Salvatore: a Dark Mafia Romance (2 page)

“Lucia.”

Salvatore said my name, his voice low and dark, making me shudder.

I didn’t know what to say, even though I’d practiced this moment in my mind for months. Years. Now, I simply stood like a mute thing.

But then his father, Franco Benedetti, head of the family and a man I thoroughly despised, approached. He didn’t even try to hide his enjoyment of the situation.

I cleared my throat, finally finding my voice. “Why are you here? You have no right.” I heard my question, knew it was the same one I’d asked my sister.

“I came to give you my condolences.”

Franco leaned in, looking around as if we were somehow coconspirators.

“Actually,” he started, his tone lower, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

I didn’t think. I didn’t do anything but feel the anger, the hot rage as it bubbled over inside me. My hands clenched into fists, and I spat at his shoe. Except he moved at the last moment, and I missed. When I looked up, Salvatore’s face showed his shock, and Franco’s was quickly reddening, showing his fury. Although I stood my ground, my heart jackhammered against my chest. I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t hit me. Hell, between this and my comment to Isabella, maybe that’s what I was going for.

Salvatore gripped my arm. “Apologize.”

“No,” I replied, my eyes locked on his father’s black gaze.

Dominic, Salvatore’s brother, who’d stood watching from a few feet away, approached. He had a smile on his face as he put his arm around his father’s shoulders. Salvatore tensed beside me.

“We’re getting some attention. Come on, Paps. Let’s go.”

I met Dominic’s gaze, and I would have sworn he was enjoying the spectacle.

“Apologize.” Salvatore’s grip tightened around my arm.

I cocked my head to the side. “I’m sorry I missed,” I said, a grin spreading across my face.

Dominic’s eyebrows shot up, and Salvatore muttered a curse under his breath.

“Let’s go,” Dominic said just when I thought his father would explode.

“In.” Salvatore’s other hand gripped my waist as he pushed me into the sedan.

“Get your hands off me,” I said, trying to force him off.

He climbed in beside me and pulled the car door shut. The driver started the engine. Salvatore transferred his grip to my knee, his eyes burning a hole through me. “That was a very stupid thing to do.” His fingers bit into my flesh.

I had nothing to say. In fact, all I could do was shake violently. I wrapped my arms around myself.

“Turn down the air conditioning,” he told the driver, his gaze still locked on mine.

I wished it were the cold that had me shivering.

“Yes, sir,” the driver said.

Being so close, seeing him again, it was too much, too intense. It brought too many memories back and foretold a future I did not want.

“You’re hurting me.”

Salvatore blinked, as if processing each word I spoke one at a time. He shifted his gaze to where his hand gripped my knee. I held my breath, feeling powerless, knowing I was entirely at his mercy.

Knowing this was only the beginning of my hell.

I
looked
down to where I held her, how hard my fingers were squeezing her. It took some effort, but I released her and sat back in the seat, my gaze still on her, on this rebellious, courageous stranger.

Courageous. Lucia was courageous.

She was also a stranger.

I knew nothing about her. Only her name and her face. Her signature on a stupid piece of paper.

I had never seen a woman stand up to my father like that. I’d never seen a man do it either—or, I should say, when I had, it had been the last time I’d seen that man alive.

I looked out the front window. “Don’t antagonize my father. He always wins.”

“Everyone loses sometime.” She turned away and folded her arms across her chest, watching the streets pass by as we drove to the cemetery.

The black veil of her hat had shielded her face from me in the church, but her whiskey-colored eyes had shone through, bright, strong, angry. Very angry. I refused to let the image of how those eyes had looked at me the last time occupy my mind. I would know only this new, angry Lucia.

The one I needed to control.

Her interaction with her sister had been stiff. I’d seen it even from the distance in the courtyard. I knew she hadn’t seen either her sister or her father—even once—in the last five years. The day she’d signed the contract, she’d been sent away to finish her schooling. A year-round, all-girls Catholic school chosen by my father. A small institution hidden away in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where she’d lived comfortably but was under strict supervision. Her movements had been monitored, and at least one bodyguard had accompanied her wherever she went. I had monthly updates on her comings and goings, and not once had her family come to visit her. Well, her father had tried, but she’d refused to see him. She’d chosen to spend the holidays at school.

I glanced at her, wondering if she regretted that now.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Her body stiffened, and the only sign that she might be crying was when she moved her hand toward her face, pretending to scratch her cheek after swiping it under her eye.

“Are you?” she asked, her voice strained, her face still turned toward the window.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone you’re close to.” I knew firsthand, in fact. My brother, Sergio, had been my best friend. It had never once, not even in the world we lived in, occurred to me that he could die. My mother had died soon after him. Her death, thankfully, not as violent as Sergio’s. Although cancer brought its own sort of violence, snuffing out a human life as efficiently as a bullet did.

