The Guzzi Legacy: Vol 1

by Bethany-Kris

  Never had he let a man take him.

  Until now.

  That ache was deep—the pain sharp even as something dark and fucking amazing started licking at his nerve endings. Still, it was slow. Too fucking slow, maybe. It felt like that heightened the pain, but also sharpened the pleasure trailing right behind. Enough to make him want to stop, though that teasing promise of more kept him right there, lost in that place.

  And still, Alessio watched him.

  A hand splayed to his chest, and another sliding under the roof of his jaw. He pushed Corrado’s head back to the pillow as he continued staring at him. It was only when that pain started to ebb, when it became better, and Alessio was fucking him until he felt like he couldn’t breathe that the man finally looked away from him.

  Alessio’s forehead hit his chest, and Corrado tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling, his lips falling open with a hard moan.

  Because there it was.

  Fuck.

  How many times had he come before?

  Felt that pleasure?

  More times than he cared to count.

  It never felt like this.

  Never took away his sight, his vision, and everything else, too. Like he was drowning in Alessio, and sensation.

  “Jesus Christ,” he heard Alessio grunt, lips grazing his chest as he stilled, coming almost in perfect tune with Corrado.

  Jesus Christ was right.

  Corrado still couldn’t breathe.

  He felt the soft glide of Alessio’s fingertips drifting over his chest, leaving a trail of raw nerve endings as his hand left where it had been resting. It was only then that Corrado realized he’d been fisting the sheets at his sides.

  “You should have told me,” Alessio murmured. “Told me you’d never—”

  Corrado looked down as that hand fell from his jaw, finding Alessio’s chin resting against his chest as he stared at him. “Why ... I wanted what I got, Les. It didn’t matter.”

  Alessio blew out a breath, the warm air skipping across Corrado’s skin. “Yeah, don’t I know that.”

  PART TWO: AFTER

  Almost five years later ...

  15.

  Ginevra

  “His name is Andino Marcello, and he is who I picked for you to marry.”

  She used to be a normal girl.

  And then life happened.

  Or rather, someone’s life collided with Ginevra’s, and she realized that, no, her small world wasn’t at all normal. She had simply been living in a delusion that someone else created for her. A pretty bubble that was opaque, so she was unable to see the truth happening all around her.

  Last month, she had been normal.

  A twenty-one-year-old woman with two younger sisters, a mom she loved, a dad who was distant but kind when he came around, hopes and dreams, and a life.

  This month, she was something else.

  The daughter of a dead mobster, a half-sister to three new siblings, and a woman with a life that was no longer her own to do with what she wished.

  “This is the way of Cosa Nostra,” Kev told her.

  Ginevra sat on her mother’s couch, hands twisted into tight balls where she could hide them at her sides, willing herself to stay quiet, and say nothing. She saw what happened when her new half-sister, Siena, tried to speak against Kev, or even their other brother, Darren. They weren’t kind about telling them to shut up, or simply striking out to make them shut up with a slap.

  Beside Ginevra, her mother, Marie, stayed silent, too, staring at the wall behind the brothers standing at the other side of the living room. She was immovable, a statue, even.

  Matteo died, and everything changed.

  Everything.

  “This is the Calabrese way,” Darren added when Ginevra and her mother stayed quiet on the couch. “And whether you like it or not, our father gave you the Calabrese name when you were born, and so you’re now expected to own it.”

  “The way we want you to.” Kev raised his thick brows when Ginevra almost opened her mouth to tell them right where they could shove their demands. His look shut her up instantly. “This will be good for you, and for us. Surely, you’ve heard of the Marcellos? You must know the family, Ginny. It’s a good match.”

  “She knows nothing about that life,” her mother said softly. “Matteo didn’t want me to explain, and we were removed from it all, Kev.”

  His gaze drifted to her mother, his lips forming a thin, grim line.

  Disappointment.

  There was no denying the fact that Kev was his father’s son, Ginevra thought. God knew he looked just like their father, even if a different woman had brought him into the world than the one that gave her life.

  Still, they shared similarities.

  Like Ginevra to Darren, or even Siena.

  The dark hair, the shape of their oval faces, and even the way they all smiled the same. She’d taken her brown eyes from her mother, though, and she was grateful for that in moments like these. Because when she looked into Kev’s eyes, all she saw was coldness. She knew her stare was not the same as his.

  “I just ...” Ginevra struggled to find her words, to say something that would make these men understand this was not what she wanted to do. It didn’t matter to her that the blood inside her veins said she was the same as them. It didn’t matter that her father—now dead—had once controlled a major mafia family. She wasn’t like them. She never lived like they did. Their way was not her way. “This isn’t my life; I don’t want to do this just because you say it’s what I should do. I’m allowed to make my own choices. I’m twenty-one, and—”

  “It’s been decided,” Kev replied dryly.

  “And you will see it through,” Darren added for his brother, “whether we have to force you down the aisle, or you walk down willingly. If you think we don’t have the means and the motive to see it through for you, test us, Ginevra. It is going to happen.”

