From what I’ve learned about her, I know she’s alone. She doesn’t know the world I live in, and I don’t want to drag her into it. But while I’ve tried to be a good man, something I’ve never been known or described as, all I want is her in my bed. Her in my kitchen. Her in my living room. Her in my car. Her with me, any way I can have her.
Clenching my hands even tighter around the steering wheel, I hit it with my right palm and rub my jaw, trying not to think about how tight my pants have gotten. Just the thought of her gets me harder than I’ve ever been, and I don’t like that all the men in the audience tonight were watching her and wishing they could have her when I’m not there.
I’m fucking crazy.
She makes me fucking crazy.
But I have a right to be when some piece of scum thinks he can put his hands on her. I’m going to fuck him up before killing him so he knows what it feels like to have the unwanted hands of someone stronger than him slowly stealing the life from his piece of shit body.
Leo is going to tear into me at some point later, but I don’t give a shit. I’ve dealt with my older brother my entire life and he doesn’t scare me. No one does.
Leo may be the head of the family and rule over our entire empire from his tower in New York, but I’m the ruler of Atlantic City. I could have been his underboss, but I never wanted that. Our father knew that, too, so he trained Leo to take his spot and my younger brother, Luca, to be his underboss.
I always wanted AC as my own. When I turned eighteen, I came to live at The Aces with my uncle Sal. He showed me how to run the business, and when he and my father were both murdered outside of one of our restaurants in Brooklyn, Leo and I stepped into our roles even though we hadn’t foreseen doing so until we were much older.
In the five years we’ve ruled together, we’ve doubled our family’s profits. With that, though, comes enemies and targets on our backs, which is why I’ve tried to stay away from Tessa. But she’s not a woman I could ever stay away from for long.
My phone starts buzzing in my pocket, and I see the screen on my car’s dashboard show that Enzo is calling me again. Hitting accept, I bark out, “What?” I’m already pissed at him.
“She’s refusing to come with me because she doesn’t know either of us.”
“Put her on,” I tell him. There’s no fucking way I’m letting her escape me now.
I hear the phone exchange hands, and I know she’s there, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Tessa,” I say low, not wanting to scare her. “Go with Enzo and let the doctor check you out.”
“I’m fine,” she says softly, but I hear the hitch in her voice that tells me she’s not.
“You’re not,” I say hard, keeping my voice under control. I don’t want her to hear my anger. Not at her, but at the situation. “He hit you. I’m leaving the city now and I’ll deal with him when I get back in a couple of hours, but I want you safe.”
“I’ll be safe at my apartment.”
Growling, I wring my hands on the steering wheel. “I need you to go with him, Tessa. We’ll talk when I get there.”
I need her to not be difficult on this.
“Okay,” she finally agrees, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“See you soon.” Ending the call, I press my foot down on the gas. Her voice…it does something to me. Delicate, yet strong. It makes me wish I was there with her to see her eyes. To see for myself if she’s okay.
The night I’m not there is the night she needs me.
Once I hit Jersey, I fly down the highways, no law enforcement agency daring to pull me over. I own their asses, and they know I can get them fired with a single phone call.
Hitting 100mph, I weave through the cars on the Parkway with only one thing on my mind. Tessa.
When I get to The Aces, I pull right into my private level of the garage and nod at one of my men standing guard at the elevator. Placing my hand on the pad, the laser scans my eye, and the doors open for me.
I’m big on security, and when I took over, I made sure the entirety of The Aces was updated so I always have control and can monitor who accesses what and when.
Going through the process of giving my handprint, retinal scan, and number sequence in the keypad at my penthouse door, I walk inside my home, my eyes landing on Tessa straight away. She’s leaning back against the couch with an icepack held firmly to her left eye, and my anger flares again, burning deep inside of me.
Her long legs are stretched out in front of her and she looks small and fragile. I know she’s not, though. A woman who is, could never handle being with a man like me. Tessa’s strong. She knows loss. She knows pain. She knows independence. She knows how to survive.
Facing Enzo, I give him a look that makes his eyes immediately fall to the floor. He knows he’ll pay for letting my woman get hurt on his watch.
In a few long strides, I’m beside Tessa. Looking at her, my anger wanes slightly at seeing that she’s asleep. She was comfortable enough in my home to let herself fall asleep. I don’t know why that fact means something to me, but it does.
I sit in the leather chair beside her and place my hand on her leg. Her eyes flash open in an instant, darting all around before settling on me.
Her hazel eyes are like rare jewels – a swirl of green and brown that comes together to form a unique color all her own. Mesmerizing. They hold my gaze for a long moment before they wander over my face and body. I stay silent, letting her take me in. When her eyes meet mine again, they have something in them that I can’t read.
“What’s your name?” Those are the first words she says, and her voice cuts me deep, shooting straight to my dick.
Jesus fucking Christ. It’s even better in person.
Her hand holding the icepack against her face falls to her side and my hands clench in fists.
Reaching out, I grip her chin lightly, and turn her face so I can get a better look at the swollen area around her eye and the bruise that’s forming.
