The Legacy: A Mafia Bad Boy Romance

by Xander Hades

  Of course, the whole thing was a flat-out-lie. I needed all of three stitches, an x-ray and probably a CT scan to deal with what was probably a fairly mild concussion. All three things would be accomplished by Dr. Daniels, who’d been stitching together our men for the past twenty years, in the private office Daddy had fitted out with all the best in physician’s toys. I’d heard rumors that he’d even accomplished brain surgery once in the tiny operating room attached to his office, after one of the men had taken a knife to the head through his eye socket. Dr. Daniels had somehow managed to not only remove the knife, but Winks had made a pretty much full recovery, all of it off the books.

  So while I swallowed a handful of aspirin, they brought the shooter into the barn office. I was expecting them to manhandle him, to cuff him around a little. But he walked in like he was one of Michael’s guys. They even gave him a bottle of water.

  It kind of made me wish Diabolo had kicked him after all.

  “Who are you?” Michael was asking the questions, and he sounded pissed. But then I’d noticed that he sounded pissed just about all the time since he’d come back. For all I knew this was him being conversational.

  It certainly wasn’t the first thing I would have asked.

  “That’s the first thing you want to know?” I probably shouldn’t have interrupted, but some things just needed to be said. “Really? How about asking who sent him, what the orders were, how much he was getting paid, what about…”

  Michael leaned over me and in a low growl he said, “Shut up. I will spank you. Glass and needing to have stitches and all in front of every one of these people.”

  This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. But I bit my tongue. I knew Michael. He would do it.

  “What’s your name?” he asked again. I stared off at a long piece of rope hanging on the wall and thought of other uses for it.

  “Anthony Grazia.” The shooter seemed a little rattled. Pale. His eyes flickered between Michael and me as if trying to figure out our relationship. Like he was trying to figure out if Micheal would mind if I were killed. “I didn’t know it was you. Honest.”

  “You knew it was her,” Michael said and pointed at me. The shooter nodded miserably. “I did.” He admitted it to his feet. “I had orders.”

  “To kill a D’Angelo?”

  “No! No, I… I was supposed to ‘send a message’.” Grazia was frantic. Sweat rolled down his forehead, and he clutched the water bottle in his hands so tight that the plastic crackled. “You don’t know what it’s like in New Orleans now. Things have gone crazy. Fingers is… he’s going on out his own. Honest, I think he’s maybe gone a little nuts.”

  Michael and Rico shared a glance which made me wonder just what they knew. “What specifically were your orders?”

  I bit my tongue. What the hell difference did it make? He’d tried to kill me, he did it on Fingers’s orders, what else was there?

  “To let Dinky know that Fingers wasn’t taking orders from a girl. That’s what he said.”

  “And as for me?” Michael asked. “What did Fingers say about me?”

  “Nothin.” The man shrugged. “He didn’t mention you at all. Just her.”

  Michael was silent a moment. I thought at first he was considering his next question, but when I saw his eyes narrow and dart toward me, I realized he was trying to think through what question he’d want to ask in front of me. I gritted my teeth, already angry enough to find out that I was thought so little of. Finding out Michael still didn’t trust me, after I’d gone and confessed to him about the past and everything, hurt.

  Michael cleared his throat. “When Fingers cuts free of The Outfit, are his men going with him?”

  The thug didn’t want to answer that. I pricked up my ears to listen. OK, maybe this was a good question after all. Mad as I was, I would have to give him this one.

  “We didn’t know about you.” Grazia licked his lips again, seeming to forget about his water bottle, and glanced at me. “Only her.”

  Was he fucking kidding me? “You have problems working for a woman?”

  He gave me a hard stare that Daddy would have cleared off his face with a backhand, but I was too far away to reach him and Michael simply stood by and leveled a stare at me that was hard and unyielding.

  “Name three of your father’s men,” he said, ignoring every man in the room, staring so hard at me that I thought he’d bore a hole in my head.

  I looked away first.

  Chapter 13

  Michael

  I had Rico send the thug home. He was Finger’s problem. He’d wanted a message sent to Deanna, it was received. Deanna nearly screamed when I told Rico to get the man to the airport, she wanted his head, but that was probably the pain speaking.

  The stitches were minor, to be honest, and they were on her hip, not her ass. A trip to the family doctor had gotten her four, not three as I’d thought initially. I’d been amazed at the private hospital setup Dinky had set up, but then maybe when you were Dinky D’Angelo you just thought things on that kind of scale. The ankle was sprained, the concussion minor, and all determined quickly without Insurance cards. I had to wonder how Dinky paid for all that, and then wondered if somehow I had too. Probably listed on my tax return somewhere under “Charitable Contributions.”

  Thankfully my men obeyed me, which was more than I could say for the hellcat who had been looking daggers at me ever since we’d left the barn. Back at her house, I’d half expected her father to descend on me and call me every kind of a craven coward for how I’d handled the situation. You sure as hell knew he knew every last bit of the morning’s ride had been detailed lavishly to the old man before we’d even gotten to the doctor’s office. But oddly enough the old man was noticeably absent, and for the most part, we were being left alone.

