“When I was a kid, my Mom worked undercover,” I go on, trying to keep my voice steady. “But the group she’d infiltrated found out, and there was…an incident. A plot to kidnap me, to get leverage over my mother. She shot them all dead before they even got two feet away with me.”
I don’t say it, but I’m always kind of impressed by what a badass my mother actually is. She doesn’t talk about that day, ever, but I read her statement and the witness statements years ago. She’s always been cool under pressure, and that day her coldness saved my life.
That particular undercover job also made her career, I explain to Alessandro. Her extensive knowledge of the Mafia in America made her so valuable to the FBI that they bent over backwards to give her everything she asked for—as long as she stayed with the Bureau. And so she went on working, rising through the ranks, dismantling organized crime.
Her own personal vendetta, I sometimes think.
The FBI moved her around a few times before she settled in LA, and they crafted me a cover story so that no one would ever know I was her kid.
A cover story I never wanted, but couldn’t refuse. My mother called it protection.
To me, it felt more like rejection.
“My Dad just wanted her to quit, but she wouldn’t. This was before he made his money, and he wasn’t interested in going to Los Angeles, so he…he left her. And me. And when it came to my relationship with my Mom…”
I don’t know how to explain it, and the way Alessandro is staring at me isn’t helping. I fight to find the words, though, because at least he’s listening.
Heislistening. That’s something, right?
“Something changed after the kidnapping attempt.” I stumble over the words, search for more. “Something broke between us. After that…”
After that, my mother withdrew from me. I still don’t really understand it. For a long time, I thought I did something wrong that day. That I didn’t fight back hard enough—didn’t scream loud enough—wasn’t grateful enough to her for saving me…
“I don’t know,” I finish up. “All I know is, she didn’t love me the same after that day.”
Alessandro’s eyes are growing blanker and blanker.
“Iswear, I didn’t tell my Mom anything about you. She doesn’t even know I was—I waswithyou. I don’t know what she was doing here tonight—”
“Enough.”
Alessandro Castellani is a dangerous man. I’ve known that since the start, saw with my own eyes what he was capable of. He does not hesitate to kill his enemies. Miller tried to warn me, and Jack, too.
But I can’t be afraid, not of him. All the terror I have is centered on losing him. “Please understand,” I whisper desperately, grabbing at his jacket. “You have to understand. I never told her I was with you, Iswear—”
“You weren’twithme. You were my prisoner. And my prisoner you should have stayed.” His hands on the wall clench into fists. “How easily I trusted you,” he says, almost admiringly. “What a talented little mouse, to so easily burrow your way into my heart.”
Into his heart?
I take a breath, my own heart thudding away in my chest. “Alessandro—”
His finger shoots to my mouth, pressing my lips together. “Do not say my name. Not now, not ever again.” His whole face twitches, his jaw tight.
I let my mouth open slowly, his finger still pressing against it, until it slips inside my mouth and I bite down gently. His eyes have softened, the fire dying to a glow, and I dare to suck a little harder, draw his finger in deeper.
“I should have known,” he mutters, pulling back his fingertip to trace it, wet, over my lips. “A beauty like you…I should have known you were never really…”
“I was,” I insist. “Iam. Alessandro, I—”
He kisses me. He cups my face in both hands, pulling me up toward his mouth, a desperate, faint noise in his throat.
And I kiss him back. I throw my arms around his neck, wrap my legs around his waist when he lifts me, pressing me into the wall, his hips grinding against me as he devours my mouth. His hands move over me, frenzied, wanton, grabbing at my ass so hard I gasp into his mouth.
“My men are out there,” he murmurs, nipping down my neck. My hands are in his hair, pulling him closer as I arch off the wall and rub into him. “They can give us privacy if we need it. If youwantit.”
“Yes.”
“You’d like that? You’d like me to pull these clothes off you and have you right here, against the wall? Fuck into this sweet little ass again, make you beg for me?”
