by Nina Levine
I can see my words affect her. Her face has softened, and her eyes fill with emotion as she listens.
“I knew I had to make something of myself to compete with what you had found here. So I went home and stopped fighting my father’s wishes for me to someday take over the family business from him. I fully invested myself in it, believing it would make me the man you would want. I knew I had to harden my soft heart and I did. By the time our eighteenth birthday came around, I was a different man. I was more confident. Focused. And determined I was going to find you and make you mine.”
Her brow creases. “But you didn’t.”
“No,” I say remorsefully. “My father became gravely ill and I couldn’t leave. I was desperate to come to you—to keep my promise. But I couldn’t leave my father. He died ten days after our birthday.”
Her frown deepens. “I remember my father telling me when he passed. But that was shortly before Christmas. Our birthday is in September.”
“Yes. We hid his death. The timing demanded it. There were things in play that would have been impacted by the announcement of his death. So we kept it under lock and key, and we hid it well for more than three months.”
She takes a moment to absorb what I have told her. “You could’ve contacted me.”
She’s right. I could have reached out. But watching my father take his last breath had changed me. If I thought my heart was already hard, then watching those final moments hardened it further. We had become incredibly close, and he had become a huge influence on me as a man.
“The last conversation I had with my father is something I will remember word for word, for the rest of my life. He told me that he knew I still held hope in my heart for you. But he told me it was a dangerous thing to hold onto. He said he’d held onto the same hope in his heart once, for your father, hoping that someday they could find their way back to the deeply bonded friendship they’d once shared. And that it had broken his heart when they didn’t. He told me to forget you, Bella. That the Isle Ciccula name would only ever inflict heartache on a Lastrantonio. After his death, I was so lost in grief that I believed him.”
The years following my father’s death were really dark years.
Dark and brutal.
Soaked in the blood.
Soaked in sin.
I became a bad man.
With venom in his veins.
I did things I regret now.
Things in the name of honor and the family name.
I took my first life at twenty-one.
The second at twenty-four.
Because of my name.
Because of who I was. Who I thought I had to be.
I threw my heart and soul into running the dark side of the Lastrantonio kingdom thinking it would make me a better man. A stronger man. A man who could forget her.
But I couldn’t forget.
Because the darkness of me was no match for the bright shining light of her.
But even then, I continued to fight it.
Until there was no fight left in me, and I came to realize I was fighting something bigger than me. Bigger than her.
I was fighting the fact that we were fucking meant to be.
“For five years, I resisted every thought of you, lying to myself that I could move on, that I was better off. But it was a lie. I thought of you every day. Hell, I couldn’t kiss a woman because I made a promise to myself all those years ago that every kiss belonged to you.”
By the look on her face, she doesn’t believe me.
“You expect me to believe you’ve never kissed another woman?”
I fasten my eyes to hers. “There are plenty of other ways to pleasure a woman with your mouth.”
Heat burns in her expression.
A heat that takes her by surprise.
Clearly taken aback, she folds her arms. “Is that what you do with Amélie?”
I move off the desk and go to her. “Those years of separation came at a cost you can’t even imagine. You think I fell out of love with you. But I never did. Yes, I’ve been with other women, I’m a man, I like to fuck, and I’m damn fucking good at it. But kissing a woman… I promised you I never would. Even when I tried to forget you, my heart refused to give up. Because I love you, Bella. I fucking love you.”
I take her by the arms.
Her eyes are hooded.
I don’t hold back. I slam my mouth over hers, stealing the kiss from her with a deep, ferocious need.
For a moment she resists, but with a whimper she melts into me and pushes her fingers through my hair. I moan against her lips, and with my restraint gone, push her up against the wall.
“Tell me you don’t want this and I will stop,” I growl into her mouth. “But tell me now, goddammit, because I’m about to rip your clothes off and fuck you so damn hard you won’t be able to walk out of here when I’m done.”
20
Alessandro
I mean it.
I’m done playing games.
I pin her to the wall and kiss her wildly.
Every cell in my body is begging for it.
I take her face in my hands.
Her eyes burn with lust.
I look into them, searching for a yes, and when I find it, I kiss her again, hard and deep, and she moans, twisting her hands into the collar of my shirt.
Pulling back, I reach between us, my fingers slipping between her silk panties and the smooth velvet skin of her body.
I haven’t touched her like this in so long, and it’s almost too much. My brain is dizzy with sensory overload.
There is so much I want to do.
I want to go fast.
I want to go slow.
I want to savor every sweet moment with her.
I want to race to the end just so I can hear her cries as she comes.
Unable to keep my lips from hers, I kiss her deeply, and it’s hot and desperate.
“Fuck, you’re wet,” I groan hoarsely.
