Effortless: A Legacy Novel

by Bethany-Kris

  “Every day is pick on you day when you bring a girl to work,” Lou said, smirking.

  Camilla hid her smile by looking away. Apparently, she didn’t need to worry about a damn thing, or feeling out of place. It was … good.

  Easy.

  “Seriously, get me the paperwork before I leave without it,” Tommaso said. “I’m not staying here for longer than I have to, if I have to listen to this shit.”

  Adriano pointed a single finger at Tommaso, but started digging in the desk. “Watch it, nipote.”

  Tommaso wasn’t even paying attention to his uncle. He had already moved onto his friend again.

  “Pick on me, huh?” Tommaso asked.

  Lou nodded. “Yeah, sorry, man.”

  “I’ll remember not to give you a call when we all head to Joe and Cory’s club opening up tonight, then.”

  “The new one downtown?” Lou asked.

  Tommaso shrugged. “Not for you.”

  Camilla knew Tommaso was just bothering his friend, but she decided to step in. After all, she might need the guy on her side someday. She pulled out her phone, and turned the screen on.

  Handing it over to Lou, she said, “Plug your contact in. I’ll call you when we’re leaving.”

  “Cam,” Tommaso said, looking like she’d just punched him in the gut. “What the hell, donna?”

  “Hey, I’m making friends,” she replied.

  Lou grinned, and punched his number into the phone. “I like her, Tom. You should bring her around more often.”

  “Yes,” Adriano agreed as he handed over a red file to Tommaso. “I agree.”

  “He’s been up there a while,” Camilla said, glancing upward at the high ceiling.

  “Business,” Tommaso’s mother replied.

  Camilla nodded, and went back to the bread she had rolled. Using a knife, she cut a cross-cross pattern along the top part of the loaf.

  “I don’t usually cut it like that,” Abriella said.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “I can roll it up again, if you want.”

  Abriella laughed, and patted Camilla’s cheek with a floury hand. “I just meant to say, that’s a new way to cut the loaf.”

  “Oh.” Camila set the knife aside, and brushed her hands off on her jeans. It left flour handprints behind, but she didn’t mind. Abriella had asked her to help with the bread she had been baking, and Camilla didn’t want to refuse. “Well, my mom does it like that because it makes it look like a cushion after it’s done.”

  “Huh.” Abriella picked up a bit of flour, and sprinkled it over her rolled dough, and the countertop. She went about rolling the dough again. “I like it. How are you liking Chicago?”

  “It’s all right. I mean, it’s not New York or anything.”

  Abriella smiled. “I feel the same way when I leave this city. It takes some getting used to.”

  “But I like it here. Tom took me around today, and showed me different places.”

  “Met some people, too, didn’t you?”

  Camilla nodded. “A lot of them were at dinner, but yeah. It was nice to meet everyone again—one on one.”

  “We are a large family.”

  “Not like mine,” she admitted. “It’s just my mom and dad, brother, and a couple of aunts that moved away years ago.”

  “No grandparents?”

  Camilla shrugged. “My mom’s parents, but I’ve never even met them.”

  She could see the question lingering in Abriella’s gaze, but the woman didn’t ask for more. She was grateful because honestly, she didn’t even know what to say about her mother’s parents. All she knew was that they were not nice people.

  “We’ve made our family big over the years,” Abriella said quietly, still working away at the bread. “Tommas’s mother and father are dead, and so are mine. What we had left were relations made by marriage and friendships.”

  “Makes for peaceful business, I bet.”

  At least, Camilla assumed it would. She knew the closer a family was, the less likely they were to fight on the mafia side of things. Or, that’s what her father liked to say.

  Abriella glanced up from the dough with a sly smile. “And just how much do you know about business, Camilla?”

  She laughed. “Enough to know my place.”

  “That’s a start. What about my son?”