  “It will happen.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath, using her fingernails to dig into the palms of her hands to keep her emotions under control. These men were horrible. They would enjoy seeing her tears all too much, even if they were simply a byproduct of her anger.

  To them, it would be a battle won.

  To them, she was just a girl.

  A stupid girl for them to use.

  “I know you think because you weren’t brought up in the same life as us that you can somehow ... escape the same expectations that we were given,” Ken said, making Ginevra wish he would just shut the fuck up, and get out of her mother’s apartment, “but that isn’t actually the case at all. With our father dead, we are expected to carry on his legacy, and make the choices that will further our family in the criminal world. That’s how it works. And you are the thing we plan to use to do that.”

  “Do you understand?” Darren asked.

  Ginevra bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. “I won’t do this.”

  “You will. Or we will make sure you do. You continue to think you have a choice here, Ginny—”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Kev let out a sigh. “Now, be nice. It’s just a nickname.”

  No, it wasn’t.

  It was the name her mother had called her since she was a girl. It was the name her sisters shouted from the other end of the apartment when they wanted her to come help them pick out an outfit so maybe they could finally get their crush at school to notice them. It was the name her professors—which she would no longer be allowed to attend classes, according to Kev—used when they directed questions at her in classes.

  It was not, however, a nickname her father gave her. It did not come from the fucking Calabrese. And she didn’t want the rest of them using it.

  “Don’t call me that,” Ginevra muttered, keeping her gaze down.

  Kev, seemingly reaching his level of patience with her for the day, smacked the wall with his hand loud enough to make Ginevra and her mother jump on the couch. “I won’t say
it again after this, but it has been decided. You will marry the Marcello man within a couple of months. We’ll nail down an appropriate date, and let you know. If you run, Ginevra, we will find you. If someone here thinks that helping you get away will help your case, then they will be removed. I won’t tolerate someone going against me—I don’t give a fuck if you are my blood. Do you understand me?”

  God.

  She hated him.

  All of them right now.

  “Do. You. Understand. Me.”

  Ginevra lifted her head, and met Kev’s stare from across the room. She felt her mother’s hand find hers on the couch, and grab tightly to keep her grounded. Right now, she just had to get through this day. They could figure out the rest later.

  Surely.

  “I understand,” Ginevra lied.

  Lied, because no.

  She would not marry someone chosen for her.

  She wouldn’t do anything they wanted.

  Kev’s gaze narrowed. “You know, I can see that fight in your eyes, Ginny. All of us Calabrese ... it all looks the same, and I see it.”

  Good.

  She said nothing.

  “But don’t worry,” Kev added, smiling in that cold way of his, “you will learn, and I will break you like I did the rest of them. Remember, you were warned.”

  A cold chill slipped down Ginevra’s spine, but she refused to show her fear. Like her anger or heartbreak, her fear would make them think they had won, too. They didn’t deserve anything from her, not even the emotions in her heart.

  It was only once her half-brothers had left Ginevra and her mother alone in the apartment—although, not before explaining they would have guards posted at the door to watch them—that her mother finally turned to her.

  Teary eyed, Marie grabbed both of Ginevra’s hands as the wetness slipped down her cheeks. Usually, her mother was a ray of happiness. Always smiling, so strong, and never sad. Lately, it seemed like sad was all she knew how to be.

  That broke her heart, too.

  Ginevra dragged in a ragged breath, and for the first time, a tear streaked down her own cheek. She didn’t try to wipe it away, her mother’s hands keeping her from moving. Not that she cared, now. Her mother could see the emotion. It was them that couldn’t.

  “It’s okay,” her mother whispered, nodding fast, “I promise it’ll be okay, Ginny.”

  “It won’t.”

  Marie shook her head. “It will. I will figure out a way to get you away from them, and this marriage. I will, I promise.”

  “Ma, don’t—”

  “They don’t scare me. It’ll be okay, Ginny.”

  Except it wouldn’t.

  It really wouldn’t.

  It was the quiet whispers from the hallway that made Ginevra and her mother pull away from each other. A quick check over her shoulder confirmed what she figured, her seventeen and fifteen-year-old sisters waiting at the end of the hallway, standing close together like they were the only things keeping each other up at the moment.

  They probably were.

  “It’s okay,” Ginevra whispered to her sisters, seeing the tears in their eyes. This was not their life, either. This wasn’t what they knew, or how they expected to be treated. They shouldn’t have to watch their new half-brothers force their sister into a marriage she didn’t want with a stranger, but this was their new reality. And it was terrifying. “Greta, Giulia, it’s okay, I promise.”

  It would have to be.

  For them, for her mama ... she was going to have to be strong. Because if not her, then would Kev or Darren go for them next?

  Ginevra couldn’t safely say no.

  That left her to keep them safe.

  “Come here,” she told her sisters.

  The oldest, Greta, came first. Giulia was quick to follow. Just a month ago, they had been normal girls, too. Experiencing high school, and their worries filled up by things like what jeans looked best with what shoes, and if they were going to pass their upcoming tests. Now, they had far greater worries.

  That shouldn’t be how it was.

