by Ella James
“I thought Lamberto has been out of the picture for years.”
“Tony told me Roberto is ‘hung up’ on you.” I blink as Alesso’s hands bend into air quotes. “Everybody knows,” he adds. “You’ve got the biggest balls in Red Hook.”
Something hot tingles through my body—like that feeling from the schoolyard when you’re playing tag and someone’s fingers come within an inch of your arm.
“Leo.” I gag hard behind my hand, and Leo hits the brakes, eliciting a cacophony of car horns from behind us.
“What the fuck?” Leo says, at the same time Alesso shouts, “Don’t throw up!”
I don’t. Throw up. I swallow a few times, feel a little sweaty for a second, and then the feeling passes. When it does, Alesso makes a heavy, sigh-like sound.
“Was that my fault?” he asks in a low, muffled sort of voice.
“What?” I turn around to face him, putting on my bullshit face. “Was it your fault I felt sick?”
He nods, wide-eyed, and for a second, we’re in kindergarten—Alesso too scared to hide inside the tractor tires that formed our little crew’s playground hideout.
“Nah, dude. It’s this tunnel.” I turn back toward the windshield. “Guess I was wrong about it. Being in here so long is making me dizzy as shit.”
Alesso makes a crack about me and motion sickness, but it doesn’t take him long to get back on topic. Especially with Leo asking him so many questions. I can see a different side of Alesso as he answers. He might hate his brother, but I think he loves knowing the answers.
I think about Lamberto and the hump in his thin back, the way the bread crumbs stuck in his white moustache. I think of his son, Roberto.
“I would like a number of things. What can you offer me, Mr. Galante?”
I remember Roberto’s dark eyes from the shoe store that day years ago. They were unsure for a second, like he was either going to throw a punch at me or laugh his ass off.
“Tony told me Roberto is hung up on you. Everybody knows. You’ve got the biggest balls in Red Hook.”
I think—with some dismay—about my riverside plans for tonight. I shut my eyes and see Elise bleeding. After that, I bar myself from thinking about the late Mrs. Arnoldi.
A few minutes later, I see light. We’re in Manhattan.
Elise
I twine my arms around Luca’s neck and giggle as I kick my heel-clad foot back.
“What are you doing, woman?”
He grins down at me, and I reach up and poke his dimple.
“That’s a dimple.”
“No it isn’t.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“Because dimples are for baby butts and little kids.”
“Then what is this?” I lean my head against his shoulder, closing my eyes. His chest vibrates beneath me as he chuckles.
“It’s a man indention.”
I hear our friends laughing. It makes me laugh, too. The balmy breeze tosses my gown around my ankles as more of our classmates spill out the school’s front doors.
Luca rubs my back as he holds me up against him. “I’m gonna have to talk to Ree.”
“What? Why?”
“For getting my date drunk in the ladies’ room.”
I’m amused. “The ‘ladies’ room?”
He’s amused. “I guess I shouldn’t have mistaken you two for ladies.”
I punch him lightly, then tip my head back so I can smile up at him. “It was just a little whiskey.”
I feel his body move again as he laughs. “That’s what they all say. That’s what they all say.”
“I’m so sleepy though! No one told me that would happen.”
His hand cups the back of my head, fingers careful around my hairdo. “I think that’s true sometimes. It can make you sleepy.”
His tone sounds contemplative, like he doesn’t know first hand—and something hits me. “Oh hell, your dad…” I say, and then I trail off, feeling terrible that I drank tonight.
When I dare to look up at him, he’s looking gently down at me. “Did I ruin prom?”
“Of course not.”
“No?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t care. In fact, I think you’re the prettiest drunk.”
His lips curve into a funny little smile before he bends down a little, brushing a kiss over my cheek. Then our friends start cheering and I look over my shoulder to find the line of limousines is moving.
“How’d you set this up?” I murmur.
He takes my hand. “L’ho fatto con soldi sporchi.”
