Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
STEFANO
Val returned my kiss with furious passion.
And I fucking hated her for it.
She didn’t want to share her life or my son with me. Yet she didn’t fight me. Didn’t shove me away. No, she opened her sweet mouth and kissed me back without hesitation.
As our kiss deepened, I pushed my way inside her robe, exploring her body, remembering every one of her curves like I’d just had her the night before.
She dragged her fingertips up my arms, softly, over my chest, and then she dug her nails into the back of my neck.
This woman still intoxicated me after so many years apart.
So easy to believe she was meant for me.
This spunky little barista who couldn’t have been any more my opposite if she wanted to be. Innocent, filled with light, thoughtful, a loving mother. A woman who wanted nothing to do with my money, my lifestyle, or my influence.
But she couldn’t deny wanting me.
Val opened herself to me like she’d spent the last ten years waiting for me to come back, waiting for my attention, longing for my touch. My touch, only mine.
Despite the shit storm between us and all around us, the secrets, and the lies, her body responded to mine with just as much greed and hunger.
Twenty seconds into kissing her, and I wanted to take her right there against the wall, even with our son sleeping on the other side. Just a kiss with anyone else could never make my cock so hard. Val owned that.
I wanted her with a desperation too dangerous for a man in my position, even after everything she’d put me through when she left me, kept my son from me, and put him in harm's way.
True, I didn’t want children.
But Enzo had come along, like it or not, and he was my flesh and blood, my heir, a Vignali.
Val had robbed him of his father and his family.
She let me believe I didn’t have anything to live for, nothing to lose, while she hid the boy who should have been my reason for getting up in the morning all along.
Despite that, after one fucking kiss, for Christ’s sake, I was ready to give up the ship.
My plan for vengeance, the rage that fueled my every move, it seemed almost insignificant with this woman in my arms and our son under my roof.
But then her mouth fell away from mine, and she pushed me away. I stared at her, working to catch my breath, watching her catch hers. A few seconds later, I caught something else… the full force of her open palm slapping my face.
Before I could react and punish her, she buried her fists in my hair and pulled me in for another kiss. I pushed her against the wall again with my body and let her kiss me with everything she had, everything she would ever be.
All of it, mine.
Her familiar scent, the sweet taste of her tongue, and her warm skin touching mine overwhelmed me. I needed more. I needed to have her in my bed.
I slid my hands around to grip her ass.
She had filled out so perfectly over the years.
With a growl, I squeezed and pulled her harder against me while letting her continue kissing me, tasting me. It took everything in me to bring myself to break away.
I rested my forehead against hers, giving her a minute to calm down and myself time to re-engage my brain and think.
“We need to talk,” I said. “About a few things. I don’t want to wake the boy.”
She nodded with her lips parted, her breath still rapid but her grip on me loosening.
“I know. Where should we go?” she whispered. “To talk I mean, and nothing more.”
I nodded to reassure her.
“Your room works. It's the closest.”
Val shook her head. “Somewhere without a bed.”
Under different circumstances, I would have told her she was being ridiculous and insisted. But considering my unrelenting erection and how I’d almost taken her right there in the hallway, she made a valid point.
I grabbed hold of her arm to drag her along with me… I didn’t want to stop touching her.
“Come with me.”
I took her to my study without letting go until I closed the door behind us. Even then, bed or no bed, I had to force myself to keep my hands off her.
The temptation was strong, and I had to turn away for a minute. I could have easily lifted her, put her back against the door, and fucked the hell out of her.
“What is wrong with you?” she hissed. “You can’t just drag me through your house like a caveman.”
Then I caught her full-length reflection in the window, and I could only think about how she looked under the robe, betting it was as beautiful as when we were kids.
Val noticed my stare and grabbed the edges of her robe, pulling them tighter to hide herself from me.
There they were again—the mental images of our past, her lying naked in my bed, inviting me closer, calling me to her.
I shook them from my head and went to the bar to make another old-fashioned for myself and an amaretto sour for her.
We’d only gone on one proper date, and I still remembered the drink she ordered.
It would have been better if I could say the memory had just then come flooding to the forefront of my mind. But it had always been there.
Every moment of that night existed on repeat in my mind. The best night of my life and the worst. The last night of the life I’d wanted before it died forever.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m making us a drink. I know I could use one. We’ll have a sit down and talk like rational adults.”
“Rational went out the window the minute you stepped back into my life, Stefano. Immediately followed by a storm of bullets. You put my son's life in danger, and now you want me to behave rationally?”
No other woman on the planet could turn arguing with me into the type of seductive strength I saw in her now. It only made me want her more.
That pissed me off more.
At the end of the day, though, it didn’t matter how much I wanted her or that she was my son’s mother, because no one talked to me like that.
