by Bethany-Kris
“That’s not sex, though,” Aria whispered. “Sex is supposed to be good, and consensual, and whatever else you want it to be, Caesar, but it’s not supposed to be that.”
Caesar glanced up to find she was staring at him—no pity looked back, though. Just another soul who might possibly be a little broken like he was, but it still wasn’t the same. It was enough to make him take notice.
It was enough.
“It’s not supposed to be that,” she repeated.
“Monsters rarely look like monsters.”
“I know.”
Sometimes, monsters were pretty women with a drinking problem, and an ever-constant presence that he couldn’t rid himself of.
Caesar tipped his drink up, and swallowed the rest of the whiskey in one burning pull before he set the glass aside. “Time to get back to hell.”
Aria let out a soft sigh. “Hard to believe.”
“What is?”
“It’s almost done. I’m almost free.”
Caesar chuckled darkly.
Didn’t she know?
There was only one way his father would let her—and probably him—get out of this alive now. And she wasn’t going to like it at all.
“You’re never going to be free now, Aria.”
SIXTEEN
THIS WAS NOT what Aria was expecting.
This was not what she wanted.
This was not the plan.
“We go ahead with the original idea for her husband,” Angelo said, eyeing Aria from where he sat behind his ostentatious desk. “Send him back to his people with a message—make sure our point is driven home that our organization is not the one they want to mess with, and wipe our hands clean.”
“And what of her?” the man sitting in the corner asked.
She thought his name was Christoph—an underboss, or some nonsense, but she couldn’t be sure.
Angelo’s eagle-eye still hadn’t left Aria. “I am undecided.”
“We had a—”
“Quiet, Caesar,” Angelo muttered, raising a single hand to quiet his son. “You know just as well as I do that deals change all the time in this business.”
Beside her, Caesar stiffened. “Only dishonorable men renege on a deal.”
The man behind the desk chuckled dryly. “And you would know all about being a dishonorable man, wouldn’t you?”
That silenced Caesar instantly.
Aria chose to speak, then. “If you don’t return me, then they’ll raise hell. I guarantee it—given who my father was, and what has happened to my husband, they won’t let it rest. Camorra clans aren’t the type to shy away from retribution when it comes to something like this.”
Angelo raised a single brow. “Even for a woman like you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what it means,” the man returned easily, smirking just a bit. “You certainly put on a good show, Aria De Rose, but that’s all it is. And when someone strips you of the things you use to hide your intentions, the show is no longer amusing.”
Jesus.
“What’s to say she won’t come back on us, then?” Angelo asked Caesar, his gaze cutting back to his son lightning fast. “Should we hand her back over as a peace offering like she suggests, then what’s to say she won’t come back on us for what we’ve done?”
“You have my word that I won’t,” Aria said.
Angelo didn’t even look at her that time. “Your word is useless, donna.”
“She did start the war between our organizations,” Christoph added. “It’s not a stretch to think she might continue it on.”
“And that’s no good for us,” Angelo said heavily.
Aria didn’t want more fighting.
She didn’t need more bloodshed.
None of that was important, now.
She had got what she wanted the second Raffe stopped breathing. She could go back to her life before she had become his wife, and regain some semblance of the normalcy she had lost. She could heal. Finally, really heal from the hell she had needed to endure.
She didn’t want war.
And these men didn’t care.
Caesar lifted a single finger high, drawing every eye in the room to his seat beside Aria. “I have another option.”
Angelo’s lips flattened into a grim line. “I can’t say I am particularly interested in hearing it, but go ahead and try me anyway. It can’t be any worse than the ones that are already on the table. Dio knows we could argue the semantics of this bullshit all night.”
“I think you might like this one, actually.”
“I rarely like things you do or want, Caesar,” Angelo grumbled. “Don’t get your hopes up too high.”
His father’s barely-hidden insults didn’t even seem to faze Caesar. It was like they simply rolled off his shoulders with every single one, as though he were used to this, and it had become second nature for him to be the verbal punching bag.
Or maybe …
Shit, maybe he liked this.
Maybe this was part of what made him who he was.
Beyond the rest …
“Do tell,” Angelo said, waving a hand dismissively at his son. “Before my patience wanes, and I just take the easy route by killing her.”
Aria’s spine stiffened like someone had driven a stake into the bone, and forced her to sit a little straighter in the chair. It infuriated her to no end how she could be sitting right there, and yet these men talked as though she wasn’t in the room at all. Her opinion—despite having shown her muscle against them at every turn on the streets—counted for absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.
She was still just a woman.
And women were less than a man.
At least, to these people.
A shame, really.
It was their mistake.
“Well, it is something you’ve wanted for a while,” Caesar said. “And you don’t need to be rude about it, that’s all.”
