by Sunniva Dee
You shouldn’t thank me. Look at what I did.
I bob my head, not taking a chance on my own voice. But if Isaias were my son and Ariadna my granddaughter, maybe I’d have overlooked the dirty, messy, twisted road that got us here too.
I take my time with the last steps toward his door. It’s open like they left it, and it’s so quiet in there. My heart thuds, alive and afraid. I’m often brave, but I’m not that right now, in this moment. I’m okay with that.
I curl my fingers around the doorframe and close my eyes. I’m as silent as the room when I open them again, slowly, slowly to find my love on the bed, to take in what is left of him.
Streaks of moss color furl out from his pupils. They make the ring of green around them look brighter than usual, black lashes vibrating. His face isn’t as pale as I thought it would be. Isaias stares at me from the bed, hands fisted loosely on top of the blanket. I run my eyes over the lone needle taped to his hand. Then, I’m back to his dear, dear face. “Hey, you.”
“Beautiful Tatiana of the Valley,” he whispers. “Come here.”
I let out a hiccough and hurry to him. “You’re awake.”
“They didn’t tell you?”
“They did, but they kept you under for so long. I wasn’t sure if you would—” I sob and nuzzle my face into the crook of his neck. He smells of hospital soap, and nothing has ever smelled better. “I love you.”
“God, I love you.” He exhales. Tries to hug me back, but my man is still weak. “I started tossing and turning on the plane, so they decided to put me under again.” He rolls his eyes, lips shifting in a tired smile.
“Aww, someone else pulled your strings? I’m sorry.”
He lifts his thumb and catches a tear that’s tipping over the rim of my eye. “Apparently, someone else had pulled my strings for a while, there.”
“Actually, that was all you. You got in my way with your own strings, pulling the wrong ones and making my puppets dance instead of your own.”
His laughter is sexy when it’s hoarse. I find his mouth and kiss the remnant of it away. My Mafioso groans. “Can you lock the door? I need you. It’s been so long.”
“That’s the first thing you think of when you see me? When did you come out of the coma again? Two hours ago?” I tease.
“Four, maybe? You took forever to get here. Also, my cock woke up before me. I’ve been needing you for a while.”
“Boy, aren’t I lucky to have such a romantic boyfriend,” I purr, even as my heart grows too big for my chest.
“Please? Come here and sheath me for a moment, just a little bit, before my daughter returns.”
I cluck my tongue but do as he says; I lock the door and sway my hips on the way back to him. That makes him groan again. “Fuck, you’re beautiful.”
I hike my skirt up. Remove my panties while he watches, stare hooding as he does. “There she is,” he murmurs. “My little heaven. Get over here.”
I scan the contraption he’s on with my eyes. He sees it and unhinges the wall of his bed on one side, letting it drop down with a click. Then he waves me over. I pull his blanket to the side and smile at his hospital gown.
“Sexy?”
“Mm-hmm.” I help him pull it upward, revealing a rock-hard extension that makes my center throb. I stroke my hand up and down the shaft, rolling my palm over the bulb on the way down. I caress his balls, weighing them in my hand before letting go. He sighs and leans back against the pillow, eyes moving over my face. They’re so bright they seem backlit.
“Stop torturing me, Tatiana.”
“Yeah? What did you want again? I forgot.” I continue my deliberate massage, and he blinks slowly and finds my eyes with his. They smolder now.
“I want you to stop messing around.” In a burst of energy, he hoists me onto the bed. Surprised, I let out a yelp. I shoot a glance around me, scanning the windows and the door—to be on the safe side, you know.
It makes him snort. “Look at her. She’s such a badass. Kills for a living and shit, but she’s afraid someone’ll see her butt while she— Holy. Shit.”
I sway, letting him glide deep before I rock forward. When I lay down on him and find his mouth, his angle changes, and it instantly drives us to the brink of bliss. His hands go up, cupping my ass. He helps me. God, and I’ve missed everything about him. All this time, I didn’t know if I’d get him back.
