The motherfucking ceiling.
That bitch put me on my back. How the fuck . . .
“Are you kidding me?” I hear somewhere off the mat, my daughter’s voice laced with shock and perhaps a little pissiness—probably from realizing she just lost her first bet. On her dad of all people, the fucking heavyweight boxing champion of the goddamn world.
I finally raise up, propping my elbows onto the mat and stare up at Sienna’s smug form. I swear my dick swells to twice its normal girth, and I don’t even give a fuck that everyone, including this hot as fuck chick, can see it.
Go on, baby, look between my legs. Take in every inch of it. It’s going inside you later.
She smirks and then turns her head to the side. “You owe me ten bucks, kid.”
And that kills it, deflating my package in an instant. “Son of a bitch.”
“I heard that, Daddy!”
Pursing my lips, I keep looking up at Sienna. Her demeanor is still smug; so smug that whatever is knocking around inside her head has her so engrossed that she doesn’t see me flick my foot out, connecting it with the back of her Achilles heel, dropping her to the mat beside me.
Once I have her on the floor, I quickly move to straddle her hips, pinning her body to the mat with some of my weight. I’m pushing two hundred and fifty pounds, so I don’t sit completely on top of her. I don’t want to crush her; though something tells me she could take it and that has blood rushing back to my dick.
Leaning down, I cage her in by pinning my forearms to the mat next to her head. “Who’s on their back now, baby?”
“Doesn’t matter, Matteo. I got you first.” Her eyes light up, and that paired with the sound of my name on her lips is beautiful—and confusing as hell.
“Siiiennna!” Her name is drawn out with so much venom it sounds murderous. That pulls both of our attention. Sienna’s body shifts beneath mine as her head tips farther back. My gaze follows hers until they land on a middle-aged man wearing a designer suit. He’s encased in all black, adding to what is supposed to be a scary-as-fuck look.
To most, I’m sure it is. It should be to me too, but I haven’t met a person on this earth that scares me—not even the Boss himself.
I should lean down and capture her lips with mine just to piss him off, but Brooklyn is here, and I’m not going to confuse my daughter or let her watch her dad get killed in the same breath.
Chapter 6
SIENNA
I’ve never been more thankful for my poker face than when I was lying on that mat with Matteo’s semi-hard erection growing while he was on top of me. I know he was holding back most of his weight as he straddled me, and I’m fortunate for that. It would have only amplified how turned on I was getting.
I’d worked up a sweat when I was sparring with Dom, so the wetness that had gathered between my thighs could have been played off as the liquid layer I already had coating me.
Jesus, it’s been fifteen minutes since I hightailed it to the showers and I’m still hot and bothered. The look on my father’s face was priceless. He totally wanted to murder us both. Matteo on principle and me because I had defied his request to stay away from the man. As if I do what I’m told on anything else.
Dad should know by now that telling me to stay away from Matteo is only going to make me want him more, and I’ve wanted him for a very long time.
Too long.
So long that I’ll be damned if I give myself to Matteo now. He may be the hottest man I’ve ever laid eyes on, but there is one thing that even Tony Caputo can count on: I’m not easy. Matteo will literally have to pry my legs apart if he wants a taste.
I slap my wet hand against the tile wall of the shower as a moan rips its way up my throat and past my lips. “Oh, God!” Oh, Matteo, is what I really want to say, but I keep that locked inside my head as an orgasm rocks through me.
“Jesus, can’t you do that shit at home?” I hear outside the shower stall I’m currently occupying.
I really have no shame, but hell, I needed that release, so whoever that was can fuck off. We’re all adults here, except for Matteo’s daughter—who he obviously brought in while he works out, and that was only because of who he is with it being an eighteen and up facility. If I need to masturbate so I don’t get stabby, I’m going to do it.
After I shampoo and condition my hair, I soap up from head to toe, rinse, and then towel dry my body with a white, fluffy towel. Once I’ve pulled on a pair of distressed jeans and a black tank top, I slide into my boots and grab my gym bag with my dirty clothes and head out to find my father.
