She was so fucking peculiar. It drove me insane with lust. It always had.
The taste of her lingered on my tongue, the feel of her under my skin. Stroking the length of my jaw, I remembered how soft her thighs were against the rough stubble on my face. How she had urged me on with her nails, digging them into the flesh of my ass. The noises she made, the ones that I had to swallow to keep from waking the house.
My cock twitched. My veins swelled with want.
She was so fucking responsive. One touch and she caught fire, burning brighter than the sun or the moon.
A warm feeling spread over me, knowing that my wish was coming true.
I took a deep drink of the whiskey that had been offered when I’d first arrived. The amber liquid slid down my throat like spiced honey and purled in my chest.
The picture outside changed. Vincenzo moved toward my wife and daughter, interrupting the dream that was my life.
No sound emerged, but the vibration of a growl deep in my throat echoed in my bones. An animalistic need to protect mine rose in me like an inferno.
There was no love lost between Vincenzo and me. We made no secret of it. I could take him in small doses. Other times, it was a miracle I hadn’t killed him.
Taking my wife and daughter, though, had crossed a line. The reason didn’t fucking matter.
Even though the reason mattered to the real culprit sitting behind me, breathing fire down my neck.
Luca had orchestrated the subterfuge. Had ordered it. He wanted me to come to him, but more than that, he wanted to see for himself how I would react. He knew I loved her, but he hadn’t imagined how much. He never dreamed we had such a hold on each other, or how deep our connection ran.
He had been told through the grapevine, but he had to see it to believe it for himself.
Azioni non parole.Actions, not words.
Luca studied and picked us apart as though we were a science experiment, a two-headed creature he had never encountered before. He was the mad scientist eager to learn all there was to know. Together, we were more than our separate entities. Though the two of us as one intrigued him more than each half, Scarlett’s half came a close second.
The other wives were hesitant of him. They went wherever he took them. They laughed at his jokes and were timid when he spoke directly to them. Even the boisterous Rosaria had somehow clammed up. Scarlett was quiet around him unless spoken to, but she had no qualms about speaking up or letting him know if she had an issue.
The woman had no fear. I’d never seen anything quite like it.
Luca had only encountered it twice before.
By all accounts his mother was of this variety, too, but he was young when she died. We’d never broached the subject of her, so there was no telling how much he remembered of her. When he gazed at Mia, it seemed like he was seeing her at times. Scarlett had told me he had made a comment about the two resembling each other.
The other was Maggie Beautiful, for obvious reasons. Even though her hand trembled with the knife, it wasn’t from fear. She would have stabbed him without hesitation. She shivered like she did because she loved and hated him at the same time. Two massive emotions at war. When I was a kid, I didn’t understand why she did it. As a man, I did.
Scarlett was the third, and she’d intrigued him no less than the other two. Her magnetism to monsters drew him in. She was fearless, and no matter how bad the man, she gave him the truth and somehow made him feel alive when the rest of the world only desensitized him. She was a burning light drawn to the darkness, and the darkness was drawn to her.
The dark monster inside of Vincenzo followed her, ignoring the fact that she had given him an icy reception. What he’d done hadn’t gone over well with her either. I saw her face when she realized that the villa came stocked with clothes, and that he hadn’t offered them to her, giving her his instead.
“Bastardo,” she’d murmured underneath her breath.
Her ice hadn’t melted. He noticed, but he wasn’t giving up. Nino took a step closer to them, his eyes black. He didn’t want to explain to me later why he wasn’t close enough to hear their conversation, what little of it was taking place. Tito would have to reset his nose again if he lagged on his duties.
“Sedersi.” Luca’s voice broke through my gaze and brooked no room to disagree.
Since I was ready tosit, I downed the rest of my drink and claimed the empty seat. It wasn’t until we were all facing him that what Scarlett had said to me hit me between the eyes.
Each of us were a reflection of him in our own ways. His dimensions had taken life and sat before him. His dream was coming to fruition.
A glimmer I had never seen before lit his eyes. An internal flame had been stoked; he was becoming what he had been prepped to be all his life—the head of the Faustifamiglia. His flesh and blood, his sons, surrounding him in his glory.
Luca signaled to Ettore, and a song started to play.
Luca closed his eyes, hands coming together as though in prayer, resting his chin on them.
