They lavish me with attention, but their motives are dark as shadow.
Lavish (Mafia Queen #2)
Lavish © C.M. Stunich 2017
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Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
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Author's Note
Welcome back to the second installment of my reverse harem romantic suspense series, Mafia Queen. This is the second of five novellas that will lead to an epic conclusion at the end of the series. If you're looking for intrigue, ruthless alpha males, group sex, and a powerful female lead, then you've stumbled onto the right book. ;)
Contains: cursing, detailed sex scenes, and graphic violence.
Read—and enjoy—at your own risk.
READING ORDER: Lure, Lavish, Luxe …
Love, C.M. Stunich (aka Violet Blaze)
Glass and blood covered the old wood floors of the winery, an unpleasant crunch beneath my heels as I made my way to the front of the building and watched Vinny's crew move around me like a wave, guns in hand, faces darkened with violence.
“Everyone is dead,” I told Vincent Gotti calmly, folding my arms across the front of the sapphire blue gown I was wearing, the one with the bulletproof vest layered over the top. “I nostri nemici sono morti.” Our enemies are dead.
“Sterminati, come ratti,” Marcell agreed, glancing over at me with eyes the color of a velvet sky. Eradicated like rats. He reached up and ran his tattooed right hand down the bloodred silk of his tie, glancing over Vinny's shoulder and nodding briefly at a man climbing out of a discreet black SUV. Following Marcell's gaze, I recognized the newcomer as one of the Moran family's most trusted capos—one of the heads of a crew of soldiers.
Ah, of course the other families would send backup for their underbosses; what a fascinating dynamic.
A hot little spark ran through me, a whisper of the mafia princess I used to be—I didn't like seeing representatives from the Moran, Bellincioni, or Moretti family in my father's territory. I ran my tongue over my lip and redirected my attention back to Vinny.
“Are you alright, tesoro?” Vinny asked, but I just smiled at him with sinful lips.
Was I alright?
Shit, sure, I was fine; I'd managed to fuck three mafia bosses and kill several men in one night. My blood was pumping hot and wicked, and I didn't know how to stop it. Hell, I wasn't even sure that I wanted to.
That sparkle of darkness inside of me was flaring to life, and all I was doing was throwing more fuel into my internal fire, fanning long suppressed want and need and desire.
Suddenly, the idea of living an idyllic life with Bo and his cat, working as a lawyer, spending afternoons doing crafts with Edlyn—it all seemed so repulsive.
I sucked in a sharp breath and slipped out of the vest, letting Lucky take it from my hand. My childhood friend locked eyes with me, our fingers brushing slightly. Energy tingled between us, the recent memory of our locked bodies sending a surge of lustful energy through me.
“I'm fine,” I told Vincent, glancing over my shoulder at the brick exterior of Costello Winery, the spiderweb cracks in the front windows, the spilled wine mixing with viscous puddles of blood. Two men lay dead in the tasting room, felled by Lucky's hand before they even managed to hit the stairs.
Hmm.
Three men, one traitor … one rat.
But who?
I glanced over at Caj, calm and collected and smoking a cigarette like nothing in the world had just happened here, like group sex and a firefight was just a daily sort of occurrence. He glanced over at me, met my eyes with a whip-sharp gaze and then flashed a toothy smile, sly and wily as a fox.
“But we're definitely looking for a traitor,” I said, loud enough that the four men surrounding me could easily hear. Fuck, I said it loud enough that several of the men inside the building—Costello family men or otherwise—could hear clearly. “Let's do our best to sniff them out,” I said, tapping a single finger against the side of my nose. “And quick.”
Taking one, last long glance at the three men I'd just screwed, I smiled, nodded, and made my way over to Vinny's SUV. I slammed the door behind me without looking back.
My dreams that night were sweaty and erotic, not violent and disturbing as I'd expected.
Instead of mourning the men I'd killed, I wished for six hands and three cocks and mouths like fire. Once again, I woke up sweating, heart pounding, and I knew the seed of corruption inside of me, the one I'd stifled for so long, had finally sprouted.
Climbing out of bed, I slid my feet into a pair of fuzzy black slippers and made my way outside, down the path and toward my mother's garden. Even with just a few scattered splotches of silver moonlight to illuminate it, it was beautiful.
The paths were brick and so were the planters, the strawberry trees dotted with tiny white flowers. A central fountain was surrounded by the purple and yellow faces of New York asters, the area punctuated with angel statuettes and redwood benches. It was on one of those that I sat, crossing my ankles and tucking them under the bench. Lifting my face up, I studied the sky above and tried to pick out a few of my favorite constellations.
“Adelasia?” a voice asked, bringing my face around to find the source.
It was Carlo.
