by Chloe Liese
“Fuck with her, and I will end you,” she hissed.
I shrugged her off. “I respect Nairne far too much to fuck with her. You can rest easy on that. Otherwise, what she and I do or don’t have is none of your damn business.”
Her eyes drifted toward Nairne who’d started away from us down the sidewalk. French wasn’t one of my languages, so her next words, whether warning or otherwise, fell on deaf ears. She skipped past me to catch up to Nairne.
I had to figure out why this woman was stuck like a poison in my system. This was absurd. Lucas stepped through the doorway, hands in his pockets, and a concerned look on his face. “All right, there, Zeddy?”
“Nope. Come on, peanut. I’ve got a problem to deal with.”
Lucas shook his head. “I don’t think I’m going to like this.”
I took his elbow and turned him with me. “I know you’re not.”
Eight
Zed
Rose Kennedy Greenway was mercifully empty. As we came into the North End, I heard the harbor’s steady current and caught glimpses of its dark glassy water. So much foul shit hidden beneath its pristine surface. Just like where we were headed.
“You’re sure that’s what she said?” Lucas asked. He spoke French, and I’d tried repeating what I’d heard from the spitfire’s sassy friend.
“Think so. What’s it mean?”
Lucas pinched his lips. “Nothing nice. Let’s leave it at that.”
I laughed and turned onto Cross Street and gunned it through a yellow. Why yield when you could power through? “Figures.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Lucas’ fingers drummed on his leg as he watched me uneasily.
“Someone I need to see. I could use some advice.”
Lucas peered out the window and groaned. “I love when you’re cryptic and driving me into the heart of mafia territory.”
“I’m not being cryptic. I’m thinking. Nothing wrong with thinking before you speak. In bocca chiusa non entrò mai mosca. That’s what Dad always told us as kids.”
Lucas shook his head. “Few men frighten me, but your father is undoubtedly one of them. The man’s too squeaky clean.” Lucas knew my general background, but he was clueless about the depth of my connection to this world we were driving toward.
I laughed and flew right onto Fulton. “He’s harmless. But that’s all you’re getting from me. I don’t talk about family dynamics, Lucas. It’s too complicated. And I like you alive.”
“See, exactly that. You’re terrifying, the lot of you. You live on the other side of town in Beacon Hill, all posh and above board. But then here we are, driving up to some laughably stereotypical restaurant that is obviously a front.”
There was a spot close by and I took it. “Who said anything about a front? The Genovese were the first Italians to settle in Boston. We’ve had our hands in everything since 1860, restaurants included.” I reached across him, opened the glove compartment, and took out my gun.
“Oh, Christ.” Lucas sighed.
I checked the mag for bullets, then clicked it back in. “Just relax when we’re in there, okay? Don’t get all jumpy like you did at Teo’s birthday last year.”
He stared at me as I shoved my gun in the back of my jeans and threw open the door. “I don’t like this side of you, Zeddy. Not one bit. Where’s the good boy from Beacon Hill?” Lucas slammed the car door shut behind him and took in the three-story brick façade.
“Long gone,” I muttered. The lights were still on and trallalero music wafted from the front windows. “Luc, relax. The gun’s just a precaution, and this won’t take long. Just follow my lead, drink what they give you—grappa, wine, just smile and drink it—and don’t touch the women’s tits.”
He blew out a heavy breath and shoved his hands in his pockets. “If I die tonight, I’m going to haunt you for the rest of your days.”
“Sounds awful. Like having Monty Python in my head all the time.” I fucking hated British satire.
Lucas laughed. “There you are. So, remember how much you don’t want the voice of John Cleese tormenting you, and get me out of here alive, all right?”
I shouldered open the door. “Deal.”
Nella kept the place tidy. Stereotypical checkered tablecloths. Bottles stuffed with dripping candles. People with an appetite for more than decent Italian food. They hungered for money and unadulterated power. There was a feeling I got whenever I came here. It was toxic and brimming with the self-serving, greedy impulse that was as old as Cain killing Abel. An impulse whose nefarious implications I spent every moment I could trying to reverse.
