Once Burned (Morelli Family, #3)

by Sam Mariano

  “It was his idea to remove Mateo. He wants Dante in his place. Wasn’t about Castellanos, we just… there was no one inside the family we could go to. We were just using the old man’s hatred of Mateo for our own purposes. If Dante took over, he’d take down Castellanos anyway.”

  Now this is fucking news. It’s not bad enough I have two traitors to deal with, now I might actually have a whole fucking rebellion on my hands?

  Vince’s gaze flickers over to Joey, then back to me. “He’s not dying, you know. Mateo tells everyone he’s sick, but he’s not. Mateo just keeps him drugged up to keep him out of the way so he can stay in charge.”

  “Does Dante know about any of this?” I ask.

  Vince shakes his head no. “I don’t think so.”

  I rake a hand through my hair—or, I try, forgetting I cut it all off. “Fuck me,” I mutter.

  This mess just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It was one thing having to go up against the Castellanos family, needing to locate Antonio and talk Mateo out of massacring everyone with even a drop of his blood in their veins, but now I’m told my own army’s infiltrated with this kind of bullshit, riddled with problems on the inside, too?

  “You shouldn’t have come back,” Vince tells me, as if he can read my mind.

  “No shit.”

  When I left, there was a part of me that wondered if I’d miss it. Right now I can’t imagine why I would.

  Sighing, I look back to Vince. “I want to let you walk out of here, Vince. But I need to know, really know, that you aren’t going to pull anything like this again. And if Mateo finds out you were involved? We’re both fucked. I am putting my neck on the line for you, kid, and if you make me regret it, I will bring so much fucking agony on you that you’ll beg me for death. I need to know right now that you will never betray Mateo again.”

  I’m tense, waiting for his response. Given his attitude up to now, I’m not confident he’ll swear to it, and I’m not looking forward to ending his life. Vince’s gaze drifts over to where Joey fell—family. Mateo’s own brother. The kid I used to play baseball with, even though I fucking hated the game.

  Vince looks back at me, and finally he nods.

  “Good,” I say simply. “I really didn’t want to pump bullets into the heads of two more people I fucking like.”

  Vince’s brow furrows as he reminds me, “You already put a bullet in his head.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Joey.”

  Fire jumps in his eyes again, this time directed at me instead of Mateo. “Mia had nothing to do with this.”

  “And it wasn’t Joey’s idea,” I point out, holding his gaze. “You may not be afraid to die, Vince, but are you prepared to keep getting the people you love killed?”

  He all but snarls at me, and I realize we probably won’t be friends after this.

  Finally he spits, “I won’t betray him again.”

  I nod. “Good.” Glancing over at Joey, I add, “Clean this up.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks, his eyes widening.

  “Nope,” I say, heading for the door.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Elise cooks dinner, but I can’t enjoy it.

  She keeps stealing glances at me, in the floor, sitting at a damn box instead of a table, but she doesn’t ask questions. I appreciate that, because there’s nothing I could tell her.

  When she’s clearing away our dinner plates, I finally say, “I need you to pack up some things tonight, whatever you need for at least the next couple weeks.”

  Frowning, she drops to the floor beside me, curling her legs up to her side. “Why? Are we going somewhere?”

  I nod, meeting her gaze. “We’re going to stay at the mansion for a little while. There’s some stuff going on that could get dangerous, and I’m going to piss a lot of people off. I need to know you’re safe so I can concentrate on my own tasks.”

  She smiles just a little, but I can tell she’s making an effort to tone it down so she doesn’t aggravate me. “Okay. When do we leave?”

  “I’m gonna take you over in the morning when I go for work. We’ll stay in my old room while we’re there. Same as before, if you need to go somewhere, you need to take an escort. Not Vince.”

  “Why not Vince?”

  “Just… not Vince.”

  “Okay,” she says, nodding.

  “I don’t think he will, but if Vince offers to take you anywhere, don’t go. And don’t say anything to Mateo about these instructions.”