He’s not hard to spot. He’s the only man in this place dressed in a suit. He looks like he should be sitting behind a desk in a corporate office, and to most, I’m sure that’s what they see when they pass by him on the street. My father prefers to drive himself wherever he’s going rather than having a chauffeur like one would think.
Other than our two housekeepers, the only service people employed by my father are the men that work for him and the five tech geeks. Some of the smartest hackers in the world are on his payroll. They spend hours scouring the dark web and the worldwide web looking for anything and everything on people with power.
“I’m done,” I announce, interrupting his conversation with Tim, the gym manager.
Dropping my gym bag to the tiled floor, I’m silent as my father eyes me from top to bottom. His dark irises finally land on my matching set and he blows out a breath, fanning me in the process. “You’re wearing that?”
I glance down and then back up to the irritation marring my father’s features. “What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?”
“You’re not wearing that attire to Casa dell’Ariana.”
“It’s just dinner at a restaurant you own. What’s the big deal, Dad?”
“It’s a business dinner, Sienna, and I expect you to dress the part of a grown woman that’s in charge of this family’s money. Capisce?”
Well, when he puts it like that . . .
Casa dell’Ariana—or House of Ariana as I like to call it—is hands downs the best Italian restaurant I’ve ever eaten at. It’s also the most expensive and lavish establishment not only in Great Neck, New York but all of Long Island.
After my mother’s murder, my father moved us out of the city and over into Great Neck, just under an hour’s drive to Manhattan. One year after her death, he opened his first restaurant; the one in which he named after his late beloved wife. Since opening the restaurant, my father is here at least twice a week, sometimes more.
He’s dabbled in many businesses over the years, but Italian eateries and fitness establishments seem to be the most profitable. He owns a line of fightwear too, but only an elite few know this tidbit of information. His name isn’t associated with the company, but my brothers’ and mine are—D’Angelo. Putting the company under D’Angelo was an easy decision since the three of us share the same middle name.
I’m in charge of what comes in and out of all the businesses financially speaking. In other words, I’m the CFO and business manager if you want to throw out titles and shit. I was shadowing my father long before I received my business degree last year when I graduated college.
Dom, like our father, has a law degree and handles all the legal stuff that gets thrown my father’s way. Domenico is smart, genius level smart. He’s a lawyer by day and computer whiz at night. He graduated high school two years early and then got his undergraduate degree before entering law school. Dom’s passion is computers; he only sought after the legal stuff to make sure the family’s ass was covered. He passed the bar exam last year. Ren just entered law school at the beginning of this year and still has two and a half years left since he just wrapped up his first semester. My twin is the one that has a real interest in the legal mumbo jumbo.
Our father didn’t force these duties upon us. In fact, he made us think long and hard before he allowed any of us to go down the paths we’ve chosen.
The thing about Dom, Ren,
and I is that we’re just as headstrong and stubborn as our old man; perhaps more so when you consider all three of us together. It made our dad happy that we all chose to work for the family. There is no one he trusts more than his three kids. We may be the only people on this earth he fully trusts, except for his father, our grandfather.
That doesn’t mean he tells us everything, because he doesn’t. And I hate that more than I care to admit. Bet Dad tells Grandfather everything.
I think of Grandfather as Daddy’s counselor, his therapist, his advisor. The old coot can’t keep his meddling hands out of shit, even though he hasn’t been in charge for nearly thirty years. Grandfather had a stroke years ago, and at the age of twenty my father became the head of the family.
Grandfather eventually recovered, but Dad didn’t step down. I don’t think Grandfather liked that, but no one speaks much of it. Dad took over and that was that.
I’m not my Grandfather’s biggest fan; only my brothers know I secretly can’t stand the old bastard. They don’t care for him either, but they respect him.
I don’t.