“I can’t believe you speak so much Italian.”
“Not as well as my parents,” he says, before Dani and her boyfriend and Ree and the girl from Jace’s party head into their limousine together.
“I think you do,” I murmur as we step back, so other friends of ours can get into their limo, which must have gotten here before ours.
He gives me a little smile.
“You’re just modest,” I tease.
“Better than the alternative.”
I don’t have time to agree because our limousine is next up. It’s black and glossy, long and glamorous, and I feel like a princess as Luca sweeps me up and lifts me inside, settling me on his lap. I hear cheering behind us, and all that makes me feel a little flushed and dizzy as the door shuts and I look up at him.
He kisses my forehead as the driver pulls off and gives the guy an address. The divider wall goes back up. I lean up so I can kiss Luca. “Thank you for doing this.”
“You deserve it.”
“Do you really think that?”
“No.” He smiles, a Cheshire Cat smile. “I know it.”
I sleep on his shoulder during the ride to Isa’s. I don’t even know I’m sleeping until he jostles me awake and whispers, “We’re here, la mia rosa addormentata.”
“What does that mean?”
He chuckles as he helps me out. “The sleeping rose.”
I blink up at the house—an ivory mansion made of some kind of flat, almost translucent-looking stone. It has a dark roof, narrow, dramatic windows topped by loopy, iron-looking accents and filled with long drapes. I glance toward the front doors. They’re delicate and crystalline, framed by four columns and underlined by a gorgeous, bib-shaped staircase that has to be white marble. I can feel Luca looking at me as I take the place in for the first time since a slumber party when I was twelve.
“What do you see when you look at it?” he asks quietly.
“A castle from a fairy tale.” I picture us as queen and king and smile at him. “What do you see?”
He swallows, looks away for a heartbeat, and then gives me an honest answer. “Another world.” His lips twitch. “But not forever.”
I want to say it’s not another world. I want to reassure him that he belongs here. But I don’t want to disregard how he feels.
I settle for taking his hand as we walk toward the door and asking, “What kind of life do you want?”
“One where I can buy you this.”
Chapter Sixteen
Luca
I don’t know how I didn’t realize before. Elise told me the party was at Isa’s house. I don’t know an Isa and didn’t care where we were going—but now that I think about it, Alesso told me last year that he thought Roberto’s daughter went to school at “one of those magnet schools—maybe it could even be yours.” At the time, I didn’t figure anyone in that family would be at a public school.
I feel like I’m moving underwater as we’re ushered through the front doors into an expansive foyer. It’s got a huge hanging light fixture that looks like an explosion of rectangular black crystals. Out in front of us, there’s a table that looks solid gold, topped by a mirror that’s so tall it reaches nearly to the ceiling. On top of the table is the mother of all flower arrangements. It’s got roses that are black and gold and red, and a bunch of vines that look like thorns arranged in different layers, so they’re sort of reaching toward the ceiling.
I suck in a breath of rose scent as I blink down at the floor—black marble with little gold lines—and look to our right, where a woman in a black gown stands in a wide, arched doorway. She beckons us into a big-ass room that’s centered on some stairs. And I get why. These stairs are motherfucking art. They twine together, curling every which way, looking almost like they’re melting as they fall into this empty room from above.
“Dinner will be upstairs in the formal dining hall. Ascend the stairs and you’ll meet another usher,” she says softly.
I notice that she’s pretty in a really made-up kind of way, with a dress that shows off a teardrop diamond necklace and huge tits.
Once Elise and I step fully into the stairs room, I look up and see how high the ceiling is. I’m looking at the way the stairs curl like the inside of a shell when I hear Elise’s quiet gasp. I follow her gaze to the room’s right wall, where, between two massive, red-curtained windows hangs a portrait that makes my heart sink.
There he is. Roberto Arnoldi.
I used to watch him read the Wall Street Journal while my father polished his shoes. I asked Dad once why he did it instead of Chris, the high school boy he’d hired to do such things. Dad said, “Respect, Luca. When a powerful man is your patron, respect is part of what you give him.”