  She frowns, but nods again, accepting my orders. Maybe it is good she’s a little trained.

  Jesus Christ, listen to me.

  Shaking my head in self-disgust, I lean back until I’m flat on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Elise comes over and curls up next to me, her arm settling around my waist.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks.

  “Just had a bad day.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Do you have a time machine?”

  “I did once; it broke.”

  “Damn.”

  Elise sighs, just a little sigh, and her finger slips through a gap in my shirt. I don’t respond, but then she undoes a button, making a bigger space. Then another. And another.

  “What are you doing?” I ask mildly.

  “I wanna make you feel better,” she tells me.

  I feel dirty from the day. I shouldn’t even be letting her touch me, but my body overrules my brain’s judgment on this one. Especially when she unbuttons my pants and slides her hand inside, grabbing hold of my cock.

  I let myself get lost in her ministrations as she strokes me, in the way her soft hand moves up and down, up and down. She pushes her hair back over her shoulder and leans down, dropping kisses down my chest, down my abdomen. She gives me a playful little look, then she releases me so she can tug my pants down.

  My instinct is to tell her she doesn’t have to, but the prospect of Elise’s lips around my cock is too tempting to pass up.

  Elise sits on her knees beside my hip, biting down on her bottom lip as she grasps my cock again, tugging it a few more times before taking the plunge. She takes just the tip in her mouth at first, then slowly works her way down my length.

  “Oh, fuck,” I mutter, closing my eyes. I open them again fast, because I don’t want to miss this, but Jesus, that feels incredible. Her tongue slides around the tip as she pulls back up, not quite coming off, just creating suction. I clench my hands at my sides, digging into the carpet like I want to grab onto her hair. Finding a rhythm, she moves her mouth over my cock again and again, involving her teeth a few times more than I’d like, but this is likely her first one, and I’m not complaining. She could probably bite my cock off, and I’d just be grateful its last memory was that of her warm, wet lips wrapped around it.

  I don’t know if she’s prepared for me to come, but right as I’m about to warn her, she speeds up and pleasure explodes, the evidence pouring out of me and right into her mouth.

  She takes it like a champ, swallowing and then running her lips over me one more time to make sure everything’s tidy.

  I laugh a little, because she’s still cleaning, even when she’s giving me head.

  Elise comes back up to lie down beside me once she’s done. “What?” she asks, because of the laugh.

  I shake my head, smiling faintly. “You’re just adorable.”

  “Thank you,” she says, pulling my arm around her so she can snuggle into my side.

  “Thank you,” I say, leaning over and dropping a kiss on top of her head.

  “You didn’t give me an assignment this morning,” she tells me.

  “I forgot. You still want me to?”

  Nodding, she says, “I like it. Though if we’re going to be staying at Mateo’s again, I can probably help out around the house while I’m there, so I’ll have more to do. I mean, Meg was supposed to replace me and she went and got promoted to wife, so Maria probably has a lot to do.”

 
; “Damned inconvenient,” I agree, my mind tempted to wander back into Mateo’s murky bullshit. I pull back, refusing to go there. This is my time off, I will fill it with Elise, not him.

  “Can I ask you something?” she asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Who did you love before me?”

  I turn my head to look over at her, and she blushes a little.

  “I mean, not that you love me,” she amends. “But you know what I mean.”

  “There really wasn’t anyone. I know you wouldn’t think so, given my age, but before I got trapped in Mateo’s world, I really wasn’t doing too much. I didn’t expect to live too long given the things I did do, and any… relationships I had were short-lived and usually meaningless.”

  “That sounds sad,” she says. “I don’t think I’d ever have a relationship like that.”

  “No, I don’t imagine you would,” I agree.

  “Are you ever afraid you might get killed doing what you do?”

  I glance over at her again. This isn’t a cheerful line of questioning. “Sure. It never really used to scare me, but I’m a lot less keen on the idea now.”