My fingers tightened on the edge of the bench as he approached me—also wearing slippers, smoking a cigar, his hair tinted silver by the moonlight. I hadn't heard him coming, but then I hadn't been paying attention; that was a mistake. I was still thinking of the Costello Manor as the same place it'd been when I was a girl, but I had to remember: somebody involved in the families wanted me dead.
“What are you doing out here, polpetta mia?” Carlo asked, moving to sit on the bench next to me. Glancing over at him, I could see fine lines in his face that weren't there the last time I'd seen him, markers of a hard life finally catching up to him—my mother's death most of all.
“Contemplating the attack tonight,” I said, looking back up at the moon with all her little craters, gray-blue circles of imperfection that made her beauty all the more impressive.
“Mm,” my father said noncommittally, sucking on his cigar, his own gaze focused on the fountain my mother had ordered custom from Italy.
“Give Vinny a new itinerary for the week,” I told him and noticed Carlo's brown eyes narrowing lightly when I dropped my attention to his face. “Tell him I'm going to be places I'm not. Prepare your most trusted driver.”
I tapped my fingers against the side of the bench and sighed.
“At least, that's what I'm thinking,” I said, hoping I hadn't offended the don of t
he Costello Crime Family. You never knew with my father, and that's what made him so damn scary—it was always eggshells beneath your feet, ready to crack at a moment's notice.
I got lucky that night.
Carlo chuckled under his breath and shook his head, ashing his cigar on the metal edge of the bench. Some part of me, this little flicker deep down, wanted to lay my head on my father's shoulder like I'd done as a little girl, cuddle up to him and tell him how much I missed mom.
But I didn't dare.
“You think Vinny's the rat?” he asked with a long sigh. “Che fine abbiamo fatto, cucciola?”
What has this world come to, puppy? he'd asked.
“No, actually,” I said, reaching down to pick at a bit of lint on my sweats. My father looked down at my ancient pajama pants like he found them repulsive. I knew my mother never would've been caught dead in an ex-boyfriend's old t-shirt and department store sweats. No, she took every night as an opportunity to get dressed up for the second time in a day. She'd twist her dark hair up into a beautiful chignon and don a nightie that cost thousands, something silk or satin that cascaded to the floor around her delicate ankles.
My mother … I was not. No, I definitely took after Carlo.
“No?” my dad asked, making himself comfortable on the bench in a pair of black silk pajamas with subtle pinstripes.
“More than likely, it's one of my overeager suitors—Marcell Moran, Lucky Moretti, or Caj Bellincioni.” I listed the three men by their full names, ticking them off on my fingers like they were simply unknown factors in a complicated equation. No, it wasn't as if I'd had all three of them inside of me at the same time or anything of the sort.
“More than,” Carlo agreed, pausing and looking over toward my right. When I followed his gaze, I found Vera waiting at the gate to the garden, dressed in a pale blue nightie, her hair in a chignon …
My nostrils flared and I rose from the bench with a wave of fury rolling over me like a storm.
When Vera reached for the latch on the gate, I glanced back at Carlo.
“I'll make the arrangiamenti,” he told me as he, too, stood up from the bench. If he noticed my anger at seeing a twenty-two year old girl in my mother's nightclothes, he pretended not to. “Goodnight, topolina mia.”
Carlo planted a chaste kiss on my cheek, the smell of tobacco clinging to his clothing as he breezed past me and stopped Vera at the gate.
Watching over my shoulder, I saw him wrap an arm around her waist to lead her back toward the house.
The anger inside made me clench both my teeth and my fists and I knew—I knew—that if I let it overtake me, it would burn me alive from the inside out.
In the morning, I sat across the table from Vinny and listened to a recount of last night's casualties: ten men and sixty-one bottles of wine.
Vincent and I both were more disappointed about the wine.
“Your father's sending you with Juliano to the shooting range,” he told me, and I felt my lips pull into a frown. Even though I knew the agenda to be a lie, I found the implication insulting.
“There's nothing wrong with my aim,” I said, remembering last night with a deep inhale that sat in my lungs like stone. A traitor. Fuck, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that someone around me was plotting against the family. It ignited my anger in the same way Vera's attire had last night—well, in what was obviously my father's hand in Vera's appearance as I hardly blamed the woman herself. If the most powerful crime boss on the East Coast tells you to put on a certain nightgown, you do it.
Well, most people would anyway.
“There's no one left from last night to attest to that fact,” I said, sipping the cappuccino that Renata had brought me and smiling at Vinny over the rim of the mug, “but then again, that's a testament in and of itself, isn't it?”
“Orders from up top, tesoro,” he said, finishing off a bite of pastry and standing up. Vinny brushed crumbs from the silver curve of his mustache and adjusted his hat. “I'll be out on business today,” he continued, tapping the new cell phone that was lying on the table. True to his word, Vincent gave me one every morning. “If you need anything, just call.”
He strode out of the dining room as I dragged the phone toward me, tapping my nails against the screen. I listened as the front door opened and then slammed behind him.