As the heat builds inside of me, I form my hands around his face. I watch too-long hair slide through my fingers, and I tell him how he was gone, not there, away, so close to leaving me forever. I tell him how I couldn’t accept it, how I couldn’t face his family after the ambush I let him walk into.
“You can’t,” he whispers, irises glazed with desire, “You can’t blame yourself. It was my choosing. You think I’d have done anything differently?”
“Yes.” The single word hisses from me. You would have saved them both.
He shudders under me. It shoots pleasure straight to the center of my stomach. I kiss him. Move with him. He presses me close, until I stop thinking, until he takes over all movement, until I tremble in ecstasy, and he buries his nose against my throat, letting my hair cover his face.
Below me, he ripples languidly. His fingers dig into my neck and my hip, keeping us close, and I contract as I peak. When he groans his relief out against my ear, a hot stab goes off in my womb.
Later, soft caresses run down my spine and through my hair, combing it with jagged masculinity. “Gabriela was here.”
“She was?”
“Uh-huh. She’s guilt-ridden. Needs a shrink is what she does. Also needs to stop apologizing.”
“I bet. Are you ready to tell me a few things, now?”
“I guess.” He smiles tiredly. “Gabriela was the only one who knew about Melania and my fling. It was a stupid late-night decision we never intended to follow through on. Since we were of warring mafia nobility, our moment of rebellion felt great. What can I say—it was fucking hot to know our parents would kill us if they knew. Months later, she called me, letting me know she was pregnant.”
I kiss his temple and slide down beside him, leaving my knee over his thigh as I hug myself close.
“What needed to be done was never a discussion. The baby was there to stay, and it needed a father other than a Nascimbeni prince. Melania chose a boy a few years older, a Santa Colombini who was shot in a confrontation a few days earlier. It’d have been her word against anyone else’s, and his family wasn’t in a position to request blood tests.”
“Amedeo wasn’t too happy, I suppose.”
“No. But as far as he was concerned, Ariadna was Santa Colombini blood through and through, so once he was done punishing Melania for her slutty behavior, he supported them the way any doting grandfather would.”
He laughs under his breath. “You’d probably think a sixteen-year-old can’t love like a father, but all I thought of while Melania was pregnant was my kid.”
“You were in contact with her?”
“In the beginning, yes. Melania shot me updates via throwaways, pictures of her stomach I deleted afterward.”
I send him a quizzical look.
“Obviously, I had to erase our footprints. I’d never jeopardize my child by keeping shit around that could tie me to them.” Isaias swallows heavily, his Adam’s apple bobbing and dipping. “Her last text came when she was seven and a half months pregnant. Something was wrong with her. She was in severe pain. I threw fucking all caution out the window and called her, but she didn’t pick up.
“Three weeks passed. I worked my ass off to find someone who could get me news about her without giving away our connection. Those three weeks were the worst of my life. It was when I decided I’d get out of the mafia as soon as I moved away from home. It was also when I determined I’d have influence wherever I went, with actions attributed to me becaus
e I could afford to pay for them.”
I nod into his chest, pursing my lips against my amusement. “Seems you made that happen.”
He grunts quietly. “Melania called me back twenty-two days later. I was keeping that damn throwaway phone on my person day and night in case she contacted me. She’d given birth to our daughter prematurely. Ariadna was still in an incubator at the NICU, but she was growing stronger by the day.
“The last time I talked with Melania was a week after she had taken our newborn home to Il Palazzo Rosa. After that, it became too dangerous. She called me from the gardens, assuring me that Ariadna was doing great. She was greedy, she said, wanting milk every hour of the day, and I remember how that made me smile. We’d been so fucking close to losing her.”
I stroke a finger over his eyebrow, watching him blink calmly back at me. “So Gabriela was your spy?”
He lets humor out in a soft blow through his nostrils. “She was. Gabriela’s good at being no one.” He shrugs. “It’s what mafia children learn, so every summer she’d head over for me, hang with the famiglia, but the main purpose of the trip was always to watch Ariadna from afar and snap pictures for me.”