  Camilla cleared her throat. “I … never really asked Tommaso, to be honest.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it didn’t matter to me if he was connected, or not. It didn’t make a difference to how he treated me, or the things he did for me. I knew he was a good man, and the rest were just details.”

  Abriella’s hands slowed in her work. “What made you come to that conclusion?”

  “I was raised by a good man who lives in shades of gray. To people who only see his name come up on the news, he’s a criminal. He sells drugs, evades taxes, and puts guns on the streets. But to me, he is just my dad. It was the way he treated me that mattered. Not the rest.”

  As she spoke, Camilla kept her gaze focused on the next dough she was rolling into a perfect loaf just the way her mother had taught her. It was easier to be honest that way, as then she could simply speak and not worry about how her words might sound to Abriella.

  “You didn’t consider at all that Tommaso is the son of a boss—the only son? That someday, he might sit where his father does because those expectations have followed him around for his entire life?”

  “Not really,” Camilla said.

  She knew, of course. She wasn’t a stupid girl.

  Camilla just didn’t think it mattered.

  “Do you think that’s because you’re a bit naive, or perhaps you grew up in this world of … business?”

  “Definitely not naive,” Camilla replied.

  “And the other one?”

  Well …

  Camilla didn’t think it was entirely because she grew up inside the suffocating world of Mafiosi, either.

  It was something else entirely.

  “As long as he loves me, then I don’t care about the rest,” Camilla said, finally looking up to meet Abriella’s gaze. “I never went looking for a man who lives his life on the right side of the law. I never went looking for a man at all. A good man found me and something about me was good enough for him. That’s all I want to know. It’s all I needed to know about Tommaso.”

  Camilla sighed. “That doesn’t mean I went into this blind, or that I’m moving forward with blinders on, either. It just means I know what I signed up for here.”

  “Do you? Do you know how hard it is to love a man who can be taken away with one misstep—in a single second? Do you know how difficult it is to build a life around a man whose very nature could leave you entirely without because he is not an easy man?”

  “I do now,” Camilla said.

  It was scary.

  It was also their life.

  “And?” Abriella asked.

  “And I still love him.”

  Once more, Abriella reached across the counter, and patted a floury hand against Camilla’s cheek. “I like you, Camilla Donati.”

  “Do you?”

  “It’s hard not to.”

  Tommaso’s mother smiled in a way that said she knew something Camilla didn’t.

  “I can see why he found you,” Abriella murmured. Then, louder, she added, “You can stop hiding around the corner, Tommaso. I know you’re out there, son.”

  Sure enough, Tommaso stepped into the entryway of the kitchen. His striking blue gaze fell on Camilla, but his face was blank. No emotion—nothing to give away he had been listening in to their conversation.

  She didn’t need to see it in his face.

  She found it in his eyes.

  Questions he had answers to now. Things he hadn’t asked her.

  Abriella gave Camilla a wink, and a smile. She understood what the woman had known that she didn’t. Even men like Tommaso needed reassu
rance—they simply didn’t ask for it. His mother had known he needed something he wasn’t going to say he wanted, and so she gave it to him.

  Camilla took that as a lesson to learn, and one to keep close. A lesson from a woman who probably understood what she was talking about better than anyone knew.

  Joe Rossi was built like a brick shithouse, and his younger brother Cory was just as big. That was the first thing to come to Camilla’s mind when she was introduced to Tommaso’s cousins.

  She was fucking dwarfed by them.

  Sure, she had to stare up at Tommaso because he was tall, but it would take three of her easily to make one of them.

  “You sure she’s legal to be in this joint?” Joe asked.

  Tommaso gave the older of the two a look. “Is Cory?”

  Cory grinned at Camilla, dangerous in a blink. “I’m not legal to be here, either, but I own half the place. No worries.”

  Joe shook his head. “Don’t let her drink, Tommaso. I don’t need an underage drinking charge or some shit. I would never get my alcohol license back.”

  “Can’t drink tonight anyway,” Camilla said.

