Giada pulled his head to her shoulder and held him there, and he wept even harder, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding on with all he had left.
~oOo~
He woke alone in his bedroom, lying on the covers of the bed he’d made this morning, when he was leaving the house for his brother and sister. The nightstand lamp on the other side was on, and that was the only light. Night had fallen.
His eyes ached and his throat burned. His chest felt stiff. He had no memory of coming to bed. Or when Giada had left, or how they’d left things.
All he remembered was crying in her arms like a lost little boy. He stared at the ceiling.
It was good she was gone. He didn’t want her here. He couldn’t, shouldn’t believe her, or forgive her. It didn’t matter that he loved her.
But he felt hollow. Dead, but for the pesky breathing.
“You’re awake,” she said, and he lifted his head, suddenly woozy with relief.
She stood in the doorway, with one of his bath towels draped over her arm, and holding a cardboard tray with two soft drinks and a white paper sack. He recognized the red and green logo on the cups and sack: Santini’s, a local pizza-and-sandwich place.
He loved that place, a favorite haunt since he was a kid. His heart kicked unhappily.
“I thought you might need comfort food when you woke up,” she said as she came in. “I was going to make you something, but there’s not much food in your fridge, so I used an app and ordered from a place that looked good.”
He’d emptied out his fridge so the food wouldn’t rot if it took some time before Tina and Matt were notified of his death.
“Santini’s is good. You’re still here.”
She set the soft drinks and bag on his nightstand and stood with her hands on her hips. “Yes. I told you, I’m here.”
“Don’t you have don things to do in Boston?” He hadn’t overtly tried to sound sarcastic, but it happened anyway.
A spasm of hurt crossed her mouth, and she sighed. “I’ll have to be in Boston in the morning, yeah. I have businesses to run, and another funeral to arrange, because I lost my uncle in all this, too.”
He’d actually forgotten about Vincenzo, which was, admittedly, pretty shitty, even considering his own problems.
“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t know what you like, so I got Cokes and meatball grinders, classic style.”
Santini’s meatball grinders were things of local legend. Angie hadn’t eaten since ... breakfast yesterday? His stomach now made a sound like a starved bear. It was so simultaneously spot-on to this moment and wildly out of tune with life in general that they both laughed out loud.
“Meatball grinder is perfect. Coke is good, too. Thank you.”
She dug into the bag and handed him a heavy, foil-wrapped oblong of heartwarming heat and mouthwatering scent. She took one for herself as well. Angie couldn’t help but note with pleasure that she meant to dig into the same behemoth sandwich. And that she climbed onto his bed and crossed her legs like a girl, still wearing that sleek, chic dress, the skirt hitched up carelessly high.
With the bath towel spread over his bed, she’d made a little picnic. For a few minutes, Angie was so wrapped in sating his suddenly ravenous hunger with one of his favorite meals that he almost wasn’t miserable.
Then Giada, after a sip of her soda, set the remaining half of her sandwich down and said, “What’s going on downstairs? All the stuff spread out on the dining room table.”
With his mouth full of meat, bread, and cheese, Angie stopped chewing and stared at her. He wasn’t sure he could swallow.
She answered her own question. “You didn’t think you’d be home again.”
Forcing the wad of food down his throat, he shook his head. “I thought it was highly likely I wouldn’t be, yeah. Now, I wish I’d been right.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think, G? Because I have nothing.” He put his sandwich down and washed his mouth with Coke. “All I ever was to be proud of is a Pagano man. I’m not a good man. I’m not a good brother. I wasn’t a good son. I’m an asshole to most people. Fuck, I hardly care about people at all. All I had, the only thing that ever mattered—I had honor. I was loyal. I was a good Pagano man. Now that’s gone, and I have nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
She pushed her sandwich aside and scooted closer to set her hand on his leg. “Angie, you are one of the most honorable men I’ve ever known. What you did for me, what you sacrificed? That took immense honor. And you’ve been loyal to Nick even while you protected me. All you did was keep a secret that did him no harm. After years and years of proving yourself, he should have trusted you. If he can’t see that, if he would deny you love because he can’t trust someone as loyal as you? Well, then, he’s not the man I thought he was.”
