“Just what I told the officer,” I told him. We were sitting on one of the couches in the great room and my head was resting on his chest.
“She left and came back immediately?”
“Almost. She showed up the first time, and when she left, that was when I called you. When I heard a car outside, I thought it was yours, and that was why I opened the door. That was a mistake because she got in.”
“Did she hurt you?”
“No, she didn’t even threaten to shoot me. She kept asking for you. She wanted to kill you and make me watch.”
“Why would she want to do that?”
“You distanced yourself from her and she took it as a personal insult,” I said, knowing that wasn’t the whole truth.
“I told her to back off. But that’s not a good excuse to do all this. I can't believe she would do something else after the fiasco with the pictures.”
“Well, she’s had two months to plan it. I’m just glad that she found me here and not you.”
“Don’t say that, babe.”
“I’m serious. You didn’t hear her talking.” I put a hand on his chest and the thought settled. I could have lost him today. He was faster than her and had seen her coming, but what if he hadn’t? How would I have been able to take losing him and my father in such a short span of time?
“What was she saying?” he asked me.
“She was talking about how she was the one who was supposed to be your wife. She went on and on about how it was her you loved and I just got in the way. If she couldn’t have you, then I sure as hell wouldn’t. She sounded like a crazy person. It was awful.”
“She’s not coming near you again, Isa. Never.”
“She also said...” I trailed off, afraid to let him know that this was what I was feeling. I didn’t want to let Elissa’s words get to me, but they had.
“What?”
“She said that I was not your type. That you didn’t like girls who looked like me, and I looked like a troll in my wedding dress,” I said, feeling small and embarrassed. What the hell did Elissa know anyway? She had been trying to get to me, and she had done it. There was also the fact that I was pregnant and gaining weight which didn’t help.
“She was trying to make you jealous, Isa. Look at me,” he said. I looked at him, and I was taken aback by his gaze for a second. The darkness of his eyes just amplified whatever was showing through them, just then, it was passion. “You’re the one I love and you are the one I chose.”
“Our parents arranged our marriage, Lorenzo.”
“But that’s all they did. They might have led us to each other, but I made the choice to stay here with you and give us a real shot. I’m not going anywhere.” He leaned down and kissed me sweetly.
There it was.
I wasn’t even going to bring it up because I didn’t need to anymore. I wanted to know what I meant to him outside of what our fathers had arranged and he told me. He wanted me—and I wanted him. He wanted to stay married to me. The surge of emotion pushed new tears from my eyes as I let him kiss me. It felt so powerful to be loved by him. The affirmation of my own feelings for him felt powerful and deeply passionate. I wrapped my arms around him, tangling my fingers in his hair and letting them trail down over his shoulders and arms. I reveled in the feel of his hard body under my hands. I wanted to feel him close to me, as close as he could get.
“Baby, I have to talk to you about something,” he said to me, as I straddled his hips. I kissed him, making him unable to continue. “Isa. Listen. We have to talk about your dad’s business.”
“Shh. Not now, Lorenzo. I want you to make love to me,” I said. He looked at me as if he was torn, but his hands gripped my hips, and I could feel his erection growing and pressing into my thigh. I kissed him slowly before pulling my tank top up over my head and unhooking my bra. His eyes dropped to my breasts, and I heard him sigh. They had been more sensitive since I had gotten pregnant and were already a little bigger. He cupped one in his hand and ran the pad of his thumb over the hard nipple. I hissed as he did it again before covering the nipple with his mouth and sucking it.
The months of misery, confusion, and danger had weighed on me and all I wanted was to feel him. I wanted to feel his weight, his passion, and his desire. I wanted to feel connected with something real and someone who loved me when everything around me seemed to be out of control. He repeated the action with the other nipple and started undoing the buttons on his shirt.
I reached down into his lap and started on his pants. His erection was straining through his underwear, and my urgency was making my hands clumsy. I stood up and pulled my shorts and panties off before mounting him again. He held me by the waist and picked me up, positioning me on the couch underneath him. He slid into me slowly, letting me feel every single inch. He was so big. He was so thick. His cock felt amazing inside me.
I wanted him to pound me like he hadn’t touched me in weeks. I wanted it dirty and rough, but he didn’t. His weight pressed down on me gently as he slowly and rhythmically drove into me with his dick. My eyes shut as the sensation intensified. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him closer into me. Everything faded into nothingness around me, and I forgot the fear and uncertainty I had been feeling all day. All I felt was the man I loved making love to me.
I started crying again. He wasn’t hurting me. I was just overwhelmed. The physical pleasure and arousal I was experiencing just heightened the passion and love I felt for him. My breathing got faster and faster as I neared orgasm. He picked up his speed a little, pushing me. I flattened a palm on his back, feeling his hard muscles working underneath. I let out a strangled cry as my orgasm exploded through me. He sped up as I clenched down around his cock, also climaxing before slowing down and then easing himself out of me. The moment was perfect. Whatever he wanted to talk about could wait till morning. We made love again before falling asleep in each other's arms.