  She didn’t give a reason why, though.

  “Lou!” Cory shouted.

  The man in question broke through a small crowd of people near the entrance with a wide grin on his face. Camilla looked up at Tommaso, and shrugged.

  “Seems he didn’t need me to get him in here, huh?”

  Tommaso chuckled. “He knew I was fucking with him. Cory is a good friend of his, too.”

  Camilla figured that one out about five seconds ago.

  Lou and Cory greeted each other with a handshake, and a smack on the shoulder. Cory pointed at something across the floor—a secondary bar of some sort, and then gave the rest of them a nod.

  “Nice to meet you, Cam,” he said. “And Joe, don’t be an ass to everyone tonight. The whole point of this business is to keep people in the club.”

  Joe made a noise under his breath, but didn’t fully respond. Cory was gone with Lou a couple of seconds later.

  “Dad’s always telling me to look out for him. Like Cory has got somebody else to worry about coming after him when he’s not looking or something,” Joe muttered. “Who he’s really got to worry about is me kicking his arrogant ass.”

  “You should meet my brother if you think Cory is arrogant,” Camilla said.

  Joe passed her a look. “Cross Donati, right?”

  Camilla laughed. “Let me guess—”

  “The most arrogant fucker I have ever met.”

  “Knew it.” Camilla shrugged one shoulder under her tight, black club dress. “Bet you still like him, though, don’t you?”

  “Cross is … hard not to like. Or respect.”

  “It’s usually one or the other with him,” Tommaso agreed. “Find us later, Joe?”

  “Sure, if I have time. Seems someone is going to spend his night showing off, and that leaves me to be the boss of the place.”

  “Knock it down to him being the younger one, man.”

  Joe nodded. “Right, that’s what it is.”

  Tommaso’s hand at Camilla’s lower back guided her through the people, and closer to the bar. His gray-blue gaze drifted over her dress, and down to the black heels on her feet. “I did tell you how nice you look tonight, didn’t I?”

  Camilla scoffed. “Nice?”

  “For the moment, I’m keeping this PG, Camilla. Don’t push me.”

  Heat danced through her insides.

  “You did tell me, Tom.”

  With that, she hooked a finger around the tie he wore, and pulled him in for a kiss. The black suit he had put on earlier did everything good for his body. It showed off his leanness, gave him that tall, dark, and handsome bit to accentuate.

  She loved it.

  “Did you have fun with my mother today?” he asked.

  “I did.”

  “That’s good.” He pressed a kiss to her nose. “I knew she would like you.”

  Camilla smiled softly. “You could have asked me, you know, about business and how I felt. You didn’t have to spy to find out.”

  Tommaso shook his head. “There is some stuff in this life you just don’t ask. You find out one way or the other. This was one of those for me.”

  “Did you think I knew?”

  “Entirely,” he replied. “I figured you would have stayed the hell away had you found a problem with it.”

  “I see,” she teased.

  Tommaso winked, and tugged on one of her loose waves of hair. Then, he gestured at the wall-length, built-in bar for the club. Behind it, bottles on shelves seemed to dance under the lights and strobes. The bass from the music pumped through the floors, and vibrated Camilla’s feet.

  “You can drink, if you want,” he told her. “Joe was just being a shit.”

  “You shouldn’t encourage underage—”

  His hand smacked her ass hard, quieting her. Still, a hot little squeak escaped.

  “So much for PG,” she told him.

  Tommaso shrugged. “I went as long as I could. I make no apologies for anything that happens next.”

  Camilla’s laughter melted into the sound of the music. “No drinking for me tonight, like I said. I have an essay I have to finish when I get back to your place, and then email it in to my professor. That way, I don’t have to rush home. I can stay … a few more days.”

  He glanced down at her. “Really?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, Tom.”

  “What’s the essay?”

  “Just a correlation between preemie births and lack of prenatal care for poverty stricken women.”