What I was doing was suicidal. Running a mafia syndicate while piece by piece weakening its network and working with law enforcement to undermine its prosperity. I was too dirty to stand blameless before the non-criminal world, and I was too clean to belong or confide in any of the mafia. It was lonely and exhausting, but I was nearly a decade in and so disturbingly used to it. The cycle of insanity was as normal to me as waking up and taking a shit.
Margarita stepped from behind the bar as we walked in. “Zeddo, ciao.” She kept her eyes down in respect, then lifted them slowly. They flicked left and up, tracking Lucas’ height. “And who’s this? Buonasera, cicognone.”
Popped hip. Wide smile. Rita was flirting and I didn’t have time for it. “Where’s Nella?”
She kept smiling at Lucas. “In the back. Etto’s in trouble.”
“Great.” I smacked Lucas on the arm. “Just stay here and don’t let her seduce you.”
Rita said something sassy in Italian that I ignored. She had a mouth on her, but she was Teo’s problem, not mine.
“Aye, aye, captain.” Lucas dropped on a bar stool and I left him to Rita’s devices.
Antonio was nowhere to be seen, but his aura was everywhere. My vision years ago had become our reality. You never saw the Don’s face. Nella was his arms and feet, and I was allegedly his soul, god help us. A table of capos sat in the corner and tipped their chin my way. I walked by, patted shoulders, threw around bullshit in Italian, and smiled like I didn’t hate them. We commiserated over Joey and his filthy business as if everything else that happened in our faction wasn’t just as foul, until I caught a punctuated expletive ringing from the kitchen.
I excused myself under the pretense of seeing what the volatile second in command was screaming about, then strolled back. Garlic and fresh basil hit my nose as I swung open the kitchen door and found Nella looking pissed as she ripped into Etto.
She slammed her hands on the counter. He sighed as he stood and dipped his head to me in deference while Nella cussed him out. When she was done ranting, she pressed one finger to her cheek, which Etto met with a kiss. Then he walked backward, facing her, until his ass hit the door. I didn’t get the appeal of bottoming like that, but to each their own.
The door slammed behind Etto while she stared him down. “Stronzo.”
“Nella.” I sat at a stool by the counter and looked her over. She was forty-five and still sexy as hell, especially when she was pissed. And she knew it.
“Consigliere, ciao.” She kissed me on the cheek and ruffled my hair.
I took her hips and squeezed hard. She didn’t flinch. “Poor Etto. What’d he do now?”
She smiled. “It’s part of how we play. He likes a good whipping.” One step out of my grip and she walked to the wall of glassware. “Now, you. Che cosa è?”
“Why do you think I have a problem?”
She pulled down two glasses, then tucked a bottle under her arm. Uncorked it with her teeth and shot it out. “Because you never come to me like this unless there’s trouble.” Blood-red wine filled each glass and sloshed as she slid mine toward me. “Talk.”
I drank half the chianti and set it down. She was right. I couldn’t betray our world as regularly as I did and keep her in close confidence. “A woman.”
“Ovviamente. What about her?”
Red waves swirled against the glass while I spun its stem. �
�She’s not my type.”
Nella frowned and set down her wine. “Sexual attraction? Fantasies? Desire? You want to fuck her, sì?”
I laughed into my glass. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Then she’s your type.”
I froze and lowered my wine. “She’s not. She’s obstinate and sharp and maddeningly confrontational. Not to mention, a woman like that in my life is a huge liability.”
Nella leaned forward and covered my hand with hers. Crimson fingernails. Olive skin like mine. “Liability, yes, but that’s only if she meant something to you. They can’t break your heart if you never give it to them. Remember that.”
I didn’t need to be reminded, but the reality of what I’d admitted sat between us, that there was a woman I’d seen and felt that potential for. It scared the shit out of me.