I WAS MAKING PANCAKES in the morning when Lorenzo came into the kitchen. The smell and taste of eggs made me completely sick during the pregnancy so I had switched Lorenzo’s usual scrambled eggs in the morning to flapjacks. He didn’t seem to mind. He kissed me before pouring himself a cup of coffee. I sat down with him picking at a piece of grapefruit. I knew what was coming. I had wanted to stave it off the night before, but there was no getting around it now. It had to be discussed.
“How are you feeling today?” he asked me.
“Alright,” I said. “What did you want to tell me last night?”
“Your father’s business... his men have been talking about it since he passed, but I didn’t want to bring it to you immediately because you took his passing so hard. Someone needs to take command.”
“So why don’t they pick someone?”
“There already is someone. You. You’re his only child. You’re the heir to his business.”
I frowned. There were a lot of things I had inherited from my parents—and even things I wanted to inherit, like my mother’s fine crystal, but this? This I wanted no part of.
“A bunch of guys are gonna listen to me?”
“They have to. They were your father’s sworn followers—and now that he’s gone, they’re yours.”
“I don’t know the first thing about this kind of stuff. I don’t want to get into it, Lorenzo. We have a baby coming and it's too much for me. The danger, the crime... I don’t want it.”
“It’s not the best situation, but you and I were both raised by men who were mobsters. It might not be that wholesome, but families have been living like this for years. Our families have been living like this for years.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know what to do. What should I do?” I said to him.
“The chances of this life becoming part of our pasts is nearly impossible,” he said. “Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“Unless we make a clean break. All the way out, you and I.”
I thought about it for a second.<
br />
“That would mean you relinquishing your territory completely and other people taking over.”
“Yes,” he said simply.
It had never occurred to me that this life was something that Lorenzo enjoyed or even loved. I always thought of it as something that was part of his family history, which he participated in because of tradition. Could I ask him to let it go? Would he if I did? What would that mean for us if he got out?
“Do you want to give it all up?” I asked him. He paused before answering.
“I want a safe and happy life with you and our child. I want to get that—and I don’t care how we get it. I want you to be happy.”
“I don’t want to ask you to do something you don’t want to do.”
“I can’t make all the decisions myself, Isa. It isn’t my place. I have to think about you and the baby, too. Whatever you decide is what we will do.”
He cleared his coffee cup and stood up. He kissed me on the forehead.
“Take your time. You don’t have to answer immediately.”
He left soon after, leaving me in the house. He had asked me to take my time, but I already knew what I wanted. It was a no-brainer. There was a time in my life when I had had no idea that these things were going on around me and that was the time that I had felt safest. Ignorance was bliss—and even though I couldn’t be ignorant about it, I wanted that bliss back.
I wanted out. I wanted nothing to do with all this shit. That was my answer.
Our future was wide open. Anything could happen but removal of the criminal element meant a lot of bad things that could happen just because of the association were removed as threats. Our lives would be inherently safer if we were no longer involved—and that was what I wanted. I wanted us to be safe.
Lorenzo had told me that he would do whatever I wanted, but how much had he thought about it? I allowed myself to think about a future where we didn’t have to watch our backs. It was nice. I liked it... I hoped Lorenzo would like it, too.
Chapter 9
Lorenzo
One Month Later
The baby had affected Isa and me in very different ways. The first was, of course, that she was the one carrying the child and I was not, meaning she was the one who was getting the odd food cravings, the increased libido, and the insane bodily changes that came with pregnancy.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still. I was anxious. I wanted and didn’t want the baby to be born right then just so I could relax. There was so much to do—and even though there were still a number of months left before the baby came, I was frantic. I wanted everything to be perfect for the baby’s arrival. We had to be settled somewhere, and we had to have everything we needed.
No dollar would be spared. The baby deserved the best of everything that money could buy. This was my kid we were talking about. Lorenzo Montorini’s child was not going to do without.
It was possible that Isa and I were better matched than we had initially thought because we came up with much the same idea concerning the future. She wanted me to leave the family business as well, and she wanted to move to somewhere that would be more suitable for raising a child. She had the New York suburbs in mind, but she wasn’t totally opposed to Europe. I managed to sway her towards my cause a little more when we flew to Rome and she saw the house that I had purchased for us.
The villa was about a ten minute drive from the city, meaning it was close but still a little quiet. It had a historic architectural style that had been preserved, but the inside of the house was modern and furnished to suit a jet-setting young couple like us. There was a pool outside and a lawn. Space. The kid could run around, learn to swim. We could get a dog. The perfect family home.
That was where we were, touring the property together for the first time when Isa felt the baby kick. She had stopped in her tracks as we were headed up the stairs and held her stomach, which of course put me on high alert. My mind had gone from zero to one hundred in a heartbeat. I had thought that she was entering early labor or she was in some sort of pain and something was wrong with the baby. I didn’t know what the national emergency number was in the case of situations like this. I was not prepared to try and deliver a baby myself—and that baby was not coming. No way. It was way too soon.