My dad talked about Roberto Arnoldi like he was some kind of legend. I sort of understood what he did, but when I was a kid, I thought of him more like a movie star—like Tom Cruise. He had a driver and wore crisp, clean suits that smelled like tobacco and money.
After the store flooded, it was Gabe Russo, an Arnoldi cousin, who became my father’s point of contact for a year or so.
When Mom got sick and my dad defaulted on his monthly payment, Russo gave him six months off—with sixty-six percent interest. Six-six-six, I remember raging to Alesso when I found out. I was thirteen then, and sort of crazy from the shit with Mom. Then Dad just lost his hold on things. He kept saying how he’d have to close his doors, how we’d be moving to Mill Street. That was when he decided he didn’t give a fuck if we knew he was still a drunk.
Now I stare at the painting of the mob don and his flawless family. I swallow, and for a second my eyes ache as I absorb that feeling I have sometimes—that I’m a traitor.
I didn’t realize how right I was when I told Elise this place isn’t for me. Yet, here I am—dressed up like a fraud, with Elise on my arm as if I’ve earned the right to her heart.
“Luca,” she says, and I look at her.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. For sure,” I lie.
We start slowly up the winding staircase. Elise looks up before I do and murmurs, “Look up, Luca.”
The stairs, which go up far above us, make a swirling pattern that makes me feel a little like the stairs below my shoes are moving.
“What is this?” I half laugh.
“I think up there—” she points— “is the third floor. But these stairs keep on going to I guess maybe a fourth floor, and the design really does make you feel dizzy.”
“Fuck. That’s pretty crazy.”
She nods, holding my hand. We step off the stairs at the second floor and are led down an long hallway to a cavernous room with dozens of candle-lit tables and a curtained stage. A band plays as servers mill around tables filled by about fifty of our school friends.
“He told me Roberto’s ‘hung up’ on you.”
We’re led to a large, round table where we find Dani and her dude Ty, Ree and her girl, and Jace Banetti with some girl I don’t know.
I pull Elise’s chair out before I realize the server was trying to do the same thing at the same time.
Elise
It’s a delicious four-course dinner, but there’s something wrong with Luca.
He’s quiet, even when the band is replaced by a comedian. He doesn’t really laugh—he barely smiles. We slip out when the band starts up again and the room is transformed into a dance floor. He holds my hand as we walk until we find an alcove, where he leans me against the wall, staring into my eyes before kissing my lips softly.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?”
“Just tired.” He tries to smile, but it’s a fail.
“Is it being here? Do you not like the party?”
“No, I like it.” We kiss more, and he holds me against him—tight and close enough so I can feel him inhale deeply. I look up and see him shut his eyes.
“I’m never going to have a house like this,” he says hoarsely.
“That’s good, because it’s kind of creepy. People could be living with you in here and you’d never even notice!”
He blows a breath out, and I nuzzle his chest.
“Let’s go somewhere. Somewhere with just the two of us. My driver will be here in three hours and twenty minutes. That’s plenty of time. Let’s get fast food or…I don’t know. Do something else. We could call a cab. I have my phone in my purse.”
His mouth twists thoughtfully. “I know somewhere. It’s not too far, and it’s kind of a throwback to our first date.”
“Take me away, Mr. Galante.”
His driver, who apparently is waiting, takes us to a glittering marina that is so Manhattan, it makes my blood hum. The boats are yachts. The water gleams with city lights reflected on its choppy surface, and the river breeze kicks my dress up around my shins as we walk hand in hand toward the last slot.
“Whose boat is this?” I ask him.
“Just this old guy I help sometimes.”
Luca speaks to someone on the dock, and the uniformed man leads us to a glorious, sleek, brown and white yacht. He swings a sort-of walkway out, so we can board the yacht, and Luca leads me up to the bow. There’s a rounded door that clearly leads down in the hull. Luca punches in a passcode, and it swings open, revealing a door-shaped swatch of maritime opulence.