  “You weren’t afraid to die?” she asks, propping herself up, resting her chin on my chest.

  I shake my head. “Not really.”

  “I’d be afraid,” she says, quietly. “Like, really afraid. Last night was pretty exhilarating, but I couldn’t do what you do.”

  I smile slightly, trying to imagine Elise, even with her little kickass mugger moves, doing what I do. “No, I don’t think it’d be a good fit.”

  “I’m gonna stick to making muffins,” she tells me.

  “That’s probably for the best.”

  “I like that you’re capable of it, but I don’t like that you’re ever in danger.”

  “You like that I’m capable of…?”

  “Taking care of things,” she says evasively.

  “Violence?”

  She shrugs. “You do what you have to do.”

  I guess living in a mob house throughout your formative years, even if sheltered from the darkness of it, can desensitize even a normal person to that sort of thing.

  “It makes me feel safe,” she adds. “When I first met you, when you first defended me like that, it just… right off, you seemed like someone trustworthy. Someone good. When you first came on the scene, I thought you were a Morelli I just hadn’t met yet.”

  I scoff a little at the idea. “Really?”

  She nods, smiling slightly. “It’s not such a stretch.”

  “You can usually tell a Morelli by the look of them, if not by the behavior.”

  “I didn’t know. It was a little harder to tell with you,” she says, her eyes drifting to the scarred left side of my face.

  “Yeah,” I say, absently touching it. “The Morelli men are uniformly pretty.”

  “You’re more intimidating and ruggedly handsome, but I think this has a lot to do with it,” she says, reaching out and brushing my cheek herself. “It’s hard to look at you without it, but if you just look at the one side, you can tell you have a certain prettiness to you, too. The scarring just gives you that ‘don’t mess with me’ look, where Mateo is more… ‘come mess with me. I’ll destroy your life, but don’t mind that.’ And Vince, he’s young, but he’s like the sulky James Dean type. Alec—I really don’t understand where his nose came from, he’d be pretty otherwise. And Joey, he looks the most like you. I think because he has the lighter hair, more golden chestnut than black.”

  The mention of Joey makes me sad. “His mom was blonde,” I explain, though she didn’t ask. “Normally the Morelli genes are dominant, but… it happens. Luciana had lighter hair, too.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She tried to kill Mateo.”

  “Why?”

  I shrug. “She was crazy. Like, really crazy. She was technically Matt’s eldest child, and even though there’s no way a woman could head this family, she didn’t want to accept her role. Felt she’d been born to more. It was kind of bizarre, considering he killed her whole family, but when she came back, she sucked up to Matt. Just worshipped him for some reason, like she was somehow at fault for what her mother had done and she wanted to make up for it.” I roll my eyes, because I personally think Belle was completely justified, but the Morelli men don’t accept infidelity. They’ll dole it out, but they sure won’t take it.

  “And yet she tried to kill his son?”

  “Matt and Mateo have had a bumpy relationship,” I tell her, thinking of what Vince told me today. About Matt not really being sick, just drugged up. I can certainly see Mateo doing that, but I would think he’d let me in on the secret.

  “Who killed her?” she asks.

  “Mateo.”

  Her eyebrows rise, like she’s surprised. “So he actually does get his hands dirty.”

  “Sometimes. He doesn’t have to, but he feeds the darkness from time to time.”

  “Do you ever do that? Kill if you don’t have to?”

  I shake my head, meeting her gaze. “No. I don’t have the desire in me; I just do it out of necessity.”

  She nods, like she was prepared for a worse answer, but pleased with that one. “Good. What do you think you would’ve done if you didn’t have to do this?”

  “I don’t like to consider it,” I tell her, propping my hands behind my head, so I can see her better. “I think another life would’ve suited me better, and it’s too late to change gears now.”

  “Like what kind? How would I have met you if we didn’t both get sucked into Mateo’s world?”

  “Maybe you would’ve been my student,” I say, smirking at her.