“Caesar, don’t test me tonight.”
“You’re no fun.”
“You’ve made me this way, figlio.”
“Have I, really?” Caesar asked.
Angelo simply stared at his son.
Caesar looked right back.
“Get on with it,” Angelo barked.
“Fine,” Caesar said under his breath. And then, louder, “I marry her—she’s a widow, and we don’t even have to pretend to wait for a period of time like we might if it was another Cosa Nostra woman. She’s not Cosa Nostra, but she is Italian, and that’s what counts to you, isn’t it?”
Aria’s head snapped to the side, and she stared dumbfounded at Caesar.
No.
He was not offering what she thought he was.
He couldn’t be …
“Marry her,” Angelo echoed.
Caesar nodded once. “And then the Accardo organization can absorb the De Rose Camorra into a faction for our business—the men will either get in line, or they can be killed. Either way, their added business is a win for us. They have a decent territory where their drug trade is strong. A heavy hand in loansharking within Philly. And even a racket in the new development on the west end where those condos are being built for the next five years. Her father knew a guy higher up with the suits—it looks like it’ll be a good deal.”
Aria was stunned.
Silenced.
Livid.
How did he know all that?
“They’re not made men,” Angelo pointed out, although not unkindly.
It sounded like he was actually fucking considering this.
“They don’t have to be made men to work under a made man,” Caesar returned. “Name one Capo in our family who has a crew made up of entirely made men. Go on—I’ll wait. I have all the time in the world tonight, apparently. No better place to be.”
He even flicked his hand at his father like he was passing the
goddamn torch.
Angelo sighed. “No need; I get your point.”
“And should a crew fall to shit, well, the business will still be there at the end of the day,” Caesar said, shrugging his Armani covered shoulders.
Like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like he wasn’t ruining everything Aria had worked for. Like he wasn’t ripping apart her entire world without even looking at her while he fucking did it!
Inside, she seethed.
Outside, she was a mask of calm.
Life had taught her to be this way.
She didn’t know anything different.
Angelo leaned forward at his desk, and rested his elbows along the edge as he steepled his fingers together. Overtop his fingertips, he stared at Caesar for a long while. The room stayed quiet with a tension so thick, it seemed almost suffocating.
Then again, that could have just been her.
And her rage.
“That would renege the deal with the Canadian boss,” Angelo murmured.
Caesar looked entirely unaffected that statement. Was that was this was? He’d been nailed to the wall with that marriage arrangement, and his way out was using her?
He’d told her that once, hadn’t he? This—to be free from that marriage arrangement—was what he needed. His way to freedom was to cage her.
“I’ll handle the De Rose crew—stay on my side of the city, and out of your hair. Other than tribute once a month, you won’t need to see me at all, or have anything to do with me. The trouble will be, essentially, gone. That’s what you want the most, isn’t it?”
“And you will see it through?” Angelo asked, ignoring his son’s question altogether. “The marriage, I mean.”
Caesar nodded. “I picked it, didn’t I?”
“It’s true you haven’t done that before.”
“I keep my word when I make it, and not when you do. There’s a difference. I will see it through.”
Angelo tipped his chin up, and then glanced over at Aria with narrowed eyes. “Well … it seems you’ve managed to find your way out of yet another one of my arrangements for you, Caesar. I hope this woman is worth the trouble. You won’t like what happens if she’s not.”
She’s to stay here until the day you marry—that’s my demand. Take it or leave it.
Those parting words of Angelo’s before he’d sent them from the office were still echoing in Aria’s head like a bad fucking dream—a nightmare that had somehow become her reality. She didn’t know how any of this had happened. This was not what was supposed to happen!
She trembled all over. From the five-inch patent leather pumps on her feet to the very top of her head—she vibrated with her rage. How she had managed to hide it for this long, she didn’t know. They were just entering the upper, private wing that had become her prison before all that fury she had been holding in finally started to show.
She was going to break her teeth from clenching them so hard. Her nails were breaking the thin skin of her palms because she couldn’t unfurrow her fists.
Caesar’s hand came to press at her lower back as they stepped through the oak doors leading into the wing, and she snapped.
Her hand swung hard, and snapped against his wrist to knock his touch as far away from her body as she could get it. He did not get to touch her now.
How dare he?
Spinning in her heels, she faced Caesar and let him see all that anger and betrayal she had been keeping hidden since he decided to open his fucking mouth downstairs. He didn’t look the least bit surprised to see how mad she was—if anything, he looked smug.
Too fucking smug.
Too arrogant.
Too cocky.
This man was too much of everything!
“You didn’t think you would get off scot free after everything, did you?” he asked.
Aria’s cheek twitched as she replied, “I thought you understood what I needed—we had a plan.”