“Wowzers.”
He gives me a teasing smile. “Do you have a yacht, Ms. O’Hara?”
“Oh no. My dad isn’t into water. He learned to swim late…but shh, cause that’s a family secret.”
“I did too. Just took some summer lessons a few years ago. Did it with a buddy of mine.” He gives me a grin, and I think he’s kidding until I see the faint blush on his cheeks.
“That’s the coolest. What was it like? Was it hard to learn?”
“Nah. A little unnatural at first, but we took to it like a boot in water.” He mimes a drumroll.
I giggle, and I can’t stop. Maybe because he looks so cute, half bashful and half proud. I press my body against his, feeling his warm chest and hard hips, and he groans.
“La mia rosa.” He throws me over his shoulder and climbs down the stairs into the body of the yacht, then sets me on my feet in the low light.
“What?” I slide my hand under the collar of his dress shirt. “Does this displease you, Mr. Galante?”
I rub myself against the hardness of his thigh, and he makes a soft, tortured sound.
“It pleases me too much,” he whispers. His hand rubs up between my shoulder blades, until he’s holding my nape. “Everything about you pleases me, Ms. O’Hara.”
His head is tipped back, his eyelids half shut as his lips part and his face slackens. I’m still rubbing against him, just because I love that I can make him this way—drunk on me. It’s the most amazing rush. In the past few months, I’ve become addicted to it. To the way he groans and pants when my hands touch him in certain places.
I run my hand down his chest, tracing the buttons of his shirt then toying with his belt buckle. I grin as I give up—only for show, of course—and rub my hand downward, my pulse racing when I’m touching him there, and he’s groaning like it might do him in. I squeeze, and his knees nearly buckle.
He drags a huge breath into his lungs, and I move my hand lower, rubbing his shaft a few times before cupping his balls. He groans again and shudders. There’s a leather couch a few feet away. He sweeps me off my feet and lays me out atop it, pushing my dress up so he can run
a hand up my thigh and over my silk underwear.
His eyes shut and his head hangs as he gets a deep breath.
“Holy fuck, you’re perfect.” He lowers himself gently atop me. I can tell he’s not resting his full weight on me—just enough so we can rub together as we so love doing.
He’s breathing heavy as he uses his hand to rub himself against me. Through his pants and through my gown, he has me moaning and arching beneath him.
“Get rid of your pants,” I whisper.
He sits back on his knees, rubbing himself as his lust-glazed eyes tilt and his lips pull into a grin. “Get rid of my pants?” He drapes his hand right where I want it, rubbing me gently with his thumb. “But rosa, this is someone else’s yacht.”
“Stolen boats are our thing,” I moan.
He plays me like an instrument and I respond in kind, singing with groans and sighs until he lifts his hand off me and starts unbuckling his belt.
“What do you think will happen if we lose the clothes, la mia rosa? Penso che non sarò in grado di trattenermi. Come ti piacerebbe?”
I reach for him as he folds his pants down. His erection springs up and my fingers trace it gently through the fabric of his boxer briefs. I wrap my hand around him, and he laughs as he leans back, out of my reach.
“Not yet.” His cheeks are flushed, his grin tender, and I can see his pulse thrum at the base of his throat. He’s revved up, but he wants to tend to me first. When he pushes my dress up more and looks into my eyes for permission, I lift my hips, and his fingers loop beneath my silk panties. He hooks the small piece of fabric aside and leans down.
And it’s all over for me. Conscious thought is over, all coherence gone. My body is a buffet and he’s hungry; he feasts as my hands twist in his hair. He groans and it vibrates my flesh. His tongue laves me again and he groans, “I love you.” And then his fingers press in.
I open my eyes a minute or a lifetime later to find Luca on his knees, smiling. Smiling like he’s got a bouquet of roses behind his back and not his long erection pressed down by his palm.