  “Heavy topic,” he said.

  “You can help me with big words, or listen to me key it out.”

  Tommaso leaned down to press a kiss to her head. “You don’t need help, but how about I feed you snacks, and make sure you’re watered every few minutes.”

  “Watered?”

  “Coffee?”

  “Will you switch it to wine when I’m almost done?”

  Tommaso patted her ass again. “Whatever you want, babe.”

  “Anything I want?”

  His gaze darted down to her as he gestured for the bartender at the same time. “What’s your filthy mind getting up to now? I recognize that tone, Camilla. That tone means sex.”

  He was so right.

  “I mean, it’s kind of good you know the owners. You probably have a way into the office.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Camilla wet her lower lip and she looked up to the row of windows on the second level that seemed to be one-way, considering she couldn’t see inside. “We could … watch the show, too. Just not give a show.”

  Tommaso cleared his throat. “Let me have a drink first.”

  “Whiskey does taste better on your tongue.”

  “Bet it tastes divine on your pussy, too.”

  Camilla smirked. “Probably. Save some to bring with you and we can test that theory out.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE CLUB’S office door slammed shut, and Tom backed Camilla into it. He kissed a path down the delicate column of her throat, and sucked hard on her pulse point. It left a pretty red mark behind when he finally let go.

  Already, his hands were skimming beneath the skirt of her black dress. Smoothing over silky thighs to find the waistband of the thong she wore underneath. He tugged, and she gave a little shimmy of her hips.

  That was it.

  The thong fell down.

  “Should lock the door,” she told him.

  Tom kissed her stained red lips once more. “No way. Nobody’s coming up here.”

  “They could.”

  “They won’t.”

  Tom considered lifting Camilla against the door to fuck her, but that hadn’t been what she wanted earlier. The desk had a nice view of the one-way windows overlooking the club’s floor, but it was too fucking high.

  Damn, Joe.

  Why did the fucker need su
ch a big desk?

  “Too bad you weren’t a couple of inches taller,” Tom said as Camilla’s teeth teased his jawline. “Could have bent you over the desk.”

  Camilla fake gasped. “Don’t point out my shortness, Tom. That’s not nice.”

  His laughter rumbled. “I was just saying.”

  She waved a hand high. “There’s a whole world up there that I don’t even know about, okay. Don’t rub it in.”

  He laughed even more.

  Camilla gave him a look.

  Tom couldn’t stop. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “Do you know August got me a fucking stepstool as a gift when I moved into my apartment?” Camilla glowered at him. “So then I could reach the cupboards.”

  “That’s perfect.”

  “Stop laughing. This is serious, Tommaso!”

  He tried—he really, really did.

  The only thing that finally stopped his laughter was a hard kiss from Camilla, and the way her tongue slammed against his with sinful intent. Her hands pushed against his chest, and knocking him back from the door.

  He didn’t stumble, but he hadn’t been expecting the move, either. Still, he managed to grab her as he took the couple of steps backward. He pulled Camilla along with him, dragging her over to the window ledge.

  Flipping her around, he shoved her against the ledge. There was one for the window, and a smaller one on the floor. Camilla stepped up on the ledge at the floor, and it gave her just a few extra inches of height. His hand at her neck forced her upper body downward and forward. The side of her cheek rested against the glass, and her skirt rode up to show just a peek of her ass.

  Camilla grasped the ledge with the first smack of Tom’s palm against her ass. On the second one—a little lower where her ass melted into her thigh—she moaned. For the third, she pushed back against his palm when he slid it between her thighs.

  “Christ, you’re wet. Like a damn lake down here.”

  Her laughter came out airless and sweet. “I like it when you spank me.”

  “Say it again and I’ll think about giving you another.”

  “Tom.”

  “Say it again, Cam.”

  Her brown gaze darted over her shoulder to lock onto his. “I like it when you spank me, Tommaso. Give me another, please.”