  Once her younger sisters were sitting with her and Marie on the couch, Ginevra felt a little better. It felt good to hug them, to promise that things were going to be okay.

  “Why are they making you marry—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ginevra said quickly, hushing Greta as she shot a look to her mom. “You don’t need to worry about me. I am going to be fine.”

  And so would her little sisters.

  Somehow, she was going to make sure of it.

  • • •

  “Ginny?”

  “Yeah?”

  Giulia looked away from the casket a few feet in front of them to stare at her oldest sister. “I don’t know how to say goodbye to Mama.”

  Greta made a soft noise under her breath—it sounded like an agreement—but she didn’t look up from her hands. She’d been doing that for a week, now. Staring silently, but saying very little, and not engaging.

  Ginevra worried more and more for her sisters with every passing day. For now, though, she had to worry about getting them all through this horrible day. “You don’t have to go up and say goodbye that way, if you don’t want to, Giulia. Mama knows that you love her, okay?”

  Her youngest sister nodded.

  “But I’m going to say goodbye, now. Are you both okay here?”

  The girls nodded.

  She didn’t believe them.

  None of them were okay, now.

  Ginevra left her sisters behind in the pew, and headed for the altar. She glided her fingertips over the chrome decals of the shiny, black casket sitting atop the altar. For now, the church was quiet ... but not for long. Soon, it would fill with grieving people who had known and loved her mother, ready to send Marie off to a better place.

  They would never know the truth. Not her sisters, or the people coming to the church today.

  They would never know that her mother was killed trying to save her from a fate nearly as bad as death itself. That those scars on Marie’s wrists weren’t self-inflicted, no matter how much money the coroner had been paid to say so. That Ginevra blamed herself every single day for this.

  I’m sorry, Mama, she thought. I’m so sorry.

  She stroked the closed casket again, wishing she was better. Because then, she might have been able to stand having the top opened, so she could look at her mother’s face and say those same words out loud. Instead, she was stuck like this.

  Wishing she could be better.

  I love you, Mama.

  Peering over her shoulder, Ginevra found her young sisters—still teenagers, and now left with her to take care of them—sitting in the first pew. The priest had suggested the girls be allowed to have a few minutes with their mother’s casket alone before the funeral started. He thought it might help them to say goodbye, but Ginevra didn’t know if it mattered.

  They were still heartbroken.

  Still crying.

  Still alone.

  And now, terrified, too.

  Because their brothers had done this. People who were supposed to be family had taken away the one person they loved more than the world and life itself.

  Ginevra needed to be better for them, too. For Greta, and Giulia. No one else would be here to take care of them, and make sure they weren’t pawns for Kev and Darren’s fucking games. For now, they were too young ... they couldn’t be used in a way to further the brothers’ agenda, but eventually they would be older.

  Eventually, they too would be on Kev or Darren’s radar. Ginevra needed to make sure that never happened. And she didn’t want them to be used against her, either. Not like her mother had.

  Marie thought to help her.

  Kev made sure she couldn’t.

  That couldn’t be her sisters, too.

  “Ginny,” came a soft voice to her left.

  There, she found Siena standing a few feet away. For the most part, her half-sister, yet another sibling she didn’t
know existed until Matteo died, was nothing like her brothers. Siena was sweet, kind, gentle, and all the things Kev and Darren didn’t know how to be. She showed true empathy and sympathy for the situation Ginevra had been put in, and she constantly stepped in between her brothers and sister when she thought she might be able to help Ginevra in some way. Even if it meant Siena got in trouble for it, too.

  At the very least, Ginevra thought she could trust Siena. That was saying a hell of a lot more than she felt regarding most other people in her life. She didn’t feel anything at all for them, now, except her sisters.

  Everyone else just fell in line.

  Except Siena.

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  Siena offered her a small smile. “You okay?”

  She shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Yeah, I ... get that.”

  Ginevra put her attention back on the casket, knowing she only had a few more minutes to spend alone with her mother before the funeral would start. Once the church filled with guests, she would be expected to put on her mask, and keep up the charade. Kev and Darren would expect nothing less from her, now.

  She would do it.

  She had to do it.

  For her sisters.

  But it killed her inside. It was taking a piece of her every single day. The closer she came to the date her brothers chose for the wedding, the worse she felt. In her heart, and in her soul. This was wrong, and all kinds of bad.

  This was not how it was supposed to be.

  “Hey, hey,” she heard Siena whisper. “It’s all right.”

  Ginevra didn’t realize it until she had been thrust right into the middle of a panic attack, but she bent over at the knees beside her mother’s casket. One hand stayed on the smooth, shined wood, while her other pressed overtop her racing heart to slow it down. She swore that if it didn’t calm, it was going to race right out of her chest. Or explode altogether.

  God.

  “It’s all right, Ginny, it is,” Siena said softly.

  She felt her half-sister’s hands on her shoulders, and then one rubbing across her back like she thought that might help, too. She bet her younger sisters were watching from the pew, seeing yet another horrifying thing to remind them that nothing about their life was normal anymore.