I know what I’m going to do if I can escape. I’m going to go home. I’m going to find out if my family really is gone. Are they dead?
More importantly, I’m going to rescue Mario and Luigi. They got left behind in the stables. They’ll be hungry by the morning. I’m not leaving them behind.
I’m not staying here to marry a killer. A coldblooded killer who doesn’t give one solitary shit about my grief. As if I’d give him a child.
Maybe you already have,the voice in my head whispers. I get a sudden flash back of our one night together. He took my virginity. I wanted him then. I didn’t hate him that night.
I could already be pregnant with his child.
I refuse to think about it. I’ll spend my life erasing that memory. I will not think about how good his hands felt on my body, how well he could kiss, how he made me feel when he brought me to an all enveloping orgasm. I will not think about it.
Behind my eyes there’s a heaviness growing that I know is exhaustion. It’s creeping up on me but I won’t let it take hold. I can sleep once I know my dogs are safe.
I move silently through the thick carpet, turning around the corner to find the front door right there. No one’s guarding it. Could it be this easy? I march right up to it and turn the handle. It’s unlocked.
With one deep breath, I pull it open and disappear into the night.
Sixteen
Nico
* * *
When I answer my phone, my father sounds like he’s already holding the Grim Reaper by the hand. His voice is faint but there’s still a rod of iron in the words.
His power is undiminished even as his body is wracked with the cancer that’s going to take him out.
He smiled when he first got the diagnosis. Told me the cigars wouldn’t take him after all. Said his enemies wouldn’t wipe him out. His own body would do that for them. Said this is what life is. A shitshow and then it’s over.
That was the only time he ever talked about how it made him feel. The rest of the time, it was business as usual.
Not anymore. I can tell from his voice that he’s fading. I won’t have long before he dies. I better be married with Rory pregnant before that happens.
There’s no way I’ll let Giovanni become Don. Not after tonight. Not after the way he set me up.
“I need to speak with you,” my father tells me. “Come to the all night diner at the end of your block.”
I think about locking Rory in before I leave but I know she won’t go anywhere. She hasn’t got anywhere to go. She has no money, no family to turn to, no spare house to go settle down in. She’s nothing and no one. I’m her only hope now. She won’t go anywhere.
Even if she does leave, fate has brought us together once. It’ll do it again. I know we’re connected, somehow. That can be the only reason why we came together that night, only to come together again. I’m meant to marry her. She is the one who will help me reach my goal.
What about after that?
The question pops into my head as I climb into my car. What do I do with her when she has my child and I’m Don of the famiglia. Do I keep her?
Maybe I will. Of course, tongues will wag. Me, marrying a Moretti. Taking a partner from a far weaker family. Maybe the Casella’s are on the decline. Maybe we’re not as strong as we say.
I can deal with wagging tongues. They’ll soon see we’re stronger than ever.
She is fucking hot too, which helps. Even when she was scowling at me in there, all I could think about was taking her over my knee and turning her ass red, wiping that scowl off her face.
She hates me now, that’s to be expected. She’s suspicious of me. That’s only natural. But I’m her best hope of vengeance. Marrying me will fuck over Giovanni, the man responsible for her family being wiped out.
She’ll come around to my point of view soon enough. I’ll use my honeyed tongue to make her see the light, same I as do with any woman I need on my side.
With men, I can use force, but with women like her? My voice and my hands are put to a different use.
The thought gets my cock twitching but now is not the time to think about such things. When I get back, I can take her to bed, show her how good it will be to be my bride, even if she tries to continue hating me.