Nella had a deep drink of her wine and set it down. “Keep your heart out of it and enjoy her. Because the fact is you respond to her, and that leaves only two possibilities, caruccio. The first is that she is as you say, not meant to be dominated, and you aren’t who you are sexually, as genetically factual as your papa’s hair and your mama’s eyes. That the lifestyle is not something you need.”
My body tensed. The thought of living without that form of sanity and control made me nauseated. Nella stared at me and smiled slowly. “Consider how unlikely that is, as I tell you your second option.” Her nail scraped against my skin, until she drew a thin line of blood. “Or that is who she is. She just doesn’t know it yet. And there’s something inside of her that fits with you, that makes sense.”
I withdrew my hand and sucked the blood away, frowning at her. “She’s not. She’ll never be like that. And she’s physically…vulnerable. I could hurt her.”
Nella sat back and twirled her wine. “Pain isn’t your kink. You don’t need to hurt a woman. In fact, you prefer not to, unless she gets off to it.” Nella grinned widely. “I’d know.”
She’d taught me, trained me in the art of breaking through a woman’s mind without ruining her body, and extracting the pleasure of her release from the depths of my control. Back then, Nella had run a finger around my cat eyes. Tigre, she’d called me. Fottimi come l'animale che sei. Then she had told me to fuck her like the animal I was.
The first time I clutched Nella’s throat, slammed into her, and told her exactly how she was going to take my cock, I came so hard I couldn’t breathe. My exacting need for order clashed with the extreme chaos of my life. I’d needed relief, and that desperation spun a web of live wires that fused into one central outcome—control. Taking a woman like Nella had silenced my unquiet mind like nothing before or since. I’d been eighteen, and I hadn’t looked back. My universe, as far as I could influence it, was control. On the field. In the boardroom. In my bedroom.
I stared into my wine. Lucas and Rita laughed in the front room, and I envied Lucas for having a life where you could laugh like that. Where death didn’t follow you, where trying to do the right thing actually translated into good things happening.
Nella drank again from her glass and looked me over. “Domination is versatile. You can break her without hurting her.”
“I don’t want to break her.” That was Nella’s realm. The wine went down easy and I set the glass on the stainless steel with a soft clink. “I want to possess her.”
Nella stood and ran her nails through my hair. “Then do it, gnocco. Take her to your bed, teach her the ways. Show her how she holds the power, as much as you. Her surrender is her strength.”
I scrubbed my face. Nairne surrendering. It was comical. “Thanks, Nella.”
“You don’t believe me, but I know you. I taught you everything, and I’ve been doing this a long time.” She stepped closer and her stilettos clacked on the tile. Her hands slid up my front and she grasped my face. “Trust me?”
I smirked. “Always.”
“Zeddo.” She sighed, as she dropped her hands. Her eyes searched mine and she looked poised to say something important.
She leaned her hip on the counter and fished her hand along the shelf for her cigs. Even in her heels, she was just short of reaching them, so I leaned up, slid the glass ashtray, Zippo, and pack of Marlboros down into her hands.
“Grazie,” she said.
I nodded, folded my arms, and waited.
Her exhale politely blew out the side of her mouth, away from me. “There’s talk.”
I kept my face straight. I did trust Nella…ninety-nine percent of the time. Her path was crooked, but it trended positively, toward the less despicable parts of the life. Yet, she was ambitious. Even though she was above me in rank, my influence as a man who was known and well-respected superseded hers. And sometimes, I caught her looking at me with a hunger that exceeded even our old boundaries.
“Care to elaborate, vipera?” Viper. It was our joke. She’d been the one to strike and make me bleed on the night I fell into this upside-down world where everything that I called evil was pronounced good.
“That you broke omertà. You’re pushing too much, too soon.”
I rolled my eyes. “They were practically busted already. I’m trying to make sure people clean up their shit before the feds throw us all in jail and forget about the key.”
I was good at lying. I’d been doing it for years. Nella’s eyes narrowed. “You should be more careful.”
