Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Valentino
Asudden shift sends us tumbling onto the rug.
One moment she’s straddling me, the next I’ve trapped her beneath my weight, my arm curved around her ribs as I pivot.
Her hair spills across the carpet in waves, her eyes wide, her lips parting before I even touch them.
I press my mouth to hers, then slide my hand up to the hem of her hoodie.
“Off,” I murmur. She lifts her arms without hesitation, and I pull it free, tossing it aside.
Her skin is cream, soft where her ribs taper to meet her hips.
Her breasts rise small and high with each breath, two freckles beneath her left one as if placed there deliberately by someone who knew what they were doing.
A pale scar, small and faded, marks her knee.
Her thighs press close together, and one hand rests lightly on her stomach, as though shielding something tender and private.
But then she moves it to the rug beside her and lifts her gaze to mine.
"Say something," she urges.
"I don't have the words," I admit.
"Valentino—"
"In English or Italian, they escape me entirely."
She swallows, steadying herself against whatever it is she sees in my expression. "Then keep looking."
So I do. My attention moves to the hollow at the base of her throat, to the elegant curve of her collarbone, and I am aware of her watching me look.
Her hand rises slowly and brushes against my face, and I lean into it, pressing my mouth softly into her palm, kissing the center, then trailing my lips down to the thin skin of her wrist.
Slowly, I place both hands on her hips and roll her over. She makes a soft sound as she settles onto her stomach against the rug, and I slide my hands beneath her and lift.
"On your knees, bella," I tell her.
"What—"
"Up."
She obeys, rising under my steady hands. I put my palm flat between her shoulder blade and press down. Her chest goes to the rug and her ass comes up.
Dio.
"Like this?"
I sit back on my heels. I look at her.
The line of her spine from her tailbone to the back of her neck. Her hair falling over her shoulder onto the rug. The curve of her waist where it meets her hip.
My hands shake as I put them on her, both palms full on her ass.
I cup her and she makes a sound into the rug that lands somewhere I have not used in a long time.
I move my right hand slow. My thumb traces down the seam of her, over the tight ring, down through the wet of her—and she is so wet it undoes me—until I find her clit. She moans, and I do it again.
My thumb traces the same path, from top to bottom. She arches into my touch, moaning softly as her nails look for purchase on the floor.
"Bella mia."
"Please—"
"Tell me."
"Don't stop."
"I won't."
I take my hand away.
The noise she makes is almost a sob. I put my hands on her, spread her open, and lean down.
"Valentino—"
My mouth finds her before she finishes my name.
She cries out, her whole body lifting. I hold her hips and keep her where I want her still, open, mine. I taste her the way I have wanted to since she laughed at me on the hotel steps in that pink dress.
Flat. Then a slow line. I find her clit and stay until she's shaking, then pull back until she whimpers, then return.
"Oh my God—"
"Quiet, bella."
"I can't—"
"Into the rug. Quiet. Elio or Luca are somewhere."
She pushes her body on my face and I laugh against her, then I go back to work.
Her thighs start shaking.
I slide two fingers into her. She's tight and hot and wet and she clenches around me the second I'm in her.
I nearly come in my fucking pants.
"I'm—"
"I know. Come for me."
Her whole body pulls tight and then breaks. I work her through all of it, slow, gentle, until she's shivering.
I kiss the inside of her thigh, then the other one.
I lean back, tracing my eyes over every inch.
She's face down on the rug, hair everywhere, breathing like she ran a marathon.
"Bella."
"Mm."
"Look at me."
She turns her head. Her cheek on the rug.
I am so far past the man who stood outside her bathroom door that I cannot find my way back to him.
I don't want to.
Amanda
The rug scratches against my cheek, and I'm still trying to remember how to use my legs when the full weight of what just happened catches up with me.
I roll onto my back and look up at him. He's sitting back on his heels, watching me like he knows exactly what he did.
"You played me," I say. My voice comes out wrecked, which does nothing for my dignity. "I asked you to fuck me. And you did all of that, and then you just—"
"I'm not going to fuck you on a safe house rug," he says, low and rough. "Not with an asshole like Mancini three doors down."
"Oh, so this is about Elio." I push up onto my elbows. "Romantic."
"It's not about Mancini." He leans forward, close enough that I feel the heat of him before he touches me, his eyes dropping to my mouth before they move lower.
"When I fuck you, bella, the whole building is going to know about it.
Every guard outside. Mancini in the room down the hall.
" His eyes hold mine. "They're all going to know exactly what's happening.
And they're all going to know how long it takes. "
My stomach drops, heat rushing fast and low before I can stop it. My thighs press together, and one corner of his mouth lifts because of course he saw.
I look away first. "That's a threat."
"It's a promise.”
"Same thing, with you."
I get to my knees, then to my feet, and the room tilts a little, but I find the wall, steady myself, and pretend it was on purpose.
I look down at him, still kneeling there like some dark saint who hasn't decided whether to bless me or ruin me.
"Fine. I'll remember that one. The promise."
He rises.
It's a slow thing. One second he's on the floor, the next he's standing in front of me, filling the room again.
Then he reaches down and adjusts himself inside his pants with the brisk irritation of a man dealing with an inconvenience.