“Pictures you’d delete.”
“Of course.”
“Do you know how selfless you are, Isaias di Nascimbeni? Do you see it?”
“Bullshit. I was satisfying my own need by making sure Ariadna was growing into a happy little girl.”
“Right,” I breathe. “You’re such a tough guy, without scruples, just doing your own thing for your own winning.”
“That’s me.”
“Except everything you’ve done for the last decade has been with one goal in mind, hasn’t it?”
He sighs and pulls me down. “Your brain needs a break.”
I stroke a hand through brass locks I can’t get enough of. I’ve been out of it for days, maybe weeks, but even so, I know I’ve missed this. I feel full, like everything’s right today, between Tatiana here with me, and the incredible nine-year-old who sat by my bedside, holding my hand, staring into my eyes like she’s always known me the way I’ve known her.
Is there such a thing as innate love? I have to look it up.
It feels good to be out of secrets.
Ariadna was the first little person I saw when I woke up.
You’re my pappa. You’re awake now, grazie a Dio. My mamma told me you’d be with me if she ever had to leave.
Who knew Melania Santa Colombini put so much trust in me?
I saw your pictures on the internet. Mamma said you loved me much. Is it true?
Whenever I was in the news, they found me.
Yes, I’ve always loved you. I’ve loved you since the day you were made.
I’m so fucking grateful to the young woman I left behind in Venice with a growing belly. She kept our deadly secret and raised our baby. Where would we be today if it wasn’t for her belief in me?
“I think your dad’s happy you’re done with your McDonald’s visit,” Tatiana murmurs when my eyes water at the sight of my daughter.
“I’ll take you somewhere as soon as I get out of the hospital,” I say.
“Where to, Pappa?”
“It’s a surprise, baby.”
My daughter smiles the way Gabriela does. It’s small and mischievous, curving only the corners of her lips as she slides a questioning stare to Tatiana.
Tatiana shrugs and grimaces out her playful defeat.
It’s a pisser to run your empire from a hospital bed. I did it from Venice once I woke up in their ICU. Now, I’m running Lucid from St. John’s in L.A., and I’m not happy about it. My fucking body needs to get it together and get me the hell out of here.
“How ’bout the final cuts of Troy’s scene?” I say hoarsely to Gianni. I still have moments when my lungs don’t cooperate. Like right fucking now.
“Sweetheart,” Tatiana says. “Why don’t you leave it for now? Gianni can wait.”
I cough. Do the eye-shift she hates: upward, letting my lids cover most of my irises before I relax and meet her gaze again. I clear my throat, but the effort ends in another goddamn cough.
She leans over the hospital bed, snatches my cell, and hits speaker phone. “Gianni? Isaias can’t talk right now, so I’ll be his voice. What’s up with Troy’s scene?” She arches a brow at me while she waits for his reply. Sexy.
“Oh, just that I couldn’t be happier with the final cut. I’ll send the PG-version over to him tonight. I’ve got Johnson doing a last polish on sound as we speak. As for the… Can I talk openly?” He waits.
Tatiana narrows her eyes at me. God, this woman.
We’ve been through a lot together in a short period of time. She’s watched me pull guns with the serial number grinded off. She’s seen me ruthlessly clip down enemies to reach the goal in my head.
I’m not the only one who’s out of secrets. After she stormed Il Palazzo Rosa with the red-jackets, her secret was out too, and she could’ve taken me down with the Colombini and the Mobespierre Sanguine. Instead she wrote me up as her informant.
“Sure, Gianni. You can speak freely.” I inhale the air I’d lost as I stare at my woman. The question in her eyes is as clear as her irises. Do I want to hear this? She makes me laugh; I’m used to everyone following my lead, but it’s damn nice when someone doesn’t— if that someone is the beautiful Tatiana of the Valley.