I rolled my shoulders and tried not to connect her warning to whomever had planted the bug in my pocket. Thank god I hadn’t spoken with any of my contacts. I was careful. I covered my time with soccer practice and used burner phones. But if I’d had that damn thing in my pocket, a burner phone would have been fucking useless. Somebody was upping the ante, no denying it.
“Nella,” I spoke her name low, with promise. We hadn’t fucked in years, because I didn’t bottom, and each year that passed, she turned into more of an alarmingly brutal top. But my effect was still there. I could distract her. Her eyes half-shut and she sighed as I slid my hand into her hair. “Thank you for your concern. But it’s unwarranted.”
Her cigarette ash was an inch deep and it fell, a cloud of dying embers that drifted to the floor. Her caramel eyes snapped open as she dragged on her cig once again and blew a dragon’s plume of smoke out her nose, this time right in my face. “Of course, Zeddo. Of course.”
I dropped my hand as she stared at me. She was tricky to read but something was behind her gaze. Warning. Confusion.
I nodded and left the kitchen. Through the front door. Lucas by the elbow. Outside.
The sounds of the harbor and sparse midnight traffic soothed my racing mind. Slow pulls of air brought my breathing to a survivable speed.
“Hang on,” Lucas said. He peered over his shoulder as the door shut behind him. “I was about to—”
I faced him, and he stopped in his tracks.
“Christ, what’s the matter?”
I ripped open the Ferrari and turned on the ignition. “Nothing. Time to go.”
So many parallel thoughts were flying through my head. I was compromised, I was stuck, and I had no long-term sensible plan for dealing with it. That was true for both the world we were driving away from, and the woman I couldn’t stop driving toward.
Lucas stared at me uneasily. “Now what?
I pulled onto Fulton and floored it out of this godforsaken part of town. “If I only fucking knew.”
Nine
Nairne
In an early genetics elective, I learned that humans select their mate based on how they smell. Typically, the scientific explanation for people’s behavior was thrilling. But this one scared the living piss out of me. You’re telling me my nose picks the man I’m going to promise my life to? Not that I had any such plans, but still.
It came down to pheromones, which your major histocompatibility complex (a sort of fancy immune system that’s analyzing gene compatibility) screens for genetic difference. The greater the difference, the more intense the response—an evolutionary trick to avoi
d inbreeding and poor genetic pairings.
“Here again,” my professor had said, “we see science demonstrating the truth of a pre-modern adage—opposites do attract.”
Bloody pheromones. I tried to forget how he tasted. The scent of him. Like that intoxicating smell after rain. Ozone and wet earth. Clear, electrified air that makes you breathe deep. It’s called petrichor. Petrichor, expensive soap, and warm earthy male—that was Zed’s essence. When he’d kissed me, those stealthy olfactory saboteurs made me forgot every principle I had about snogging arseholes who made me want to bash their brains in with my arm crutches. I was a helpless victim of my animal brain, and no amount of rationalizing with myself changed the fact that I wanted him.
“Ms. MacGregor?”
My gaze snapped to his. “Yes?”
He’d gone all out today, probably to punish me. To test me. For saying I didn’t want him, for saying that kissing him had been an error in judgment rather than the only thing I could think about when I wasn’t distracting myself with lab work and annotating my research thesis.
Charcoal trousers hugged his muscular arse and stretched down his powerful legs. Crisp white shirt strained against built shoulders and a trim waist where ridges of abs pressed against the material. Impressively built, in beautiful proportion to his height and stature. His hair was dark as bitter chocolate and its thick waves looked wet.
He smiled slowly, and I fantasized about slapping that smirk right off his gorgeous face.
Damn him.
“I said I was hoping for your thoughts on how Matt wrote the research component. Does it reflect what you recommended?”
I’d read the final draft of the proposal that morning, so this time I could save face. I had no idea what he’d been saying before because I’d been too distracted, bouncing between hatred and hunger.
“Yes. It’s broad enough to invite a diverse set of interests, and specific enough to indicate what we’re willing to incorporate in terms of research and medical care.”
