassy and bratty, but when something got to her, it just about wrecked her through and through. This wasn’t an Adelina I saw often, but it was one that made me want to serve her the world on a silver platter.
“Tell me,” I said as gently as possibly.
“Wh-when he had me up against the wall, the way he was looking at me, like he was starving, and I could be his next meal.” She pulled away from me, dragging her hands through her long dark-brown hair.
“Adelina, tesoro, you can talk to me.”
Her glassy eyes found mine again. “Like we’re girlfriends, Rafe? That’s weird!”
Perhaps, but weird should’ve been our family name. Didn’t she know by now that she could tell me anything? That I would do or be anything for her?
With a steadying breath, I asked, “Do you have someone else?”
“No.” She hugged her midsection and gnawed at her bottom lip.
“I may not be the best option,” I said, “but I’m willing to try.”
After a deep breath, she started again. “Okay. My body reacted to him and how Graff was watching.” Her eyes fluttered up to meet mine then away and back again. “It was like I was channeling one of the bunnies.”
“Adelina, you are not one of the bunnies,” I said, my teeth clenched.
“But I’m still a woman.”
I wanted to yell at her, tell her she wasn’t. That she was my niece. A little girl with chocolate-brown pigtails and dimples. But I simply bit down on my tongue.
She raised her head, reminding me just how much of a woman she really was becoming.
Twenty-two years old and a college graduate with not only a bachelor’s degree, but a master’s too. An MBA. She would be so good for business around here if they would just let her. She had bloomed while I was gone at war, turning into a blossoming belladonna flower. Deadly with how gorgeous she was. Poison.
My young niece had turned into an adult, legally, and had been a woman for four years. Her flat chest and skinny body had rounded out in all the right places. Her hips had widened, breasts perked, and she would be ripe for bearing children soon.
Adelina. A woman.
I felt the urge to smack the heel of my hand against my forehead.
“A woman has wants, Uncle Rafe,” added Adelina after I took too long to answer.
I stared at her for too long, and my cheeks started to burn. My turn had come to be embarrassed for looking at my niece that way. Thinking about her as something other than someone to protect. I was going to hell.
“You understand, don’t you, Zio?” she asked, leaning back on the bed. Her dress pulled across her body.
“Understand what?” My voice cracked.
“Wants? Needs?” She swallowed. “Sexual desires.”
“I do understand lust, yes, Adelina.” I stared at a crack in the wall, wishing it was a structural crack and the wall could collapse and bury us inside. I could only hope.
“The MC... they were rutting like goats outside.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“I’m not.”
I peeked at her. “It’s no place for a gir?—”
“Woman,” she corrected.
I nodded. “It’s no place for a woman like you.” The word still tasted sour on my tongue when talking about her.
“It’s exactly the place for me. It opened my eyes,” she said, running her thumbnail over the edge of her dress. “You know? My father thinks I’m a virgin.”
My breath hitched at the same time my cock twitched, betraying me. She was family for fuck’s sake. We were blood! “Adelina, I, ah, I’m, I probably shouldn’t have made you talk to me about this.”
She giggled. “Relax Rafe, I am a virgin, but only because the normal relationship shit doesn’t do much for me.”
“Oh,” was all I could say and then I scrubbed both hands over my face. This wasn’t the direction I expected things to go.
“With everyone fucking around the fire and then Sas and Kaos and apparently Graff—” She snickered. “I kinda want it like that. Dirty. Like the bunnies and prospects outside. Like how Sas acted when he had his hand in my hair and his lips on mine.”
She ran her hand over her swollen lips, and my gaze followed the movement. “I bit him, you know, and I think he liked that too.”
I turned away from her, unable to hear this anymore. I couldn’t believe my cock was reacting to this, straining in my pants. This was fifty shades of wrong, and I couldn’t seem to stop my reaction.
Blood gushed past my ears, my heartbeat alive everywhere in my body. Fuck. I searched for something else to think about. Anything at all.
But Adelina continued, “I wouldn’t have regretted it if Sas had taken me out there against the wall or if Graff watched or they wanted something more. Having them both want me. I think I like the idea.”
What else did she like? Me?
I looked down, trying to tame my terrible train of thought. I needed to get out of here, but the strain would still be there.
“Do I disgust you, Zio?” she asked.
“No,” came my clipped reply.
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
“Adelina,” I breathed.
If only it were that simple. If she wasn’t in this position with Sas and the motorcycle club. And damn it, if I just wasn’t her uncle.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked, and a sob bubbled from her. “I know how gross it is. I shouldn’t have these thoughts. It’s wrong on so many levels. Forget it. We should both forget everything I just said. I’ll?—”
“No,” I cut her off.