  For all I knew. Dinky looked on this time together as part of our courtship process. Which only made me wonder just how twisted his own courtship had been.

  Whatever the case, we were alone now. I walked behind the couch she was laying on and sat on the high back.

  “Can you?” I’d been dying to follow up on this question for the last two hours, but had waited her out, figuring that at the very least letting the pain medication kick in would at least buy her time to answer the question.

  “Can I what?” She was still pissed off, but her brow was crumpled in confusion.

  “Can you name three of your father’s men?”

  “Well…” She grabbed at a throw pillow like it was some kind of lifeline, eyes dark and stormy. “Can you?”

  I looked at her long and steady. She wasn’t going to like my answer, but I hadn’t liked hers so we were pretty well even. “Yeah. I can name everyone that worked for my father. I can name everyone that works for your father. I know the names of their wives and kids too.”

  “Kids?” Her eyes widened a little, and the skin beneath her tan had gone a little pale like she’d never considered this before. “They have kids?”

  “Most of them, yeah. Most of them do what they do because they want their kids to have a good life and this how they pay for it.” I looked at her for a moment. “You didn’t know that?”

  Her fingers plucked at a tassel on the corner of the pillow, shredding it into so much yarn and fluff. “No. I figured that risking yourself is something that should be done by people that don’t have dependents.”

  “People like that,” I said, striving to be patient when in truth I was angry and honestly, disappointed. “don’t need to risk themselves. It’s the men and women with obligations and responsibilities that take risks. They do it for their kids, usually.”

  She threw aside the pillow and stood. The little inflatable cast on her ankle didn’t slow her down much. Her jeans had been transformed ingloriously into cut-offs, badly done with surgical scissors while waiting to get the results of her tests back. There had been no other way to get them back on after stitches and her foot had been bandaged and put in a cast. She’d wound up cutting the
legs a little higher than necessary and so I had a good eyeful of leg and a hint of delectable curvature of bared butt check when she moved. She hobbled over to me and stood in front of me.

  “Michael,” she said, placing her hands on my chest. “I have studied. I have worked, I have spent my life ready to take over the D’Angelo family business.” Her fists clenched on my shirt, her voice held shards of ice. “I am not walking away from this.”

  I slipped down off the back of the couch and grabbed her, one hand on either side, just at the bottom of her ribs. Deanna was always athletic, and she was always somewhat petite. I, on the other hand, filled out a great deal in college and I found a couple of friends who’d taught me a thing or two about how to grapple.

  I picked her up, much to her shock. The grip on my shirt turned from emphasis to hanging on for dear life. I slammed her against the wall, not hard, I wasn’t planning on hurting her, just letting her know that I wasn’t going to roll over and say “yes ma’am.” That had been Tony’s specialty.

  I leaned in, pressing her body against mine. I could feel myself rising, the pants I wore tenting with the arousal. Her legs were bare, the shirt was thin, and she was in my arms and I had her pressed against me. Of course, I would respond to her that way. She was nearly naked, sexy as hell. It didn’t have to mean anything. Simple biology.

  “I’m not asking you to,” I said, my voice a low growl. I was pissed and tired of her little games. “But that’s what you’re asking me to do, isn’t it?”

  Her breaths came heavy and fast. When she looked up at me her eyes were wide. Not from fear. God, she felt it too, the arousal, the sudden need.

  “I thought you didn’t want it.” She’d lost the edge to her voice and sounded uncertain.

  I didn’t know if she was talking about The Outfit or sex with her. It didn’t actually matter, either. I wanted both. I would have both. It was that simple.

  I touched my nose to hers, turning my head a little. She shifted her grasp, no longer gripping my shirt, now wrapping her hands behind my neck. I took her. I pressed my lips to hers and took her mouth with mine.

  She pulled me in, trapping my head in her hands, pulling my lips down to hers. I chose to believe I initiated the kiss, so that’s the way I think it happened. My hands went under her shirt, I ran my fingers over her back and under the bra strap.

  Her legs wrapped around me and she leaned in. I lost my balance for a moment and carried her backward until my legs hit the couch. I turned her around and propped her there, my fingers working on the bra clasps until they finally gave way.

  There’s something about a woman’s back, the feel of it, I mean. I ran my hands over her back from her shorts to the nape of her neck, breaking off the kiss only long enough to pull her shirt off over her head. She wiggled out of her bra and tore at my shirt, I could hear threads giving way as she pulled it over my head.

  Skin to skin we rejoined the kiss, her legs still wrapped around my waist. I let my hands roam over her, reveling in the soft satin of her skin as she did the same with me, tiny delicate hands that I’d love to carve someday were I artistic enough, were cupping my flesh. Stroking. Slipping beneath the waistband and finding me beneath my jeans.

  In the shop the other day, it was… it was a continuation of the old days, it was trying to recapture what we had. This time, this time was different. This time, she and I were different people than the kids we’d been and these people wanted each other, badly.

