He’s silent, but I don’t turn to him. I can’t look at him as I voice the next words. As I admit that I’m not angry. Perhaps a little hurt, but not angry.
“I lay in my bed, I looked at the photo of the stranger, and I imagined it was him. I pictured his strong hands holding a black Glock, or perhaps a handgun with a silencer, and I saw his fingers press the trigger. I heard the shot. It echoed through my mind every night. The sound would ricochet around me and the strange thing was, that was when I realized how fucked up I am.”
“What?” He rasps the question and I place a hand on the glass, recalling those nights alone. Those nights when I found my father’s secrets. When I learned the man I called daddy wasn’t what he said he was. When I learned that secrets and lies were what broke my family apart.
“It’s true. I learned that I wasn’t his daughter. Because the only thing I thought of, the only thing I did every night after, even before my father’s death, was think of you. I’d fallen for a stranger in a photo. You gave me my first real orgasm without even touching me. You showed me a part of me I didn’t know I had, you ripped it from the cold darkness where it hid and you gave it light.”
He’s behind me then. He moved so swiftly, I didn’t hear him approach. But his body is behind mine in an instant. “Raina.” He caresses my name in his thick accent. Dripping confusion and hunger. “What are you talking about?”
“I…” My words fall short because I can’t admit it. I can’t tell him I sought him out but couldn’t find him. I didn’t know his name, and I couldn’t find any information in my father’s documents. I’d waited too long after his death. When I went into his study, everything was gone. The police had taken it all. And so, my stranger was gone.
“Can you feel this?” He strokes my arm. It’s a gentle, almost tentative touch. Sweet. Soft. Different to how he normally touches me. I nod. “Not my fingers,bella,” he murmurs against my neck and I dip my head to the side to allow him access to the sensitive flesh. “This tethered connection. It’s…intossicante,” he murmurs.
“What?”
“Intoxicating, Raina.” His lips plant a soft kiss on my nape. “That’s what you are to me. I can’t deny myself you. You’re my addiction. A wicked sin I could never pray for salvation for taking and enjoying. I won’t survive this life without a shot of you to my veins every day.” His words are filled with emotion, affection, something deeper than we both agreed to. Something I wanted, but he couldn’t give.
As I turn in his arms, I regard him. I see it swimming in those mocha pools. His eyes remind me of those espresso shots he loves to drink. Deep, dark, and bottomless.
“I’m not leaving. I can’t. I know you told me I shouldn’t do this, but as they say, the heart wants what it does. And mine…” I lean in, my lips on the scruff of his jaw and I revel in the way it scrapes along my cheek. “My heart wants yours.”
* * *
It’s been two weeks,two long fucking weeks, and he hasn’t touched me again. I’ve slept in the guest room, far from him. He told me he needed to focus on work, but I know he’s lying. I saw it in his eyes. The afternoon I told him I wanted him, he did what Gio said he’d do. Pushed me away. Only, I don’t believe his cold shoulder act. It was blatantly clear in his eyes when he looked at me there was so much emotion shining in them. It knocked me breathless.
Even when I knew he’d hide it, I didn’t expect him to just block me out completely. At work, he’s been attentive but professional. When the sun sets, he stalks out of the office and I don’t see him again until the next morning. At first, I thought he had someone else, that he was leaving and visiting another woman, but when I stumbled upon him in the gym in the basement one night, I realized he’d been spending his hours working out.
After a chat with Matteo, he admitted that Franco wasn’t, in fact, seeing other women, and he’d only ever seen his brother act so strangely once. And that was when he was with his ex. I still don’t know what happened to her. Something tells me I’m better off not having that information divulged to me.
Sitting back, I sip the cocktail in front of me, with my mind racing through Franco leaving this morning for New York. He was gone before I had a moment to process anything. With a chaste kiss on my forehead, he was gone. To be honest, it stung, and I sat for most of the day wondering why he couldn’t just give in to his feelings and admit it.
At least, he could to me. Even if he didn’t want his brothers to know. Not that they’d have a problem since I’ve become like part of the family. The same family he told me holds his heart. Questions, confusion, and no answers, taunt me as I drink the blue concoction of alcohol my cousin insisted on buying me.
“Are you going to sit and mope all night?” Casting a glance at Calista, I shrug.
“I’m not moping. I just find it really strange that a man who is nearly forty is so afraid of being honest with his feelings and emotions.” Frustration is evident in my tone.
“I think he’s planning to propose,” my best friend, Adria, says, ever the positive one. Needing a happily ever after. Although I’ve always wanted one too, I was honest when I told him I just wanted him. Even if he wasn’t offering me a ring, I needed him. The ache in my chest is too much, and I shake my head to clear the thoughts of him walking away and find two sets of eyes on me.
“He won’t propose. I just need to give him space. He needs it. He just can’t love.” Even as the words fall from my mouth, the ache in my chest tightens, gripping that useless muscle that beats, at the moment, only for him.
“So you’re just going to give up your life for a man who blatantly told you he can’t love you?” My cousin’s glare is incredulous. So is my best friend’s. They’re looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, and I think I have. Only, they don’t know the whole story. I do. If I told my cousin what Andrea did, she’d never forgive him. It was his fault my father was killed by Franco. Only, it was my father who killed the older Moretti by his betrayal of a life-long client. Someone who’d put their trust in him.
Jesus, this is like a goddamn soap opera. All I wanted was a normal life. I know Franco vowed to tell me the whole truth when he got back, but with all that he’s already told me, I have too many suspicions racing through my head. I can’t ask Gio because he wouldn’t go against his brother’s wishes and say anything, so I wait.
“Listen to me, Rai.” Adria reaches for my hand and stares at me. “If this is the man you want, don’t let us tell you what to do. But be careful. You know the Nostra are dangerous. Your father got involved with them and look where he is now. That was his choice to do. I don’t know all the details, but this is something you need to decide. Nobody can tell you what’s right or wrong. It’s all you.”
I nod, understanding what she means, but as much as I do get it, they need to know the whole story.
Only, I don’t know if I should be the one to tell them.
“There’s so much you both don’t know.” My gaze implores them both and with that, they regard me through narrowed gazes. “So many goddamn secrets and it pisses me off that we grew up around this shit. With all these dangerous people, but there are things that he told me about my father.” I murmur the last few words because even when he told me, I found it a difficult pill to swallow.
“Then tell us, Rai,” my best friend asks and I take a deep lungful of air, hoping it will give me the confidence to admit the mistakes of our families. Before I can, a man dressed in exquisite Armani steps up to our table with the bravado of only a member of the Nostra can.
“Ladies.” The quirk of his mouth lifts into a smirk, and it’s then that I notice the two men flanking him. A flick of his fingers commands me to shift so he can sink into the bench seat beside me. The two bodyguards, at least that’s what I think they are, step closer to the table, prohibiting us from leaving. We’re trapped.
“Who are you?” He leans back, his arm curling around my shoulders as he pulls me closer. The thick scent of an expensive, spicy cologne invades my nostrils. The smell is familiar and I wrack my brain trying to figure out when or where I’ve come across it before.