“Shut up.”
She laughed softly. “Listen to you. You’re still loyal to him. Even now.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“My God, Angelo. How can you say you’ve lost your honor? Nick has forsaken you, and you still hold with him.” She squeezed his leg. “Trust should run both ways. He should be worthy of your loyalty. You should have been able to trust him to honor your proven worth, the love and friendship you’ve shown, and to trust you to keep faith with him wherever you are. If he would trust you under torture, why won’t he trust you in love?”
“It’s different,” he said, though his conviction quivered a bit.
“Why?”
“Because torture hurts only me. Love brings somebody else into the equation.”
She rolled her eyes. “But you already have other people in the equation. You have your sister—wasn’t she hurt in Pagano trouble? Or what happened to Lara Pagano? Or when the Ukrainians tried to take Carina? Or what happened to Bev? Obviously, if Nick is worried about his secrets getting told to protect loved ones, he should have stayed single and demanded that everyone in his family cut all ties with anyone important to them, because loved ones are at risk, and you can’t tell me Nick wouldn’t do anything to save them from trouble. That makes them risks themselves, as well as at risk.”
She was wrong. In every one of those cases, Nick had responded with vehement violence, but he had never given an enemy what they sought in harming those he loved. He’d always found a way to beat their game.
In fact, many innocents had been hurt. Some, like poor Brenda, had been hurt specifically because Nick had refused to change his behavior under threat. As his security chief, Angie had argued against that last fucking dinner at Dominic’s. They’d been in the middle of a war and had just sent Yuri Bondaruk’s son’s parts back to him in a cooler, packed in dry ice. Despite their tripled security, they should never have been sitting in a restaurant well-known for his patronage only a few days later. But Nick Pagano didn’t cower. Not even to save the innocents who might have the misfortune of dining on the same night. Or at the same table. Fuck, he’d had his own wife at that table. As protective as he was of Bev, his need to show strength had been the greater impulse.
Rather than argue that point, Angie chose one more directly cogent to the woman before him. “This is different. You are different, Giada. You’re a don. He’s worried my loyalty will be divided.”
“We’re allies. For a long time. We’re friends.”
“Un amico oggi può essere un nemico domani.”
“You got that backwards. The saying is un nemico ieri può essere un amico oggi.”
“Works both ways. Friends and enemies are slippery in our world. One this day, the other the next. What if we’re together and Paganos and Saccos fall out? Where would that leave me?”
Giada made an unconvinced face, tucking in a corner of her mouth. “Has your loyalty to Nick ever slipped?”
“Yes. This. The secret I kept. Being with you knowing he didn’t want it. I chose you over him every time we were together, every day I kept the secret. I chose you.”
His voice broke, and he coughed. Another crying jag was not something he could handle. “This conversation is breaking my fucking heart, Giada. Nick was right. I was wrong. I’m lucky, I guess, to still be breathing. Period. It’s over, and so am I.”
He didn’t want the rest of his sandwich. Wadding the foil over it, he shoved it back in the sack. “Goddamn, I’m tired.” He must have slept for hours by now, through the day and into the night, but he felt like he could do another full shift.
“Angie,” Giada said softly. He turned back to her. “You’re not over.” She clasped his hand. “Come to Boston. Be with me. I need people I trust around me, and I don’t have Enzo anymore. Bruno’s the only one in the family I really trust right now, and I’m not strong enough with only one man at my side. Be my consigliere.”
His mind froze. “Please?”
“Nick broke your vow to him. You’re not bound. If it’s over, then move on. Take our vows. You helped me take the seat. Now help me keep it. Help me make the Sacco Family what it once was.”