  Only this time we wanted each other on our own terms.

  We wanted it badly enough that we were willing to meet those terms, her and I.

  I yanked at her shorts. I tried to be mindful of the large gauze pad on her hip where the stitches went, but I might have pulled on that too. She didn’t seem to care if I did. She was too busy working on my pants, tearing them open and pulling them down, underwear and all.

  I was able to free her good leg from the shorts, they hung comically from the inflated splint. The panties… I thought about it for two seconds, but by then she’d freed my cock and was playing with it and it was too late to be polite.

  I grabbed the waistband and tore the fabric. I pulled them off and threw them behind me and pressed against her. She wasn’t having any of that, though. She grabbed at me, bold and sure, trapping the hard flesh in her hand and aimed it where she wanted it to go. Her bare leg wrapped behind me and pulled me into her tender trap.

  I was consumed. She gasped against my mouth and moved her hips to take me deeper, holding me there, tightly inside of her while I grabbed her hair and pulled back her head, opening her mouth to mine again, tongue flicking hers, biting at her lower lip. Taking her mouth as brutally as I wanted to take the rest of her.

  Maybe I hesitated a moment here, thinking of her injuries, her head. Surely this couldn’t be good for her. It was she who made the next move, grabbing at my hips and firmly bringing me home. Encouraged, I slammed into her, pulling out as much as I could before pressing back again and again. Once I’d started, there was no way I was stopping. God, she felt good, fire and heat at the core, silky skin against mine, iron will meeting my every thrust and never backing down, taking as much as giving. She rode the back of the couch while she rode me and I could feel her, more than I ever could.

  I had sex with her for the first time when we were both 16 and for three years we played together whenever we could get away. That’s what it was, playing. Children who thought they were in love, crushes exploring each other’s bodies when they barely understood their own.

  This was a meeting of two adults. Two people that knew what they were doing and why and with whom and the difference was incredible. I could feel her. I could feel her around me as I slammed into her, I could feel her breath as her breasts rose and fell against my chest I could feel her lips on mine, but more than that, I COULD FEEL HER. It was as though our skin, as wonderfully soft and pliable as her skin was, it was as though they melted away. More to the point, like our skin merged, our bodies merged, our…

  I don’t do poetry, I don’t have that mindset. I want to say that our souls merged, our feelings became one, I don’t know about all that. All I know is that I felt her and when my release came and when I felt the sensations rippling through me… for a moment I knew how she felt, how her orgasm centered around mine.

  She held me. She held onto me like I was a tree in a storm, even past the point where her spasms stopped, past when her climax and the little aftershocks eased away.

  Then she buried her head in my chest, arms around me, legs limply falling, tangling with my own.

  “I love you.”

  I don’t think I was supposed to have heard it. The words came out in a breathy whisper as she stayed, collapsed around me.

  We were one.

  I felt what she felt.

  I just couldn’t say it.

  Chapter 14

  Deanna

  A part of my brain froze. That had been…amazing.

  We’d had sex before, as often as we could before we went our separate ways after graduation. It had always been good, hell it had been great. But this was something different.

  Maybe it’s we who were different.

  The other day had been a test. We’d been probing each other… OK, maybe that’s not the best way to say it. We were testing each other to see if we still fit, if there was still an “us”. This time, this time it was as if we reconnected where we’d left off, like a continuation of what we once were to each other.

  Only the children had grown and Michael… oh my, Michael had grown. Not just his body, but that had filled out handsomely and he’d muscled up pretty well too. But the boy I knew had been bitter and angry a lot. He was a child with a chip on his shoulder, but so afraid of being hurt that he kept people at arm’s distance. Even me.

  I thought he was in on the great plans Daddy had for me. The “whoring” as I used to call it. Ironically, I’d ended up hurting him in exactly the way he’d tried to avoid. He let himself be open to me
and I hurt him to hurt Daddy.

  Now… Now I had let my defenses down. I did what I swore I never would. We’d both bandied the word about like a soccer ball back when we were kids. “I love you”, or “Bye, love you”, or “love you, call me…”. It was an easy phrase to use, it meant friendship with sex, it meant best buds, it meant…

  But that was then. Michael was a boy, I was… innocent. Michael became a man and I became bitter and angry and resentful. Yet, I was here I was perched, naked on the back of that couch and I experienced something I’d never felt before. I blended with him. I felt what he felt, I breathed his breath I…well I forgot where I ended and he began and it didn’t matter.

  It wasn’t sex, it was a joining and in that moment, I didn’t remember what it was to be two separate people. Everything just made sense in a way it never did before.

  I held on to him, feeling the sweat that glistened on both of us, the breath we both tried to catch and hanging on to that moment of joining as hard as I could, not letting it go. And then those damn words just… slipped out.

  “I love you.”

  I’d said it many times over the years. I thought it meant something then. It did, in its own innocent way. This time… this time it carried a heavy significance. This time it felt more real than ever. And I’d said it first.