I can’t respect someone I don’t trust, and there is something sinister about that man that I haven’t quite figured out. He’s the only person whose voice makes me tremble in fear, and even that doesn’t make sense. I could take his old ass down in a heartbeat; probably before he realized what was happening.
My father changed the game when he took over. He has all legit and profitable businesses now. That doesn’t mean he isn’t also a criminal. He did murder a man last night, after all. Tony Caputo is a ruthless king who bathes in the blood of others, but he’s not all bad. He uses his position, his money and power, to keep corrupt law enforcement and politicians in check. Someone’s got to do it.
There are far more evil men and women in the political game than there are mobsters on the street.
“Antonio, when are you going to find a suitable man for our little Sienna?”
It takes everything I have to restrain my reaction to his question. As if to silently say, fuck you, I don’t even look up from my phone to acknowledge the bastard is talking about me.
“Si isn’t ready for a husband, Father,” my dad replies from his spot at the table to my right. From my peripheral, I see my father pick up his glass of cabernet sauvignon, taking a small sip before setting it back on top of the white linen tablecloth. “She has too many responsibilities to this family.”
“And the right man could take on those responsibilities for her,” my grandfather adds from where he’s seated across the table from me. I feel his hard gaze on me, but I continue scrolling down the page.
“Trust me, Father, I’m actually doing the men of the world a favor by keeping her busy.” One side of my lips tip up at that remark. “It took her brothers three hours last night to make her tap out. She would walk all over any man, and then I’d be forced to put a bullet in his head for being a fucking pussy. So, I see no point.”
A full-on smirk is displayed across my lips now as I scan the cost report from my inbox on the latest sales data from DEFY Gear and Apparel, our fight gear company. “Maybe if you’d sent her to an all-girls school, she’d act like a proper young woman instead of some butch broad that goes around beating up men to prove she’s just as tough.”
“There’s nothing butch about me,” I finally chime in. Glancing up, I look at my father. “I clean up quite well, don’t I, Daddy?”
“You do, princess.” He smiles, cutting his eyes at me, and they are full of life tonight; a rarity these days. “A far cry from what you had on an hour ago.”
My father isn’t big on informal attire. If there’s one thing he could change about me, it would be how I dress. Dad would prefer me to wear expensive business-like suit dresses instead of my normal jeans, fitted tank top, and leather jacket paired with biker boots. Even though I enjoy dressing like the badass bitch I am, I can easily soften my appearance with a designer dress and heels.
I’ll never admit it to anyone, but I like looking sexy, and I love the gazes I pull my way from men when I do dress up. Like tonight, half the patrons in the restaurant have cut their eyes over to our table more than once; though, that could have something to do with the fact that I’m sitting at a table with not only Antonio Caputo, but Raffaele Caputo as well.
My grandfather still has quite the reputation. He became a widower when my father was in college, but from what I’ve heard, he wasn’t a faithful man to the grandmother I never knew. It’s another reason I’m not fond of him. He’s seventy-five for Christ’s sake, yet he’s still photographed with women that are younger than my twenty-three years.
There is a big gross factor to that.
“Besides,” my father continues, “it makes me proud to know that she can protect herself. In the world we live in today, a woman needs certain skills. As a father, I like to think I’ve made sure Sienna is adept at anything she may need to handle herself.”
Our waitress stops next to my father, and without speaking a word, she tips up the bottle of wine in her hands, refilling my father’s glass. She then smiles, meeting my eyes.
“No, thank you,” I say and then pick up my glass, taking a sip of cool water.
“It’s unnatural as an Italian to not drink a glass of wine with dinner, Sienna,” my grandfather comments while waiting on his own glass to be filled. “Seriously, Antonio, are you even sure she’s yours?”
I swear I can see a dark fire ignite behind my father’s eyes over my grandfather’s rhetorical question. I place my hand over my father’s wrist, squeezing, but Raffaele Caputo’s words hit their intended mark as he locks his jaw.