My jaw clenches as I try and keep my anger at bay while my eyes sweep over her face before locking with hers. It’s a straight shot to my dick once again. Her eyes hold so much strength and power, mixed with a little fear that I know is because of me.
Brushing my fingers over her bruise, Tessa closes her eyes briefly, a little sigh leaving her lips as she leans the slightest bit into me. That little separation of her pouty lips is giving me visions of how they’d look stretched wide around my cock. I know I’m an asshole for thinking that while she’s hurt, but she’s reacting to my touch. To me.
She’s fucking amazing.
“I’ll be back, bella.” Standing, I stalk towards the door, but stop when I see Enzo still standing and looking down. Grabbing him by the throat, I slam him against the wall. “You were supposed to be watching her,” I growl out in a low voice so Tessa can’t hear me. “You let him touch her.” I squeeze his throat a little tighter. “I trusted you with her. And the only reason I’m not going to put a bullet in your brain right now is because she’s here and I don’t need her seeing that side of me yet. This is your one chance, Enzo.”
Releasing him, I walk out and straight into the waiting elevator. Punching the B button, it reads my fingerprint, and the doors close. The basement isn’t accessible to anyone but myself and my men. It’s deep below my casino and isn’t in the building’s blue prints, so no one knows it exists. The only entrance is through this private elevator, making it the perfect place to do my business.
Turning the next corner, I give my finger print and punch in the passcode to the door that grants me access to all of the rooms down here. There’s a conference room, security room, fully stocked artillery, and soundproof rooms for interrogations.
Tessa may not know it yet, but she’s mine, and what I’m about to do is my first act of my promise to protect her. To protect the strength I see in her eyes that I never want to see snuffed out by the evils of this world. I may have stayed away, but that was before she needed protecting, an
d before I touched her and saw the look in her eyes that made me never want to look away.
I pass a few of my men as I walk through the conference room and out into another hallway that leads me to one of the holding rooms. Nodding at Gino, who’s standing outside the door I need, he opens it for me, and I wait for the click of the door closing before I take a step towards the man handcuffed to a metal chair in the middle of this cement box.
I’m usually the one giving the orders to do the dirty work these days so it never traces back to me, but this time I’m making an exception. This is personal.
“Look at me,” I command, and the sorry excuse of a man lifts his head, his eyes going wide. “What’s your name?”
“T-Trent,” he stutters, his fear showing.
“Do you know who I am Trent?”
“Y-Y-Yes.”
“Do you know why you’re here?” My voice never wavers from its low, indifferent tone, and the little prick starts shaking like he’s freezing, while also sweating bullets.
He gives up on talking and just nods his head.
“You touched my woman tonight.” I take a step closer. “You put your dirty hands on her.” Another step. “You hit her.” Another step, and I’m towering over him. He shrinks down, somehow thinking that’ll save him from what I’m about to do to him. “Look at me,” I growl, the animal I keep caged wanting to come out, needing to see the fear in his eyes.
Lifting his head slowly, his eyes meet mine, and I give him a predatory grin as I shrug out of my suit jacket. I drape it over the empty chair in the corner and remove my ace playing cards cufflinks, rolling my sleeves up to my elbows.
Sliding my hands into a pair of leather gloves left on the chair for me, I unlock the handcuffs holding him to the chair and toss them to the ground. “Get up.”
“W-What?”
“Get up.”
“I c-can go?”
“Sure, why not?” I say with controlled casualty.
Standing back, I make it seem like he’ll be able to pass by me, but the second he takes a step, my fist slams into his face, taking pleasure in the sound of his bones crunching beneath my fist.
A scream is torn from him that sounds like music to my ears. His pain is my pleasure, and the blood trickling down his cheek is a beautiful sight.
Picking him up by his shirt, I throw him against the cement wall, gripping his throat tightly. The sound of Trent gasping for air fills my ears, and I smile sadistically as I squeeze his throat just a little more.
His hands try and scratch at mine, but it’s without much effort when all he gets is leather, and he slowly starts to fade before me, his eyes losing the will to live. But just when he’s about to pass out, I release him, letting him fall to the floor in a heap. He coughs violently, sucking in ragged breath after breath.
My foot rears back and kicks him in the ribs, and another scream is torn from him as the air he so preciously needs leaves his lungs in a rush.
Toeing him on the ground, I grip him by his shirt and haul him up onto his knees, punching him in the face again.
“Let’s see what hand you hit her with. Lifting his hands, I see the right one has a ring on it, and I know instantly that that’s the one he used. “I don’t think you’ll need this hand anymore, do you?” I taunt, and he whimpers like a fucking scared little girl.
I pull out a switchblade from my pocket, and Trent’s eyes widen. Placing his hand on his thigh, I stab the knife through the back of his hand and straight into his leg, pinning it down. His garbled scream echoes around my head and I grip his throat.
“You won’t be leaving here alive, Trent.” Pushing him to the floor, I grab him by the hair and hoist him up so his back is to me, not wanting to get his blood all over me.
Yanking the knife out of his leg, he screams again, a little weaker this time due to the blood seeping out of him, and I hold the knife to his exposed throat.
Jesus fucking Christ, he’s crying.