No one.
Val would show me the respect I had earned.
Then there was the matter of that slap.
“Our son,” I corrected. “And you’ll watch how you speak to me.”
I pulled long from my glass with my eyes on her, warning her to keep her mouth shut.
“I’m not the one who put our son’s life in danger. You did that,” I said. “Whoever is behind this didn’t have to work hard to find him, since they knew about him before I did. You forget, Valerie, I could have let them kill you both.”
“No,” she snapped.
“No what?”
“Enzo is my son, only mine, and you don’t get to change that now. You weren’t there for his first steps or his first words. You didn’t take care of him when he was sick or teach him how to read.”
Her voice rose in volume and pitch as she continued.
“You have never been there for him, not once did you?—”
“Whose fault is that?” I yelled.
I would have been there. Maybe not for everything, but I would have been involved. She’d robbed me of those moments, the first steps, first words, and now she had the fucking balls to blame me for missing them.
“Yours,” she said. “It’s your fault for lying about your identity. If I’d known the truth, I wouldn’t have talked to you. But no, you had to make up some fictional character to get off on. You obviously have a thing for roleplaying.”
I clenched my teeth, once again forced to keep a tight grip on the rage burning through me.
“Stop it, Valerie.”
“Was that fun for you?” she asked. “I deserve to know the truth now that we’re here. Did you enjoy your game? Did you have a good laugh behind my back? Did you tell all your serial killer friends about the idiot woman who trusted you and fell for the act?”
Her last words faded, and I had to look away for a second.
Even now, she was still heartbroken over the whole thing. Finding out my real name and what it meant had shaken her to the core. Then she’d clearly made up her own story about me and what had happened between us.
She made me the villain.
It couldn't have been further from the truth, not with her.
I pushed out a heavy breath through my nose, feeling the need to explain, though I didn’t know how. I doubted she would believe me anyway.
“That’s not what happened, Val.”
“That's exactly what happened, Stefano. Then you waited ten years to show up again, waltzing back into my life with a small army on your heels, bringing gunfire and literally blowing up my café. This isn’t a fucking John Wick movie. This is my life. An innocent boy’s life.”
I flexed my fists, my self-control waning, and fired back.
“You’re not turning this around on me. This is on you. I can’t protect what I don’t know about. If you’d told me about my boy, I would have kept you both safe. I don't understand why you are so stubborn and pigheaded and insist on doing everything on your own.
“You not wanting to be with me is one thing, Valerie, but this is something entirely different. I would have helped you. Yes, I would have been there. And I would have paid for him to have a safe home, for his clothing, his education…”
She scoffed, but no way would she dismiss me so easily.
“I could have protected you, made your home secure. I would have provided for you both. Provided stable, consistent employees for Con Amore, giving you more time off, so you didn’t have to work as hard day after day, so you could focus more on raising our son.”
I bit my tongue for a second.
“I would have given you everything to make your life easy. But you had to do it on your own without me. And look where that brought you, il mio bellissima diavola . Right back to me.”
She drained her drink in one shot, then threw the glass. It hit the wall behind my head and shattered.
I slammed my glass down on the table.
“I swear to Christ, if you hit me or even so much as think about it one more fucking time…”
She took a step toward me, her shoulders back and her chest pushed out, ready for a fight.
“You'll do what?”
“You will regret it,” I warned.
Hatred made her light eyes glow as she dared to get closer.
“I already regret everything with you, Stefano Vignali.”
Lust flashed through her eyes.
“No, you don't,” I said with a smirk.
Then I moved in and closed the last bit of distance between us, looming over her. I didn’t know if I wanted to grab her by the throat and actually strangle her this time or kiss her again.
“You're right,” she whispered.
The malice in her eyes melted, revealing something more. Regret? Fear? Both. Then she went on.
“Not everything. I love my son. I just hate that he’s no longer safe… because of you.”
Her gaze darted to the side for a second, then returned to my face like she had to force herself to look me in the eye.
Definitely fear.
She was scared. She had almost lost her son earlier, and then I dragged her into a life that she knew nothing about…
Val had probably watched one of those old gangster movies, and then convinced herself that was how shit would go down, how something bad would happen to our son if they had anything to do with me. I might have laughed if I hadn’t already been so pissed.
It didn’t have to be like that, not for my boy.
I had to make her understand things could be different for him. I was among the strongest. I had the greatest resources. I could protect them both.
How many times would she make me repeat myself?
“Just because you don’t want me, Val, doesn’t mean I’m not his father,” I said. “I would have accepted him and done everything necessary to protect him if I’d known about him.”