Anything that can be construed as ill-advised remarks regarding the subject of my mother should be avoided at all costs. Everyone knows that Ariana D’Angelo Caputo was the love of my father’s life. Though my brothers and I have no issue with our father dating again, he never will. We know that. Hell, my grandfather even knows that.
“Why don’t we get back to the reason we’re all here. I have the data for the first quarter and the projections for the second. Would you both like to hear them?” I ask, before my father has a chance to open his mouth.
My mother is the only topic they’ve ever argued over to my knowledge. It’s been almost eighteen years since my mother’s death and my grandfather still can’t help himself. Just another reason not to like the cocksucker. He’s disrespectful in regard to the dead.
“Sure, Sienna,” my father answers, his jaw finally unlocking.
“We took a loss in the first quarter with the launch and how much we placed into marketing. Of course, we knew the likelihood of that going in. We are, however, projected to make back three times our investment next month at quarter’s end.”
“I like that. Good work, Si.”
“Why are we even in the clothing business?”
“It’s more than clothing,” I clarify. “And we’re in talks with martial arts gyms across the nation and Canada to supply them with anything from boxing gloves to Jiu Jitsu Gi’s to T-shirts and other fight clothing.”
“You think just because you can scrap, that you now know something about fightgear?” My grandfather shakes his head.
“She can do more than scrap, and if you want to see for yourself, you can watch her in her first sanctioned match in July, Raffaele.” My dad only calls his father by his given name when he’s on the verge of losing his temper which often has to do with me. My grandfather hates the fact that I’m a woman who is a full-fledged member of this family with actual say in what goes on—to an extent, of course. When it comes to money, Dad listens to me over his own father when they disagree, which is a lot. But I haven’t steered my father wrong yet, so until I do, I’m going to soak that shit up every chance I get.
“Sienna!” I hear my name being yelled in a close enough range that I turn, seeing a little girl launching herself at me. My chair scoots back, as if on some type of instinct, and the next thing I know, I have a brown-eyed, chestnut-haired gi
rl in my lap.
“Uhh, hi,” I say, looking down at her and not knowing what to do with a kid on my lap. Do I hug her? Do I push her down? What the fuck am I supposed to do right now?
“Jesus, Brooklyn,” he scolds. When I glance up, I see Matteo standing in front of us, dressed in black pants paired with a black dress shirt. No tie is present, he has the top two buttons, with a hint of his chest tattoo peeking out. He and my father are dressed similarly, but it’s Matteo who has me drooling, because let’s face it, drooling over my own father would be all kinds of wrong. But here I sit, mouth hanging open and trapped by a tiny human on my lap.
Fuck. Me. He’s positively delicious.
“Yeah, I don’t usually say this, but okay, I guess I am. I’m sorry for the intrusion.” His stare goes from awkward to pissed. “Brooklyn,” he admonishes. Another aspect he and my father share. Dad often says my name as if I’m being reprimanded. “Come. Here.”
“No, Daddy.” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes at the same time. I can’t help the snicker that escapes my mouth. Brooklyn twists her head around, looking back at Matteo. “I want to hang out with her. She’s cooler.” Her soft eyes slide to mine. “You got me in trouble for saying ass, by the way.”
“I have a knack for getting people in trouble.” My arms go around her to keep her from pushing my dress farther up my thighs. “Stick with me long enough and your backside will stay black and blue.”
My gaze flicks over her head to see Matteo’s expression, but his eyes aren’t on either one of us. They’re on my exposed flesh, and the way his hungry stare is eating me up, I’d say his meal wasn’t very satisfying—that is if he’s already eaten.
“Princess, you’re done here, so you’re free to leave,” my father chimes in. His eyes go from me to the kid on my lap and then to Matteo’s. “De Salvo.” My father picks up his napkin and wipes the corner of his mouth with it. “I’ll accept your apology if you take my daughter home for me. She’s finished and I have other business to attend to.”
Bad Princess: A Mafia Romance Page 4