  She grins in approval. “Yeah? High school or college?”

  “Oof, college,” I say, grimacing. “I didn’t like that you were 16 when I met you, for the record. Typically I don’t go for younger girls; I like to stay in my own age bracket.”

  “How very un-Morelli of you,” she jokes.

  Well, sort of. It’s not really a joke, I guess, since it’s consistently true.

  “I wonder if I would’ve always liked older guys,” she says, still resting her chin on my chest, but gazing at the wall beyond me.

  So do I, and that makes me sad, too. She may daydream up scenarios in which we would’ve met outside of our circumstances, but we never would’ve. She would’ve been a normal girl with a normal life and she would’ve cycled through relationships with normal guys her own age until she found one smart enough to keep her.

  I know I didn’t cheat her out of that, but she got cheated nonetheless, and now I’m benefitting from it.

  “Are you happy with me?” I ask her. I know it hasn’t been long, and she’d probably say yes regardless, but I can’t really shoulder any more guilt today.

  “Of course I am,” she says.

  “I don’t feel like that warrants an ‘of course,’” I tell her. “You don’t have to say what you think I want to hear, you know. I only want the truth. I won’t be disappointed in it.”

  She reconsiders, and despite what I just said, my heart stops as her generally pleasant smile melts, giving way to actual deliberation. Finally she says, “I mean, it’s had its ups and downs, and it hasn’t been that long, but I like where we are now. I feel less like you’re trying to change me now, like you’ve accepted me more, and that helps. You had me kind of twisted up the first week. When Mateo told me I was coming here, I had certain expectations about what that meant, and then you didn’t act on any of them. And I wasn’t even sure I wanted you to at first, which is why I felt so… unsure about this whole thing, but then you gave me time to adjust. But then it was a little too much time, and I started to feel like Mateo misread what you wanted me for, and then I couldn’t figure out what you wanted me for, and no, I guess I wasn’t very happy about all that. But I’m the sort of person who always finds the bright side of any situation. That didn’t start when I went with Mateo; I was always like that, even as a kid. And i
t just so happens, there are a lot of bright sides to this for me. I already told you I had a crush on you back when you tutored me, so the groundwork was there, I only stopped because we stopped spending time together and you weren’t interested. Maybe Mateo wasn’t either, but he never expressly said that, and he gave me just enough encouragement to…”

  “Keep you on his hook,” I say with a nod of understanding.

  She nods, pursing her lips. “Yeah, I guess. Or maybe he didn’t even mean to, I don’t know.”

  “No, he did. You were his back-pocket threat to keep me in line.”

  “You wouldn’t have let him hurt me,” she says, frowning.

  “Nope. But he figures you would’ve let him… not hurt you.”

  She flushes at that and doesn’t say whether or not she would’ve. I’m half relieved and half consumed with dread, but I can’t focus on any additional dread tonight, so I let it go.

  “I kinda want to go to bed,” I tell her.

  “It’s 7:30,” she points out.

  “It’s been a really long day.”

  “Want me to read some Brontë?”

  “I would.”

  “And then we could have sex,” she offers.

  “This pot keeps getting sweeter,” I state, eyebrows rising in surprise.

  Elise grins and pushes up off the floor. “Let me clean up the kitchen first and I’ll be right in.”

  I stand, too, figuring this will be a good time to take a shower. Before I do, I approach her at the counter, lightly wrapping my arms around her and giving her a hug from behind. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” she asks, sounding surprised as she twists to look back at me.

  I place a soft kiss on her lips. “For being happy with me.”

  Her whole face seems to soften with tenderness and she turns in my arms, wrapping her arms around my neck and leaning in to press her forehead against mine. “Thank you for letting me.”

  She’s so close I can’t resist giving her one more kiss, then I break away, otherwise I’m never getting to the shower. She gives me a playful little wink as she turns around to clean up the counter, and I sigh, thankful that I have her, ‘cause there’s no way in hell I ever did anything to deserve her.