“From others, but what about you? Who would protect him from you? I’ll tell you who… me. And that’s what I was doing. He needs protection from who you are and what you do. And I need protection from the corruption and power and violence and all the heartbreak your life would bring. I need…”
A sobbing gasp escaped her. Her eyes filled with tears. And for the first time, I saw her complete truth reflected in them.
She hadn’t left me. She’d rejected my family, the business.
“Why do you think you need to be protected?” I asked, studying her face. “What is it you think you know about my life, about my family, my business? What makes you so afraid?”
There was plenty for her to fear, sure, but I needed to understand what she really thought. Or at least what she thought she knew… it might even have been close enough to the truth.
If I understood what exactly scared her, maybe I could show her how I would protect her from that very thing. Maybe I could convince her that her fears were based on lies.
She swallowed hard.
“I know enough. I see the news reports about the shootings in the streets. I see what happens with drugs. Gun trafficking. Crime is running rampant throughout this city. Every day there’s another tragedy.
“Someone missing. Someone found floating in the river or in a landfill. This street or that street, people killed in drive-by shootings. It all leads back to one thing.”
“Val, it’s not all?—”
“Are you really going to tell me you don’t know about every corrupt deal taking place in this city?”—a bitter laugh escaped her—“That you haven’t put money in the pockets of crooked politicians, police officers, and whoever else is willing to sell their souls to men like you?”
“I—”
“This is a city of widows and grieving mothers, Stefano. Victims of your family and families like yours. You can’t choose the family you’re born into, I know that. And I know being a Vignali isn’t your fault.
“But me not keeping my son away from your family legacy, seeing him become part of it, that will be my fault. I have to make sure blood never stains his future the way it has yours.”
When she stopped, it took her a minute to catch her breath.
Good. My turn.
“If you don't let me protect our son, he won't have a future at all. I won't claim him as my heir if that’s what you want, but that doesn't mean I'm going to abandon him. Or you.”
Her eyes filled with tears again, and she paced the room.
“You just don’t get it, do you? Just being your son is enough to put him in danger, even though he’s a bastard, as your people so kindly call him. I tried. I tried so hard, but I don't know how to protect him from your life.
“And even if you aren’t the danger, even if you loved him, especially if you loved him, your rivals would keep trying to hurt him. You all play by the rules only when it suits you. A monster in a three-piece designer suit is still a monster, no matter what he pretends to be. At his core… he’s always that monster.”
I had the strangest feeling in that moment that Val could see into the depths of my heart to pull out exactly the right words that hurt me the deepest.
What the hell did she know about the beast living inside me?
It had nothing to do with her or the boy. Yes, it was part of me. A piece of me I would keep away from them, locked up where it belonged.
But her words.
She’d used her own metaphor without realizing how closely it hit home for me, without knowing I often thought of myself that way.
So yes, I got it. I understood what she meant about my life inside La Cosa Nostra.
At one time, I’d felt the same way. And that was why I had tried not to father any children. Hell, I still felt that way.
But what was done was done. Enzo was here. He was ours.
I couldn’t change the fact that he was my son, and I would never turn my back on him.
Val stopped pacing, crossed her arms, lifted her chin. She didn’t have to say anything. I could read the words on her face.
I told you so.
Fuck.
I’d run out of ways to tell her I would protect them both. And judging by the tired look in her eyes now, she probably didn’t have it in her to listen to anything else until she rested.
I had to come up with a plan that would convince her.
“We can talk about our son’s future later,” I said. “First, I’ll handle this threat. Once I deal with whoever’s behind it, I’ll make it clear to all the families that no one will ever use him against me again. This will not happen again, Val.”
She met my gaze. A tear trickled down her cheek.
“I don't know what I would do without him.”
Seeing her like that, scared, hurt, vulnerable, it unlocked something inside me that I didn’t know existed.
And I couldn’t handle it.
I pulled her to me, slid my hands into her hair, and kissed her. Softer this time, sweeter. This one not meant to control her or own her but to show her that she wasn’t alone.
Not anymore.
She pressed her palms against my chest, her heat burning me right through my undershirt. She didn't pull away. She opened herself to me, let me kiss her the way I chose to, with want, need, holding nothing back, and holding everything back.
When she stepped back, I thought we were done, that the night had come to a close.
Then she untied the knot in her robe.
The cashmere fell open, revealing her breasts, larger than I remembered, her stomach softer, hips rounder. My younger Valerie looked different now, even more beautiful.
I pulled her into another kiss, a harder, more intense kiss. Her hands dropped to my stomach, dragged over my abs, and then she moved lower to unbuckle my belt.
She’d pushed me too far.
I didn’t have the will to stop her.
I didn’t have the will to stop myself.
There was no fucking way back for us.