Law frequently needs Crime. Egoistic reasons will pull the two together. Law needing information. Crime needing absolution and an opportunity to move on with a clean slate. Even so, there’s often a common goal, like with Tatiana and me: our ideal roads to get there might have been different, but we wanted an end to violence and relief for those who’d lived in fear.
“Okay, well, I have the X-version ready too. I’m talking the full version for the whole song,” Gianni replies on the other end.
“You do?”
“Yeah. I’ll upload it for you.”
As I hang up, Tatiana squints at me. I like that about her. It’s nice to have someone so close they try to enter your brain.
“The X-version?”
I shrug. Of course, she knows what we’re talking about, a music video where genitalia meet genitalia and ends in all the climactic juices.
“Isaias.” She tips her chin downward, stare piercing me as she silently nudges my morals.
“Tatiana.”
She doesn’t insist. Again and again, she’s perfect.
The X-cut wasn’t my plan for Clown Irruption. Our contract says PG only, which means I won’t use what I have without their consent. But filming adult content, you consider all angles; soft-core, hard-core, female-friendly, plus, plus, and with multiple cameras rolling, it’s a matter of economics to get the most out of each shoot.
Who knows what will happen in the future. Clown Irruption and I might agree upon a re-edited, uncut, or behind-the-camera edition of “Deep in You.” If that happens, Gianni will have us covered. Eventually, I’ll explain this to Tatiana, but with my current shortness of breath, I don’t bother.
“Where’s my littlest girl?” I whisper instead. It’s not like I haven’t seen Ariadna today, but I miss her.
My custody of Ariadna hasn’t been straightened out yet. They tell me there are Colombinis left in Venice and some random asshole in the U.S. wanting to claim her. Can’t say I’m worried, though. A little paternity test and a small haggle of lawyers, and we’re good to go.
“Your mother took her to some high-end kid’s place for lunch.”
I widen my eyes in fake surprise. “Really? That’s odd.”
“Isn’t it? I guess she likes her grandbaby a little bit?”
I grin. With Ma, it’s all about the heart. “She enjoys spoiling her.”
“Right. First grandchild and all.”
“As far as we know.”<
br />
“Stop it, Isaias. That’s not funny.”
I lift the corner of my lip in a mafia-film snarl-grin. It makes her snort. “You’re so full of yourself,” she murmurs. “You think you know it all.”
The amusement leaves me in a slow exhale. “Not anymore.”
She rests her chin in her hands, then, looking straight at me with eyes that are tender, understanding, and more than I deserve. “No?”
“Nah. I thought I had it all figured out, but you taught me a lesson.”
Tatiana smiles, and I don’t say anything else. It’s my apology, my goddamn sincere apology, and when I’m jumbled and don’t say things right, my love gets me all the same. All out of secrets, I’m here with her. And so I pull her face toward me and place a kiss on her soft, soft lips.
“Per favore.” I tilt my head, pleading with Sister Margaret the way I’ve done for years. She huffs and folds her arms, black sleeves draping over her ample chest.
Half-hiding behind me, Ariadna has a grip on the belt loop at my back. I don’t blame her. Sister Margaret has been her typical harsh self so far.
“You think you can come and go as you please, Mr. Nascimbeni. First, you’re here, forcing me to break hospital policy several times a week, and then you disappear completely for five weeks? This is not the way to treat your calling.”
I suppress my entertainment at her choice of words. “Oh, the good sister missed me?”
The hold she has on her own arms tightens further, and when she scoffs, it’s with the understated belligerence of a teenager. “Assolutamente no. It’s been peaceful here without your midnight visits.”
“Well, they’re not always at night. Look at me now, for instance.” I open my arms, palms up. “It’s not even dark outside. You know why I’m here early today?”
She scowls, firmly planted in front of the door to the NICU. Over her dead body, right? She sends Ariadna a furtive glance like she’s been doing since we arrived. Sister Margaret is the curious kind, and she’s been dying to know who I have with me.