“You had a plan. I used what bit of it would work for me, and the rest … well, shit happens. What you need isn’t always what everyone else wants. I’ve been told time and time again that the world rarely revolves around me. Maybe it’s a lesson you should learn as well.”
Screw him.
“Since when do you give a fuck about everyone else, Caesar?”
His lips curled at the edge—only one side. A sexy, hateful half-smirk that she might have enjoyed seeing any other time. But not right then.
“Low blow,” he said.
Oh, he hadn’t seen anything yet. She could promise him that, but very little else.
Caesar took one step forward, but Aria refused to let him come closer to her. Not after everything. She took one giant step back. He didn’t even seem bothered or offended by it.
“You manipulated me in to making a bigger war with your family—in to killing your father, and your husband. You showed everyone just how vicious and dangerous you can be, donna. And what? You thought after all of that, he was going to let you go?”
He, she noticed.
Angelo.
Not Caesar, though.
“Killing you would have been the easy choice,” Caesar said, “except I had a better option.”
“For who?” she asked. “Not for me. You’ve ruined everything, Caesar.”
“Have I?”
“How could you?”
Caesar grinned. “Stomp your foot, and add in a how dare you for good measure, love. It might get you the same result, but you’ll look fucking cute doing it.”
Fire blazed through her very being—burning through her muscle and sinew with devastating intent. It was going to ruin her like he had, but she would much rather her rage take her down than this man.
He caused her to feel a fury so strong, it nearly knocked the wind out of her. She cared for this man—she didn’t know when it happened, or why or how. And none of that mattered anymore.
None of it mattered because of this.
Because he betrayed her.
The two stared at one another in silence.
Caesar, unmoved and cold.
Aria, enraged and trembling.
It was a stark contrast, and she was not so distracted that she didn’t recognize it for what it was. Both broken, and damaged in ways that would never be repaired. They were two entirely different people who played the most dangerous of games. And at the end of the day, they were still just pawns to one another.
Nothing more, and nothing less.
Caesar forgot, though, how goddamn good Aria could be at this game.
She knew her moves.
She knew his.
And she knew how to work them against each other.
“Fuck you,” she uttered.
“We’ve already been there and done that—you’re still wet from it, Aria.”
Caesar rocked back on his heels with a dark laugh, and turned his back to her. He reached for the handle on the oak doors a second after a knock echoed from the other side. He turned the knob, but just before he opened the doors, he looked back at her.
“A parting gift … if you want one.”
She didn’t care.
She wanted nothing from him.
Not now.
And yet, when Caesar pulled open the door, there stood someone she did want to see and talk to. Or … needed to see and talk to after everything.
Nico.
The only person she could actually trust.
“Told you she was alive,” Caesar said to Nico.
“Lucky for you.”
“That is a matter of opinion at the moment.”
Nico didn’t respond to that at all. He stood with a guard at his back, and his wild gaze darting between Caesar, and her. Nico didn’t move an inch until Caesar passed him by, and when he did move it was only to come closer to Aria.
“Behave,” Caesar said over his shoulder, “and Nico stays for as long as you want him to. You could use a friend, Aria. D
on’t be stupid.”
“Ten minutes,” Nico murmured.
Aria glanced away from the mirror, and nodded at her friend. “Okay.”
She was grateful for his company—he stayed with her in the mansion’s wing even when he could have gone home, and filled in the important people with the news of everything that had happened. Instead, he stayed there with her for three days.
So far.
Caesar hadn’t come back to the wing since he left that first night, and she wasn’t even entirely sure that he was still at the Accardo estate. But she couldn’t say for sure. It was a wise move on his part to keep his distance.
Strangely enough, the wing wasn’t locked, either. Aria was allowed to leave, and wander the mansion or the grounds without much interference. Although the guard that had accompanied Nico—he called the man an enforcer—was never too far behind when she left the wing.
He didn’t speak.
Luckily.
Aria went back to her reflection in the mirror, and smoothed out her white dress. The elbow-length sleeves, and short skirt was both modest, and yet sexy. She’d managed her curls into a thick mane that fell over her shoulders, and halfway down her back. She’d done up her makeup, and wrapped a bracelet of pearls around her wrist.
Simplicity and elegance.
They asked for a De Rose—they got one.
“You don’t have to do dinner with them,” Nico said. “It was only offered.”
She shrugged. “It was offered, though. And why not take them up on it?”
If the Accardos wanted to pretty Aria up, and put her on display for their people to show what they had done and what they now had, she was more than willing to play along. At least for the moment, anyway. She couldn’t say how long it would last.
“Shame I wasn’t invited.”
She might think Nico was offended about that if he wasn’t smirking.
“Cute,” she said.