I wanted to turn to her and hold her and comfort her, but my hard-on would give me away. My cock wanted to find a home in her, and I wanted my lips on hers. To find out what she tasted like and how she might scream in ecstasy when she exploded with her orgasm.
Everyone would know, and it would surely get back to my brother.
All the torture techniques our father taught him, Massimo would use on me. He would start with my cock and balls, using his blades to cut into me and make me squeal like a stuck pig. But I deserved every cut he would make for merely having these off-limits urges. Massimo would strip me bare and peel my flesh away until he finally killed me in the most painful and bloodiest way possible, and he would be justified in the torture.
Yet my cock thrummed, filled with blood. It was willing to risk pain for Adelina. But the sickest part: the rest of me wasn’t objecting like it should be.
“I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear all this stuff,” said Adelina. “It’s weird.”
“Adeli—” I cleared my throat. “I’m happy you trust me enough to tell me. And no, your urges aren’t weird. They’re natural.”
“They are?” Disbelief laced her words.
“Yes.”
“But—”
“There are no buts,” I said. “Unless you like asses.”
She laughed, but I cringed at my own terrible joke.
“And do you like asses?” she asked.
Fuck me, I needed a cold shower. “Yes,” I answered in a tight voice, but truthfully. I’d always been honest with her, and I wasn’t going to stop now just because I was uncomfortable.
“How many times have you. .. you know?” Her eyes glittered.
Were we being this open? “Not as many times as you seem to think.”
“Do you have a number?”
Despite myself, a smile tickled the corners of my mouth. “Why do you want to know?”
She touched my cheek, and I jerked away. “What is it, Rafe?” When I glanced up at her, her expression was pure mischief.
“Are you asking me if I’ve had taken it in the ass?”
“Or given it?” She shrugged.
“Seriously, Adelina? This isn’t something you should?—”
“Afraid of the answer?” she pressed.
I growled and then snapped, “What about the mouth? The cunt?” I spat the word out between my lips, enunciating the two powerful syllables.
“I like that word too much,” she admitted.
“Own it.”
“I already own it.”
This was dangerous ground, but if we weren’t holding back, I was going to press her just as hard as she pressed me. “Say it aloud, Adelina.”
She hesitated.
The silence spread thick and heavy between us. I wanted to close the distance.
I pursed my lip, imagining kissing her. My hand already caressed my bulge. I hadn’t realized I had started touching myself. My body was reacting to her. To her word. To her every breath.
“Cunt,” she said finally in a rush of breath, as if she was still trying to feel out the word. Then, more confidently, she said it again with her chin held high. “Cunt.”
A shiver ran down my spine. Though I pushed her into saying it, it felt like lightning striking straight through my balls, my length growing thicker and heavier with every breath. Maybe my jeans were too tight at the moment but thank God for the barrier.
My niece was having some kind of sexual awakening, walking the line between crisis and desire, and here I was acting more like a teenage boy than I had in high school, college, or the military. And the object of my desire...
Why the fuck did we have to be related? I am a man. She is a woman. What’s so wrong about that?
So, so many things.
Time for a new topic. “The MC officers are coming tomorrow. For church.”
“Oh.” Her posture deflated, but her voice lifted in question when she asked, “Because of the cartel?”
“Yeah.” The pounding pulse in my ears and cock wouldn’t stop, even though I changed the subject.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.
I considered her for a second. With both her bachelor’s and an MBA, she could probably whip this little “business” we had going here into shape. Not alone, because her only experience was on the sidelines of Mass’s business. And suggesting she take part right away could get us both taken out.
It wasn’t an option yet with this old boys’ club, so I shook my head. “No. I’ve got it. Just stay out of the way. And stay in your room.”
Adelina loved to have the last word, but I didn’t give it to her. Couldn’t give it to her. The flinch she gave made me want to rescind the words, but perhaps if I talked to her like a child, it would remind us both of our differences in age.
And our similarities in genetics.
I walked out of the room before she could say anything else.
As soon as I was in the hallway, I felt my balls constrict. Precum left a wet spot on my lower belly, and the fact that the air temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees in the hall, it now felt cool. I fell against the wall, balling my hand into a fist. I held still for uncountable beats as I refused to give any attention to my painful groin.
I had to gain control, at least enough to make it back to the other side of the warehouse and my new bedroom, where I could stand under a cold shower for the next hour.
Maybe two.