“No one touches my woman without dying,” I tell him, slicing the knife clean across his throat. Blood spurts out from the cut and I push him to floor as his tries to cover the open wound, but it’s useless.
I wipe the knife off on his pants and wrap it in my handkerchief, putting it back in my pocket to clean thoroughly later. Removing the leather gloves, I leave them on the chair for Gino to use when he takes care of the mess, and grab my jacket.
I step around the blood pool forming and leave the room, turning to Gino by the door. “Clean it up.”
“Yes, sir.” He nods, and I walk back out the way I came, feeling better than I did when Enzo first called me.
The way everyone was looking at me in the meeting after he called… Leo especially, gave me a look that said it all – be careful.
He had someone once, years ago. He never told anyone, and he never brought her around, but we all knew. He’d disappear most nights and he’d never pick up women when we went out. But when he took our father’s place, that was the end of whatever they had together. He stopped disappearing for chunks of time and became the hardened, ruthless man that I know today.
He doesn’t talk about it, and I would never ask. Feelings aren’t something we ever share in my family. Feelings make you vulnerable. Feelings get you killed.
All the men in our family know the consequences of having a woman in their lives. Especially a woman not from our world who doesn’t know the score of what they’d be getting into when they’re with one of us.
My mother was never in love with my father. I don’t know if my aunts and uncles were ever in love either. Marriage to us is a convenience, a business transaction, a means to an end. I’m sure they were fond of each other in some way or another, even friends. But a real relationship? Not even close.
The only two people I ever saw in my world who truly cared about one another were my grandparents. They were an anomaly, though. Where my grandfather was hard, my nonna was soft. Where he was tough, she was forgiving. And where he was ruthless, she was caring. They were opposites from both ends of the spectrum, but they worked. The only time I ever saw that man smile was with her, and that was when he thought no one else was around.
My nonna taught all of her children and grandchildren how to respect the attributes of a woman. She taught us what one can offer a hardened man with no redeeming qualities other than his loyalty and devotion to his family name. A man like me. She showed us there is a possibility for truth and love, which is why I always preferred being at my grandparent’s house over mine.
But that was quickly taken from them when my nonna got cancer and my grandfather had to watch her die right in front of his eyes each day, with no power to change the outcome.
That was when we all saw what love can do to a man. He was destroyed. Without her, he was nothing more than a shell of himself, and it drove him to an early grave right along with her with a heart attack.
I never wanted that for myself.
Chapter 4
Tessa
“Are you hungry?” Enzo asks from somewhere behind me. I haven’t moved from my spot on the couch since I arrived almost four hours ago, and I’ve just been staring at the unlit fireplace in front of me for the past hour.
My mystery man is sexier than I could have ever imagined. And now that I’ve seen him up close, and looked into his dark eyes, I realize nothing I could have come up with in my head would have done him justice.
He’s dark. He’s dangerous. I saw it in his eyes, his walk, his posture, and his entire aura and demeanor. But there’s something else there. Something I can’t help but be drawn to while still remaining just the slightest bit afraid of him.
I need to know his secrets, what makes him tick, why he comes to watch me every week, why he leaves me lavish gifts without ever having met me, and why he’s had someone following me.
“Tessa?”
Blinking out of my thoughts, I look up at a concerned Enzo, and remember that he asked me a question.
“Yes?”
“I asked if you were hungry.”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. I know I was when I left The Aces after the show, but my stomach turned to lead the moment I thought my life was going to be left in the hands of that asshole.
“I can make you something. Toast? Soup? Or do you need a strong drink?” he offers, and I give him a small smile.
“A drink, I think.”
Nodding, he walks over to the dry bar in the corner of the room against the wall of windows and pours me a hefty glass of amber liquid from a crystal decanter.
“Whiskey?” I ask when he hands it to me, and he gives me a curt nod. “Thanks.”
Taking a sip, it goes down smooth, spreading through me with a warmth that pools in my stomach. I’ve never had expensive whiskey before, and so I take another sip, savoring the sweet burn on my tongue before swallowing.
When the front door opens, I know who it is immediately by how the frayed nerve endings in me spark alive and I jump where I sit, the liquid in my glass almost spilling over before I steady my hand again.
My God, he’s beautiful. Beautiful in the way lightning is when it cracks across the sky during a summer thunder storm – powerful, dangerous, electric, uncontrollable, a force of nature. You want to get closer, you want to dance in the warm rain, but you know if you do, then you risk getting struck. You risk getting burned. You risk everything. Including your life.
But if you survive, you cheat death, and that’s a euphoric rush straight to the soul, making you feel more alive than ever before.
He’s a force of nature with a direct line straight to my core, heightening everything I’m feeling.
He’s probably somewhere around thirty, but every trace of youth has been wiped from him. Every inch of him is all man.
I can’t help the slight shaking in my hand as I bring the crystal tumbler to my lips again and take a larger sip than before, needing the whiskey to calm my nerves.
He watches my every movement, his eyes darkening when my tongue peeks out to lick the drop of liquid left behind on my upper lip.
Casino King: A Dark Mafia Romance (Carfano Crime Family Book 1) Page 3