Except there is nothing inconvenient about what I'm looking at.
The fabric strains.
He shifts it.
It does not help.
He's huge.
I knew he was a big man. Big hands. Broad shoulders. The kind of man who makes everyone else seem smaller when he walks into a room.
This is just... additional information.
Information I apparently cannot stop staring at.
"Amanda."
His voice has a dry edge to it.
"Eyes."
My gaze snaps upward.
"I wasn't looking."
"Mm."
"I wasn't."
That almost-smile appears again.
Barely there. Infuriating.
"You were."
Heat rushes into my face.
"I was not."
His eyebrow lifts.
I hate that eyebrow.
"Get dressed.”
I bend for the hoodie because the alternative is standing here naked while he looks at me with those dark eyes.
I pull it over my head and shove my arms through the sleeves.
When I look up, he's still watching. Arms crossed now. Leaning against the wall in that way he has.
I wonder if he knows he does it. I wonder if there's a single second of his life he spends not preparing for the next disaster.
"You're impossible," I tell him.
"You've said."
"I'm going to keep saying it." I climb onto the bed and sit against the headboard, putting a little distance between us before I do something embarrassing. "Is this the new normal? You get exactly what you want and then leave me arguing with you about it?"
He huffs through his nose, the closest he comes to laughing.
Then the amusement leaves his face, and my stomach sinks.
The man who lives in contingency plans and exit routes is back.
"In about three hours we move," he says.
"I know. Rome."
He nods once. "Luca takes the lead car. You'll be in the second with me and Mancini."
Something about the way he says it makes me sit up straighter. "What happened?”
His jaw shifts. "Nothing."
It's such an obvious lie I almost laugh. "Valentino."
He pushes off the wall, and suddenly I know he's about to leave before I get the full answer.
"Wait."
He stops, one hand already reaching for the door, and turns back, a hint of hesitation in his eyes that I'm not sure I understand.
"Don't. Just stay. A second. I have questions."
After another moment, he comes back, sits on the edge of the bed, and before I can get my walls up, he hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me sideways onto his lap like I weigh nothing.
I land against his chest with an undignified little oof. "This is your idea of an interview setup?"
"You wanted me to stay." His arm bands across my hips, anchoring me there. His mouth is close to my temple when he speaks, and I feel the words more than hear them. "Five minutes. Ask whatever's eating you. After that I have to make calls."
"Okay." I twist enough to see his face. "What is actually happening? And I don't mean the Rome thing. I mean all of it. I know what your family is, but I don't know what this means now. For me."
His jaw works, that little tell he has when he's deciding how much to say. "You know what a vendetta is?"
"In the movie sense? Pacino sense?”
"In the real sense." His hand flattens against my hip, absent, like he needs to keep touching me to keep talking.
"Aldo Basile is dead. His father is Don Enzo Basile.
Old rules. When Enzo learns it was a Sartori who killed his son, and he will learn, he won't go to the police.
He won't sue anybody. He starts a vendetta.
Blood for blood. He won't stop until he's killed a son of our family.
One of ours for one of his. That's how it balances. "
For a second I just stare at the wall across the room, trying to process what he's saying. "A son of your family?"
"Any of us." He says it with a calm that feels almost unnatural, like he's reciting a fact he'd accepted long ago. "Yes."
"You." I grab a fistful of his shirt before I realize I've moved. "You killed him. You're the one with the target."
"I'm aware." A dry curl enters his voice. "I was there."
"That's not funny.”
"It's a little funny." His mouth doesn't move, but something in his eyes does. "You're shaking. Enzo doesn't even know I'm the one who killed his son yet."
"Yet." The word comes out too quiet, so I clear my throat and try again. "Then why Aldo? If killing him starts a war, why do it at all? You don't seem like a guy who does anything by accident."
His expression changes. The dry humor is gone. "Aldo Basile was running girls," he says.
"Running?"
"Trafficking. Eastern European girls, mostly.
Brought in on real modeling contracts through the agency.
Agenzia Luce." He watches my face when he says it.
"Forty, fifty arrive a season. Thirty leave.
The agency holds their papers, their housing.
The ones who disappear have no one here to miss them. That's the design."
Nadia.
The bruise on her jaw.
The way her hands shook when I said her name out loud, like a name was a dangerous thing to have.
"That's what I saw," I whisper. "The bruises. Nadia. The way everyone acted when I asked questions." I shake my head. "I knew something was wrong. I just didn't know it was that."
"You weren't supposed to know." His hand settles on my hip. "People like Aldo survive because most people only see pieces. They don't see the whole thing. But your instinct was right."
I think I might be sick. "So you killed him because of the girls."
"No. I won't lie to you. We don't traffic.
The family won't touch it, never has, it's the one line everybody keeps.
But I wasn't sent to Milan to save anyone.
I was sent to look. If Aldo had kept his hands off you, I'd have gathered what I needed and walked out, and the girls would still be exactly where they are.
" His arm tightens. "We have business with the Basiles.
Money. Routes. Eventually his mess would have splashed onto us.
That's the only reason any of this was ever going to matter to my family. "
"But it didn't end up being about business," I say slowly.
He doesn't answer that. "Time's up," he says quietly.
It isn't. I know it isn't. We both let the lie stand.