“I don’t—what?” The thought of being in another family made him queasy. He was a Pagano man. He’d always been a Pagano man. He’d always be—
No, he wouldn’t. He wasn’t. He was nothing.
Unless he might be a Sacco man.
“Your men would accept that? Me coming in at the top, like the queen’s consort? Or would they see me as Nick’s mole?”
She laughed. “Wouldn’t that be ironic, if they thought you were a spy in the other direction? They might think so at first, and I’m sure they won’t like it at first, but if I’m strong enough, they’ll accept it. And then we’ll show them how right it is. I’ll make Bruno underboss to settle their nerves.”
“Jesus. I never ... I don’t know. I don’t think I can flip a switch and be a Sacco man just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “It’s not just a job I lost.”
“I know. Take some time and think about it.” She wrapped up the rest of her sandwich and scooted off the bed. When she’d tossed it in the sack, she crossed to the other side of the room, near his tall dresser, and bent to gather her shoes.
“What are you doing?” he asked, knowing the answer. The weight returned to his chest.
“You’re tired, and I’m stressing you out. I want to give you some space to think.”
“Don’t go.” Suddenly that was the most important thing—whatever else happened, whatever choices he still had, right now, he needed her to stay. He didn’t want to be alone, and he didn’t want to be without her. “Please don’t go.”
She dropped her shoes and came back to the bed.
~ 18 ~
After their sandwiches and painful talk, Giada convinced Angie to take a hot shower and wash the day off his skin, and while he was in the bathroom she’d cleaned up their meal, taking their sandwiches to the fridge so he’d have leftovers later.
The hot shower had calmed him and made him dozy, so she’d tucked him under the covers, and he’d fallen quickly to sleep. For the last two hours, she’d lain beside him and watched the calm lift and fall of his broad chest. And she’d turned her mind loose to think.
That table downstairs, strewn with keepsakes, broke her heart. Nothing of tremendous monetary value, but all of it priceless. And that faded, tattered old songbook, with the note Please don’t sell the piano. Somebody take it home.
She’d only wanted a strong ally. She’d only wanted notice for it, and sex, romance, was the only thing the men in their world would look at her twice for. She was about to change that, but first she’d had to exploit it.
But Angie had almost died for her ambition.
It wasn’t her fault alone, however. Nick bore his share of the burden, too. For one thing, why hadn’t he told his men the plan was hers? In what way did that matter to him? For another, what she’d told Angie earlier she absolutely believed: he deserved much more faith than his don had given him. He had proved himself over the course of years and had earned some slack.
Nick was getting old. He’d been badly wounded. Though he was as powerful as ever, maybe he was beginning to lose something. Or maybe he’d finally gathered so much power to himself he’d begun to believe he was a god.
Lost in her thoughts, Giada shook her head. The last thing the American Families needed was their own Ettore Cuccia.
With a gasp and a groan, Angie flinched in his sleep, dreaming. Giada scooted closer and kissed his rough cheek—in just a day, he’d grown the kind of stubbly beard some men cultivated, and his face and neck were covered in prickly black and grey hairs.
He was due for a wax, too, and she could see the natural pattern of his body hair. He hadn’t exaggerated; he was a bear. But she liked it, at least now, when it was only a hint and not a pelt. The man had gone in for thirds of testosterone.
She brushed her hand over his chest, soothing his fretful sleep, and sighed at the tingling pleasure of the short hairs on her palm.
Angie had sacrificed everything for her, but that wasn’t why she loved him. She loved him for who he was—for his honor, and his humor, for his surprising sweetness and for the way he didn’t see that in himself. She loved him for his turmoil and vulnerability, and for his brazen masculinity. She loved him for who he was.
In the world she’d grown up in, to love would have made her weak, so she never had allowed that emotion to flower.
But she’d changed that world. She’d shaped it to her will.
Now she could love. Maybe Angie would say love had made him weak, but she’d show him otherwise.