I want her ready for me. For my size. For the thick girth of my cock. But she is already lush and drenched, and the way her soaked pussy suckles at my fingers makes me fucking weak behind my knees.
Her head lolls against the wall, and she looks at me through heavy lids as I find the little nub of nerves among the moist softness. She shivers and bites down on her lip, moaning as I torture her with my fingers.
She reaches between us, her hands searching for my cock which is a hard ridge straining against the confines of my boxers.
“I want your cock,” she breathes.
But I turn away just enough that she can’t reach it.
“Not until you come.”
Her brows drop. “But I want to come on your cock.”
After torturing her clit with just the right amount of friction, I slide two fingers inside her again. “Oh, you’ll be doing that too.”
I’m merciless with my touch, and her body can’t help but respond. She doesn’t have time to argue.
“Alessand—” Her voice falls away and is quickly replaced with a moan. Her eyes lose focus and close as ecstasy takes up in her expression and she starts to come.
It’s the most amazing fucking thing I’ve ever seen, and it’s almost enough to drive me over the edge.
She trembles against me, her fingers pressing deep into my shoulders as she lets her orgasm consume her.
I can’t take anymore. I hoist her up in my arms and hold her against the wall. Releasing my cock from my boxers, I grasp it firmly in my hand and slide it between the soft folds of her pussy.
“Look at me,” I rasp.
When her eyes open, I thrust into her, and a strangled grasp leaves her parted lips.
My mind splinters into a thousand tiny fragments.
It’s been more than a decade since I’ve been inside her. Since I took her virginity in that shady olive grove back home in Italy. And no memory could ever be as magical as the real thing.
“Goddamnit, you’re tight,” I breathe out. My cock feels so
fucking good, I’m not sure I’m going to last. I cup her juicy ass, and she tightens her legs around me as I thrust up into her, my hips driving the hard length of me deep inside her until we’re both breathless.
“Sandro…” The nickname falls from her lips as she comes again, and I feel an overwhelming emotion hit me from out of nowhere. Sandro. It’s been twelve years since I’ve heard her say it, and the intimacy of it does something to me. The emotion flies through my veins like a drug, and I almost can’t take it.
Sandro.
I thrust harder and deeper.
Sandro.
I can’t get deep enough.
Can’t get close enough.
I want to be so deep that we lose where I start and she ends.
I want her to feel what I feel.
I want her to love me again.
I just want… her.
Forever.
I feel her muscles spasm. Feel them tighten around my cock, and it’s all I can take.
Sandro.
A growl rips from my throat and vibrates between us as a mind-blowing ecstasy falls over me like sunshine. I kiss her hard, wanting the feel of her lips as I fall into the heavenly nirvana.
“Fuck, Bella,” I gasp into her mouth.
I shudder against her, burying my face in the crook of her neck.
Sandro.
It’s the name of the man I was always meant to be.
21
Bella
There are days when I think I am in heaven.
When I awaken to the touch of my husband’s luscious tongue on my flesh, or his hard cock driving me toward one orgasm after another.
Then there are days when I am reminded about who I am married to and what he does when I am not with him. Oh sure, New York knows him as the King of the Boroughs because of his business acumen and portfolio. But as much as he tries to keep the secret part of his life in the shadows, it is still there.
It’s like a ghostly finger up the spine.
It’s like an unsettling sensation in the back of your mind.
A reminder to not get too comfortable with him because his shadowy world—the same nefarious world my father moved about in—is a world I do not want to be a part of.
My husband is a criminal. And some days the reality of that is very imminent.
I look up to find Alessandro looking at me from the doorway.
His expression unnerves me.
It’s dark. Like a storm cloud passing over his face.
“You need to come with me.” His voice is hard.
“Where to?”
He comes to me, towering above my small stature. “It’s time to show the Castabellas why they shouldn’t fuck with us.”
I look at him and see the thinly veiled sense of regret on his handsome face, and I get a sick feeling in my stomach. “What are you going to do?”
He takes my hand. “You need to come with me.”
I know better than to question him. And to be honest, I don’t have the energy. The late nights of ecstasy are catching up to me.
Outside, a car is waiting for us and we drive through a warm summer evening to a warehouse just a few minutes out of the city.
Inside, a man sits tied to the chair, his brow beaded with sweat, his lips bloody, his face bruised. He’s been well worked over and is out cold.
Beneath the swelling and the spit and blood, I recognize him.
Luca Castabella.
I look at Alessandro.
“Did you do this to him?” I ask.
Alessandro’s jaw ticks. His eyes black and hard, and full of dark fury. “With pleasure.”
Fractured images of the attack come back to me and I falter, but Alessandro steadies me.
“What are you going to do to him?” I ask.
He hands me a gun. “You deserve justice.”
I look at the gun and then back to Alessandro, stunned. “You want me to… kill him?”