“You need anything else before I start lunch, Lazy?” Renata asked, wiping her hands on her apron as she peeked out of the kitchen. My mouth full of ciambelle al vino or wine cookies as they were sometimes called, I lifted a hand to let her know I was good. I had coffee and pastries—the morning wasn't all bad.
But I did have to wonder: if I wasn't going with my cousin to the shooting range then where, exactly, was I going?
I didn't for one second think that last night's incident would warrant much discussion. Around here, nights like last night were one in a million. Even the group sex part … well, I imagined my father had had a night or two surrounded by beautiful women, so even that wasn't strange for a member of the Costello royal family.
The edge of my lip twitched in either disgust or amusement, I wasn't sure, before I rose to my feet and headed upstairs to get dressed.
With a less formal engagement on the menu today, I wouldn't need Carlo's mistress' help.
Thank fucking God.
Juliano sat quiet and stern on the opposite side of the bench seat, but every once in a while, I caught him surreptitiously checking his phone for messages from his pretty, new wife. Hiding a smile of my own, I focused my attention out the window as we made our way toward the family's shooting range.
My mother had insisted my father keep it off the property for safety reasons—and not the type that most people would be concerned with. No, she was bothered by the fact that if my father and his men took shots on the property for practice or fun, then how were they to know when something real was going down?
Smart woman, my mother.
I sat on the sumptuous leather seat in old jeans and a black knit top, watching the scenery flash by behind my reflection, dark hair and dark eyes plastered over green hills and trees going red, orange, and yellow for fall.
Looking at the changing seasons, I could almost recall a few normal memories of my parents: a visit to the pumpkin patch, an afternoon spent making pies, even a night of trick-or-treating … although now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure we'd only stopped at the houses of people my father knew and trusted. Mafiosi. I'd always wondered why we'd had to drive from one house to the other, rather than walking like all the rest of the children I saw …
I blinked myself out of my reverie and noticed that we were turning on a semi-familiar dirt road. A quick glance at the clock on the SUV's dash showed that we'd been driving for just over an hour.
Putting two and two together, I knew exactly where we were: Lucky's house.
Down the dirt road a ways, we came to a stop outside a wrought iron gate. Although most mafia movies and TV shows portrayed the houses of mobsters as fortresses, there weren't any armed men waiting for us. No, they'd be hiding in the trees or in a deer stand in the bushes, somewhere they could still shoot us without being obvious. For all intents and purposes, we were simply normal New Yorkers visiting a countryside retreat.
Without a word passing between us, my driver eased the car forward so I could roll down my own window and talk directly into the intercom.
“It's me,” I said, and then rolled it right back up again.
Fortunato would already know I was on my way.
The gate slid open automatically and the SUV rolled forward, down a drive lined with pumpkins and around a hideous white marble fountain with its very own Adonis statue on the top.
“It's my mother's,” Lucky said, sitting on the wide front porch steps in a brown leather jacket, green sweater vest, and tie. His blonde hair was slicked back, and the expression on his face was casual interest … just barely enough to cover up the sparkle of lust in hazel eyes. But I was astute—I
saw it.
“The fountain?” I asked after I'd climbed out and left Juliano behind. The SUV drove away with him in it, heading toward the large garage on the north side of the property. I didn't need my own guards here; there were plenty enough around for the both of us. And besides, if the Morettis were the rats and decided they wanted me dead, they wouldn't do it here. If they did, my father would come down on them with everything he had and nobody in their right mind wanted that. “Or the whole damn house?”
“Just this asshole over here,” Lucky said, rising to his feet and moving over to the edge of the fountain. As I watched, he slipped a coin from his pocket, whispered in Italian under his breath and flipped the quarter into the water. “Oh, and the pumpkins.”
He flashed me a bright smile over his shoulder and turned around, burying his hands in his black jeans pockets. Casual but cleaned-up, that was how Lucky looked today, like he was trying to impress me, but attempting to hide the fact at the same time.
“I assumed as much,” I said, fingering a faux leaf garland wrapped around one of the porch beams. “As I can't see you putting up scarecrows and cardboard owls as decorations on your own. You know, for a woman married to mob boss, your mother certainly has interesting tastes.”
“She certainly does,” he said, giving me a look that swept from head to toe and back again, pausing finally on my face. I had my own fingers stuffed into my front jeans pockets, a slight northeasterly wind taking over me and making me shiver with cold. “Shall we go inside and warm up before heading out?”
“And where might we be heading out to?” I asked, watching those hazel eyes dance with mischief. I couldn't imagine Lucky being the traitor, but I also knew that my heart was playing tricks on me. Childhood friends we might be, but I knew him fuck-all right now. The only current memories I had of the man involved dancing and hard cocks. Not exactly the best litmus test to find a traitor.
Lavish: A Reverse Harem Miniseries (Mafia Queen Book 2) Page 1