He hadn’t returned the words she’d said, but she knew he felt the same. Everything he’d risked, everything he’d lost, told her. With far more force than words ever could.
She leaned over him and kissed his chest. His breathing changed when she did, and she looked up and found his eyes open.
“Hi,” she said.
He brought his arm around her, slid his hand into her hair. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Still dark, though. Do you feel any better?”
“I don’t know.”
Pushing up, she pressed her lips to his, but backed off before it could become more than just that quick touch. “I want to make you feel better.”
Angie said nothing, but his eyes studied her. They were a brown like tiger’s eye, picking up light and heat and emotion, and shifting color in a range from amber to umber. Now they were warm and dark, like chocolate.
Keeping her eyes on his, she kissed his chin, then scooted down, putting her lips on his throat, letting her tongue swirl at the notch at its base, sucking his gold chain between her teeth. He groaned softly, and she looked up again. He was watching her, his heavy brow drawn lightly with interest.
As Giada worked her way down his body, favoring each inch in turn, she felt ease slip under his skin. Almost everywhere, he softened, settled. Except for one place, long and thick as a tree branch and just as hard. It dug into her hip, and then her belly—she’d stripped her dress off before she’d gotten under the covers with him, and now wore only her underwear set—and then her breasts as she made her loving way toward her destination.
As she traced the line of an abdominal muscle with her tongue, his belly quivered, and his hips flexed, driving his cock between her breasts. She lifted her mouth from his belly and let him fuck her cleavage for a moment, holding her breasts while he thrust against her skin and the lace of her bra.
“Fuck,” he muttered on a groan. “Giada ...”
“Ti piace cosi?” she asked.
“Fuck, yes.”
“I’m gonna make you feel so good, bello.”
She wrapped her hands around him, let her fingers brush his smooth, hot balls, and took him into her mouth.
His hand clenched in her hair, and he groaned like he was dying in pain, but he pushed on her head, and his hips came off the bed, forcing his cock deeper into her mouth.
She tightened her grip and backed him off a little, keeping control. When he gave over, she began
to show him the benefits when she was in charge.
She took her time, tasted every inch of him, moved tongue and lips, hands and fingers in as many ways as she could imagine, found what he liked, what drove him crazy, what brought him back down. She suckled his tip until his head thrashed. She dipped her head and filled her mouth with his sleek balls.
“Mi piace così tanto!” he gasped, his hips arched high. “Giada! Sto per venire!”
He was closer than she’d realized this time. She could back him off again, but decided to end his torment. Taking him into her mouth again as his hips dropped, she clasped her hands firmly around what she couldn’t take, twisted her grip around his shaft and sucked him off.
“Giada!” he shouted. His hips shot up again, and he filled her mouth. She backed off enough to swallow but stayed on his tip, bringing him down gently, until his whole body was limp and his cock began to soften as well.
Scooting up and settling over him, Giada kissed him. His hand was still in her hair, and he held her head to him, plunged his tongue into her mouth, and tasted himself fully. When his body pressed on hers as he began to roll them over, she didn’t resist him, and he put her on her back.
Looming over her, he brushed hair from her face. “Ti amo, belladonna.”
She hadn’t thought she needed the words, but in his voice they were music. This man had given up so much to love her.
She smiled and wiped the beads of perspiration from his upper lip. “Deadly nightshade.”
“And beautiful woman.”
“Be with me, Angelo. You make me stronger. Let me make you stronger, too. Come home with me.”
His eyes searched hers. She tried to show him what he was looking for.
Then he nodded.
And kissed her again.
~oOo~
Giada sat at a table in the West End billiard hall her brother had favored. She meant to create a space of her own for meetings, one of her own taste and without the looming specter of her brother or her father, but for now she used a space the men were familiar with.
The building in which she’d claimed and taken the head of her family. Now, she would assert her leadership.
The Name of Honor Page 23
