“Why does he want you two married? What does he gain from it?”
“I don’t know, Rome. But he does. There’s something else that he told me, but I haven’t had time to look into it yet.” I thought about keeping it to myself, but Romeo and I didn’tkeep secrets from each other. ‘Except one’, I thought to myself, looking at the closed bedroom door.
“What?”
“Kozlov thinks that your dad had something to do with my father’s death, but I don’t know why or what. The way he said it, though, he seemed sure that your dad was involved and even responsible for it.”
I stopped talking, waiting for him to respond.
“If he did, that would be enough to break the trust between my father and his men.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, but we would need proof, and the reason he would have wanted my father dead. If he said my father was a rat, that wouldn’t break the trust. It would enhance it. Nobody would bat an eye at him for killing a rat.”
“It could be for nothing,” Romeo growled in frustration. “He wouldn’t keep evidence of this around, and without proof, we have nothing.”
I could all but hear him pacing around his office. “I’ve offered before.” I left the rest unspoken. I’d offered to take care of his father before, but Romeo declined, wanting to wait the old man out so he could take over the family peacefully, and with the exchange of power and allegiance passing from his father to himself organically.
“I know,” he muttered. “I should have done it myself years ago. God knows I’ve wanted to kill the bastard since I was ten years old.”
“We both have. We did what we could to protect your sisters, Rome. No way they have allowed us to keep our family together back then.” We would have all gone into the system when we were kids, with no parents or family to take us in. They would have torn us apart. Instead, when we were old enough, Rome and I shielded the girls as best we could, but the same logicapplied. No way would any judge have given custody of the girls to us. We had to wait for Nicoletta to be old enough that they wouldn’t take her away from us. By that time, Luca Morelli had advanced-stage cancer. Why live with his blood on our hands when he was a dead man walking anyway?
There was no way we could have anticipated him offering up Bianca as a token of payment for joining the cartel to the Morelli family. It was hard to fathom why he was taking the family down this new path. One that would open us up to a deadly enterprise that paid more, but at what cost?
“I know.” I could hear the guilt in his voice. The weight of our family rested on his shoulders.
“I’ll take the burden on, Rome. You don’t need to live with the act of on your conscience,” I volunteered again to take out his father. I had blood on my hands already. What was another life to add to my body count?
“No,” he said gruffly. “If it comes down to it, I’ll take over my family’s empire by force, and I’ll be the one to end him. That’s my responsibility as the future head of the family.”
Chapter Fifteen
Bianca
I smiled and stretched. My body felt achy in ways it had never felt before, but it was also an amazing feeling. Lorenzo. I sighed his name with a sappy smile, and a soft, masculine chuckle had me opening my eyes to see him sitting beside me on the bed. His fingers were gently stroking the side of my neck.
“How often do you dream about me, Princess?” he teased, and I shivered at the sexual caress in his voice. The man was positively lethal to the female hormones, and what was worse was that he knew it.
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I rolled my eyes sleepily and let out a large yawn. “How long have I been out?”
“A couple of hours. It’s time to start getting up and getting ready so we can get married before the couple finds out we’ve hijacked their wedding.”
“I feel bad about that. We can seriously just bring the preacher up here and get married in the suite.” I shrugged. “It’s not like it’s real.”
I watched Lorenzo carefully. Every time I alluded to our wedding and marriage being anything but real, he got this look on his face that confused me. He almost seemed angry or determined, but I didn’t know what it was about. Did he want it to be real? I did, but it was not something I would ever say to him out loud. Hell, it was something I would barely admit to myself since I’d been focused on getting out of this world for the majority of my life and dancing career.
“You have an hour to get dressed, Bea. Don’t waste it because we have to get this done before the staff and wedding party start arriving for the couple’s wedding.”
“You don’t feel at all bad that we are going to use their wedding?”
He grinned. “Who’s going to know. Us, Kozlov, Alek, and the preacher? It’s not like we are going to trash their wedding venue, Bea. We are simply going to stand at the front, say our vows for our small party, and then I’ll kiss you before we sign the documents and leave.” He smirked. “We’ll be done in a matter of 20 minutes or less.”
I sighed, he was right. Nobody would ever know. Heck, our own families, for the most part, didn’t know. The only person who knew what we were up to was Romeo. Giana and Nicoletta had no clue what was going on. They thought I was away for a wedding of one of my friends from dance. I still couldn’t believe they didn’t question that. I didn’t have friends, choosing to live mostly in isolation.
“Time to get up, Sleeping Beauty,” he said again, while he pulled the covers back to reveal me curled up in the robe that was now slightly askew.
I stretched one more time and groaned at the ache between my legs. Lorenzo was insatiable, but I couldn’t blame him. I could become addicted really fast to the feeling of him inside me. He clasped my hands gently and helped me up. I thought the ache of dance was satisfying, but the ache of sex was even better. My core clenched at the memories of being in his arms.
I’d told him no sex or kissing when I’d agreed to marry him, but the second he got me away from my father, I’d succumbed to the desires I’d always felt for him. It felt inevitable.