She turned to me and lifted her veil, tucking it behind the small hat fitted on top of her head. She was stunning. When I’d first met her in person, she’d been sixteen. She’d been pretty, but now, five years later, she was no longer a child. Her features had sharpened, her lips fuller, her cheekbones even more prominent. Her eyes…even more accusing.

She studied me, a slow, steady perusal from head to toe. When her gaze met mine, I swallowed, uncertain. Uncertainty was not new to me. I lived with it daily. But this? This was new, this was something—someone—I knew not at all.

The day we’d signed the contract, the day I’d stood by and allowed her to be humiliated, something had happened to me, some obligation had formed, some bond between us. Maybe it was the disgust I felt for myself for standing by and letting it happen. At the time, I told myself, I’d had no choice, but I tried not to lie to myself. Not anymore. After that day, something had changed. I owed her something. What that thing was, I did not know. An apology? Seemed stupid, a waste. My protection? She would have that, she already did. But she was my enemy and the spoils of war. My father had tried very hard to drill that into my head, but he hadn’t seen that look in her eyes that day—the desperate, terrified plea inside them—nor did he see it every time he lay his head down to sleep.

I wondered if my father lost sleep over anything at all, actually.

You were twenty-four. What could you have done?

No, not good enough. Not anymore.

“You know what it’s like to lose someone close?” Her tone dripped sarcasm. “My father and I weren’t close.”

I studied her, feeling my face tighten, my eyes narrow infinitesimally.

I did not speak.

“But let me ask you something. Do you know what it’s like to watch people you love killed before your very eyes?”

I did, but still, I remained silent.

“To have everyone taken away from you? To become the
property
of your enemy?”

Oh yes. Yes, I did.

“To be sent to live on your own among strangers with not a friend in the world? Under constant watch. I don’t think you know those things, Salvatore, because if you did, you would
feel
. You would have some compassion. Be human.” She gave me another once-over. “But there is one thing you do know, isn’t there? You know how to stand by and do nothing at all.”

My hands clenched into fists, and a sudden, hot anger burned inside me. I saw the driver’s eyes flash back at us in the rearview mirror, but he kept driving, slowing down as we passed through the cemetery gates.

“Be careful,” I warned, my tone low and quiet. But it was true, wasn’t it? What she said was true.

Lucia’s eyes narrowed, and she tilted her head to the side, one corner of her mouth rising into a smirk. “Did Daddy give you his seal of approval that day? Did he pat you on the back later? Call you a ‘good boy?’” she taunted.

My fingernails dug into my palms, and I made it a point of looking out the window as the driver parked the car.

“Is that it, Salvatore?”

She misunderstood my silence, mistaking it for weakness.

The driver killed the engine. “Give us a minute,” I said. He stepped out of the car and closed the door, standing just outside.

I turned back to her.

“Are you Daddy’s little puppet?” she asked.

Her eyes spewed hate. Did she know she toed a very dangerous line? That she broached a truth that had kept me in a state of constant struggle these past few years?

I gave a little snort and relaxed my body, smiling, leaning just a little closer. I could see the pulse at her neck working, telling me her heart pounded hard, telling me that on the inside, she wasn’t so sure.

“Lucia.” I said softly, raising my hand.

Her gaze shifted to it, then back to my eyes.

I touched her face with the backs of my fingers, caressing that soft, creamy skin. “So pretty,” I said, my eyes on her lips when I gripped her chin. “But such a big mouth.”

She swallowed, her eyes widening.

I leaned in close enough to smell her perfume, something soft and light and somehow, even now, erotic. I inhaled deeply before drawing her to me, my eyes still on those lips. She held her breath. “So, so pretty.” My other hand traveled to her chest, to the soft swell of one breast, coming to rest on her pounding heart. She knew I knew I affected her.

I turned her face to the side, rubbing the scruff of my jaw against it before bringing my mouth to her ear. “Be careful,” I whispered, feeling her shudder when I ran my tongue over the ridge of her ear before sliding it inside.

She gasped. Her hands came up to my chest, but she didn’t push.

“When you try to bite the wolf,” I said, “he just might bite back.”

To make my point, I took her earlobe into my mouth and gently drew my teeth over it, drawing it out. Beneath the hand that rested against her heart, her nipple hardened.

A moment later, I released her and sat back, victorious. I tapped my ring against the window, absently glancing at the family crest. The driver opened the door.

“Let’s go put your father in the ground,” I said, climbing out. She emerged a moment later, the net of her hat back in place. I buttoned my coat jacket. “Fucking stifling here.” I gestured for her to go ahead. She did, refusing to meet my gaze or make a comment. I smiled, putting one tick on my side of the column marking my win for this round.