The look on her face, which was one of shock and happiness, brought me back down. She had started crying almost immediately and grabbed my hand and placed it on her rounded belly. It was a few seconds and then I had felt it, too. Our baby, kicking up a storm. It was likely the most humbling and beautiful thing I had ever experienced. I knew the baby was there. I had seen it through the sonogram at the hospital, and I had been watching Isa’s body grow and change with its development, but that was the closest that I could get to the kid as its father before the little guy or girl was born. Isa was carrying the kid, so she felt it all the time, but the child and me, we were a little more separated.
I didn’t care that it was routine movement of the child and that it was completely normal. The baby was talking to me. The kid was talking to me and telling me that he or she really liked the house and couldn’t wait to move in.
I already loved Isa with a force that scared me to think about, but feeling our baby move inside of her was the closest thing I could imagine to magic. It was magic, and it was love. Our love had manifested itself physically, and it was going to be born in four to five months in New York City. I couldn’t imagine anything so beautiful or so pure.
During one of our earliest fights, we were at Campania and I had wanted her to leave. It was a whole ugly blowout both inside and outside of the restaurant, a moment I wanted to leave firmly in the past because she hadn’t deserved any bit of that. I had told her that I would buy her a restaurant if that was what it took to get her to leave Campania like I was asking her to do.
It was only fair, a restaurant for a restaurant.
New York was a different city from Rome. Did the Italian food we ate back home even pass for Italian food here? The culture was different, the people were different, and life would be different—but I had a feeling that Isa would be able to hack it.
It was a restaurant I had promised and it was a restaurant that she was getting. The international experience was going to be fantastic for her career. Her star had been blindingly bright in New York, and I was convinced because she was who she was and because she was my wife that she would bulldoze the competition and make them bow down. I knew what she had done for Campania and it was only fair that she got to do the same with her own restaurant.
Even the original restaurant that we had fought about, Campania, had passed into her possession, though it was through the sad situation that was her father’s passing. She became the owner, but she ended up bringing in family to manage it. Her mother was going to be her eyes and ears while we were far away starting a life together.
Of course, the timing was a little off.
We were expecting a baby, and we were about to get married again. I hadn’t wanted Isa to work initially, but it was what she wanted to do. We were starting over. So many things were changing so why couldn’t that? After the baby was big enough, she could go back to work at a restaurant. Not just a restaurant but her own.
I liked to think of it as a sort of wedding present, either a belated one for the first wedding that we had had or one for the wedding that we were about to have. Planning had understandably been halted for a while following the difficulties that we had been through recently, but they were back up and running. The second wedding had been my suggestion, but it was another thing that I was going to let her take control of. It was supposed to be for us, but I wanted it to be for her.
Everyone knows the wedding day is really for the bride and all the rest of the people, including the groom just showed up. She deserved everything I could and couldn't give her. Whether she wanted to invite half of Manhattan or she wanted it to be just us, she was going to get it.
What we were looking for was somewhere to build the restauran
t that would become Isa’s. It would be a long road, getting architects and contractors, decorators and when it was ready, getting actual chefs and wait staff, but we had time. We weren’t in a hurry. We had a marriage to begin and a baby to have and raise in the meantime. We would be fine.
As far as New York went, it would still be a part of our lives yet. Say what you wanted about organized crime, but when you were at the very top of the command chain, the job was a versatile one. Sure it would be easier to work using New York as a base, but there were more important things we had to think about. My lieutenants were always a great team. They’d do just fine without me. New York was always just a phone call away. If my guys needed me, all they needed to do was ring. Isa made the decision to break her father’s empire into pieces that she meted out among his men.
We were keeping the house, and we would move away to Rome after the baby had been born. After that, we would have a life across the sea, peaceful and safe. Perfect to raise our family. The house in New York was for when we decided we missed the friendly New York atmosphere. Our parents might want to see their grandchild sometimes—and this way they’d be able to.
Chapter 10
Isa
Every little girl has had some sort of fantasy about her future wedding. All of them. If someone tells you they haven’t, then they’re lying.
I had had my wedding planned for years when I was little. Of course, I would be wearing a blinding white dress. It would be a ridiculous, flared ball gown, and the train would rival Princess Diana’s. I would wear a tiara in my hair, and we would have hundreds of guests. My father would walk me down the aisle and give me away to the man of my dreams, who would be my perfect Prince Charming in every way.
The fantasy changed a little the older that I got. I realized that the dream of having unlimited guests and the grandest of everything that money can buy was not a feasible dream because weddings cost money, and sometimes, you have to pay for them on your own. Another thing I realized was that getting married wasn’t the only thing I wanted to do. It wasn’t even that high on the list of things I wanted to do. I wanted to work and establish myself in my career. I wanted to live alone and enjoy my independence. I wanted maybe to even date and spend time with different people who potentially could teach me things and who I could have new experiences with.
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