“He abducted you and was going to rape and murder you! When I think of the things he was going to do…” His nostrils flare and his fists clench at his side as his thoughts get the better of him.
I turn back to Luca. A thread of bloody spit drips from his broken lips to his shirt, and I can’t help but recall him abducting me off the street and knocking me out.
I think about waking up in a warehouse with a splitting headache and the odor of mildew in the air. I think about the evil in his eyes and the fear in my heart when he’d told me he was going to kill me. I think about his hands on my body, sliding up my thighs, and without hesitation I raise the gun and press it to his temple.
As he starts to come to, I dig the gun deeper into his skin, my skin crawling with the thoughts of what if. What if I hadn’t gotten those binds untied? What if I hadn’t made it out of that warehouse?
Lifting his head, his eyes find mine and recognition ripples across his face. His thin lips pull back into a smug smile to reveal blood-soaked teeth.
My fingers tighten around the grip of the gun.
I loathe people like him.
He was going to rape and murder me before dumping my body into the Hudson River.
But I am no killer.
And the fact that I am standing here with a gun pressed into a man’s temple tells me I’ve been pulled too deep into this world that I despise.
This is not me.
My hand drops to my side.
I fix my eyes to his, hating the small part of me that wishes I could pull the trigger. Because this man is a monster.
But it isn’t up to me.
I won’t play God.
But I know there are men in this room who are willing. My husband included.
“You should make peace with what’s about to happen, Luca Castabella. Because I’m pretty sure the next hour is going to be hell for you,” I say, echoing the words he said to me as he’d unzipped his pants to rape me.
He recognizes the words and his smile fades.
Feeling disgust for the whole thing, I turn away from him and walk toward my husband, my heart pounding wildly because I was seconds away from doing something I could never live with.
It’s further proof that I don’t belong in this world.
Or with Alessandro.
I’ve been too drunk on his body to think about our reality.
Too drunk on the things he does to mine.
Too distracted by sex and the deep, sensual way he kisses me.
I’ve let myself get carried away by the idea of him, and by the orgasms and nights lost tangled in bed with him.
But this isn’t what I want.
I never wanted to be a part of the darkness.
I hand the gun back to Alessandro. “This is your world. Not mine.”
Walking away, I hear the gunshot.
I don’t know who shot him. I’m not entirely sure I want to know.
But it was probably my husband.
22
Alessandro
In my world, you pay for your crimes.
Luca Castabella put his hands on my wife. So he had to pay.
The killing is ugly and evil, and it’s what I’ve always hated. But it’s a part of the world I was raised in. Part of who I am.
But something tells me I’ve fucked up in Bella’s eyes, and my suspicions are confirmed when I arrive home to find her packing her bags.
“What are you doing?” I ask from the doorway to our room.
“I’m leaving. I can’t do this.”
“Why?” There is a sharp edge to my voice.
She turns around to look at me. “I just held a gun to a man’s temple and was seconds away from pulling the trigger.” She shakes her head as if she can’t believe it. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“You’re my wife.”
She returns to her packing. “Not really. I’m just a business deal you fuck.”
Her words infuriate me. I hate that she thinks so little about what we have.
I go from zero to a hundred faster than li
ghtning. Because how can she not know? How can she not see the power she has over me?
I’m fucking in love with her.
She’s the fucking love of my fucking life.
And fucking everything I’ve done has been done for us.
I go to her and take her by the arms.
“You are my fucking everything, Bella.” My voice is rough because just when I think I am getting through to her, she tells me different. It’s terrifying because I don’t want to lose her. I can’t lose her. Life won’t be worth it without her in it.
She looks away.
“Look at me,” I demand. “What do you want from me?”
I’m unable to keep the edge out of my voice, so I come across a lot angrier than I intend.
She yanks her arms free. “I never asked for this life. But it’s being forced on me and I hate it. Do you understand me? I fucking hate it.”
“What about me? Do you hate me too?”
“Right now, yes!”
“Then tell me what you want from me.”
“I want you to let me go!” She cries.
Her words ripple in the air around us and spear me right through the heart.
“That’s never going to happen.”
“Why?” she cries.
I grab her by the shoulders. “Because you’re the only thing that fucking matters in this world to me. Do you understand me, Bella? I’d rather die than lose you again. You are my life. You are my heart. You are my fucking everything!”
The tension snaps and I slam my mouth to hers, and she grabs the front of my shirt as her tongue sweeps into my mouth. Our kiss is wild and desperate. When we finally take a breath, we look at each other, our pulses racing, our breath coming hard and fast, our bodies begging us to keep going.
But then something happens.
Something shifts in both of us.
The anger recedes like a tide, and when it’s gone, our hearts are left open and vulnerable like an exposed shoreline.