* * *

W
e stayed
in my family’s home in Calabria, sharing a suite of rooms—a bedroom for each of us and a common sitting room. Our flight to New Jersey left the next day. Lucia would move into my home tomorrow. She’d finished her studies, graduated with honors, and now that she’d turned twenty-one, it was time for me to take possession of her.

A knock at the door announced the delivery of dinner. As a kindness, I’d ordered our meal in our room rather than making her eat with my family. A girl I didn’t know set the table in the living area and left. The scent of the food made my stomach rumble. I knocked on Lucia’s bedroom door. I wouldn’t force her to share my bed. Not just yet.

“Dinner’s ready,” I said through the door.

“I’m not hungry,” she replied. “I already told you that.”

“Well, you need to eat. You haven’t eaten anything all day.”

“What are you, my mother?”

“Open the door, Lucia.”

“Go away, Salvatore.”

“I’m only asking once.”

“Then what? You’ll huff and you’ll puff and you’ll break my door down? Isn’t that what the big bad
wolf
does?”

I smiled. Clever.

But I was cleverer.

I slid my key into the lock and pushed the door open. She gasped, turning from where she sat at the vanity.

“No need to exert myself huffing and puffing. I have the key. It’s my house.” I held it out for her to see before tucking it into my pocket.

Even air-conditioned, the rooms felt sticky, and her bedroom more so. I’d taken off the heavy jacket and tie I’d worn earlier, and now I unbuttoned the top few buttons of my shirt.

“You mean your father’s house,” she goaded. She already knew the buttons to push.

I forced a grin and went to her suitcase, flipping it open. After rifling through her things, I found a pair of lace panties and lifted them out.

“Don’t touch my things! Get out!” She lunged to take the underwear out of my hand.

I raised it above my head and out of her reach, really smiling now. “Dinner’s ready.”

“You are one stubborn son of a bitch!”

She jumped to reach the lacy slip. I stepped back and lowered it, inspecting the little pink thing. “Pretty.”

“Screw you!”

I allowed her to grab it this time, and she shoved it into her suitcase and attempted to zip it. With a snort, I took her by the arms and turned her, holding her so I could look at her and she at me.

“Let me go!”

She had already changed into a nightie, a simple, long, almost sheer white cotton dress that reached to just above her knees. She wore no bra, and her small, round breasts swelled beneath the fine fabric, her dark nipples pressing against it.

“You’re finished with school, and you’re twenty-one now, Lucia. You know the contract. You will come live with me. You belong to me, like it or not, and you will do as I say.”

“Oh!” She made an incredulous face. “Oh! I will
do as you say
?”

“Yes.”

“Or what?”

She attempted to free herself from my grip, but I shook her once, holding her tighter. Her fingers curled around the fabric of my shirt.

“So many options,” I said, slowly dropping my gaze to her breasts while I brushed a thick strand of hair over her shoulder. “So many possibilities.”

Before I’d even turned my gaze up to hers, she raised her free arm in an attempt to slap me. My grip hardened, and I tossed her onto the bed. Before she could right herself, I climbed on top of her and grabbed her wrists. They were small and delicate and vulnerable. I dragged them out to either side of her, pinning her with my weight, my gaze traveling down over the mounds of her breasts to where her nightie rode up her thigh, exposing white lace panties.

She liked lace.

I liked lace.

In fact, I’d like to lick her cunt through that lace.

My cock stiffened. Lucia stilled, her eyes wide on the crotch of my pants for a moment before they met mine.

The fun was suddenly out of it for me. I released her.

“Don’t make this harder than it already is,” I said, climbing off the bed, turning my back to her momentarily until I adjusted the crotch of my pants.

“How is it hard for you? I’m the one whose father we just put in the fucking ground. I’m the one who’s lost everything. I’m the one who pays when I didn’t have anything to do with anything!”

Her hand shook as she wiped away the tears that streamed down her face. She looked at me with puffy, red eyes, and I realized she’d probably been in here crying.

Fuck.

She turned away and, pulling two tissues out of the box on the nightstand, wiped her face clean.

“How is this hard for you?” she asked again, her voice quivering as her chest heaved with a heavy breath.

The way she looked at me—did she think I wanted this?

I raked my hand through my hair, feeling like an asshole. “I meant it earlier, when I said I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.”

She remained silent, watching me.

“Even if you weren’t close with your father, he was your father.”

I knew on the one hand that I needed to control this, control her. I knew how my father would do that. Knew he’d call me weak if he saw me now. But I couldn’t do it. Not yet. Not today.