BOUND: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Leah Wilde

  “All right,” the person started to say. Vince. It was Vince this time. But for some reason, that didn’t make Fiona feel at all relieved. Had he come to fire her? To carry out his mother’s will? Or was he walking in here totally blind, completely oblivious to the fact that his family members would gladly murder him for his disobedience?

  Fiona turned to look at him, staring at the back of his head for a moment as he moved a lock into place on the door. He was beautiful, really. A gorgeous specimen of a human being, the most handsome person that Fiona had ever touched. The most beautiful person that she’d never had the opportunity to really kiss. And now she never would, for she knew what she had to do. There was no other choice.

  She had to quit.

  # # #

  An hour later, Fiona was sitting on a park bench, across the street from her apartment complex, drinking from a bottle of wine that she’d bought on her way home. She didn’t have a brown paper bag to cover it or anything, but at this point, she didn’t really care if she got ticketed or even arrested for public intoxication. Nothing really mattered anymore.

  She had money to carry her over for a few months, at least, covering the upcoming doctors’ appointments and medication for her father, but she’d need to find a new job. I’ll start looking in the morning, she thought to herself as she took another large gulp of bitter wine. Right now, I can’t do anything. Right now, I can’t even think.

  Fiona’s whole body felt numb, but underneath her skin, her blood buzzed with anxious energy. She couldn’t keep her eyes from bolting from one side of the park to the other, checking the dark corners around her apartment complex to see if there were any men waiting in the shadows to jump out at her. Mrs. Romano might have been bluffing, but there was just as much chance that there were hitmen waiting for an order to kill both Fiona and her father. She knew she was being paranoid, but there was nothing she could do right now to calm down, except maybe forcing her nerve endings to shut themselves off as a result of alcohol.

  As the sun slipped lower in the sky, eventually passing under the horizon, Fiona remembered with a wry, pained smile that she expected to be back in Vince’s playroom tonight, discovering another side to herself that she’d never known before.

  But she had to resign herself to reality. She’d lost that side of herself, just as she’d lost the job, just as she’d lost Vince. Her new hope was short-lived. She should have realized it would be that way. But no, she was stupid. She let herself believe. Sitting there on the bench, watching the darkness spread around her like a suffocating blanket, she made a promise herself never to make that mistake again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Vince spent the rest of the day moping in his office, berating himself and staring off into empty space. This is why she doesn’t want you, he thought to himself as he lobbed another pencil across the room, smacking it in the middle of the previously pristinely painted wall. Because in a crisis, you fall apart. You crash down. You become weak. She wants a real man. A strong man. Maybe she did want my dad, even if they never hooked up.

  He knew he was being ridiculous, pitying himself into total inactivity, letting the sun sink down around him without ever accomplishing anything beyond losing his assistant. But he figured he deserved at least a few hours to himself, seeing as how everybody else was busy preparing for the funeral tomorrow. After enough hours passed by, Vince’s growling stomach finally convinced him to head home to his penthouse where he had Yuri bring him comfort food along with a ton of wine. He drank himself into a stupor and then collapsed onto his bed, memories of his time in the playroom with Fiona bouncing around in his head as he slipped off into dark, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, he barely woke up in time to jump into his suit and tie and have his driver take him over to the cemetery, just in time for the priest to make a speech over his father’s dead body.

  Vince zoned out the whole time, staring off into the distance and ignoring the cracked, overdone sobs that emitted from his mother’s mouth. He knew she wasn’t really that upset. Especially now that Fiona was gone, she had nobody left to threaten her place as the woman in the family. He should have known better than to hope that it would ever be any different. His mother held the power, especially now that his father was gone. It was going to be this way until they all died, until there was nobody left in the world that obeyed the Romano family. Maybe it’d be better that way, Vince thought to himself as they lowered Paulie Romano into the dirt. Maybe we should all go this way, take our evil, fucked-up, twisted ways out of this world. Stay away from people like Fiona who deserve better.

  The family rode in limousines back to Mama Romano’s house while roughly half of the funeral’s attendees followed to partake in the “after-party in celebration of Paulie’s life.” Vince kept his sunglasses on the whole time, even as he stepped into his mother’s dimly lit house, just so people wouldn’t be able to tell how hungover he was. He didn’t need to make a bad impression on anybody. He still wanted to be the leader, even if he couldn’t dominate Fiona anymore. After all, he’d need to find some other way to exorcise his aggression, and he figured he might as well sublimate all his rage and loneliness into boardroom strategies.

  “Excuse me, excuse me!” his mother yelled about thirty minutes into the after-party, lightly tapping on a glass of champagne to get the attention of everyone in the crowded banquet hall. “Would all members of Romano Incorporated please follow me across the hall for a short discussion on business matters? It’ll only last a few minutes, and then we can get back to drinking and enjoying Paulie’s memory!” She smiled brightly, but Vince still felt his muscles tense up under his skin, his body preparing a fight-or-flight response as if a physical danger dropped into his path.

  Still, he forced himself to move to the room she pointed out, forcing his way through the crowd so that he was at the front of the group and going to stand by his mother when she moved to the center of the room. Guido was there, too, on the other side of Mama Romano. They had to show a united front, even if behind closed doors they were at each other’s throats, emotionally speaking.

  “I’m so happy you’re all here, celebrating the life of my late husband. It means so much to me,” Vince’s mother said, smiling warmly and turning to address a different man in the room on every other word. The crowd mumbled in response, all the enforcers and legal workers and administrative aids all smiling and nodding back at Mama Romano, encouraging her to go on. “We are at a crossroads. Not just the immediate family of Paulie Romano, but everybody in the larger, capital-F family, if you will. All of us here in this organization who have sacrificed so much time and energy and effort into making our business run smoothly. I want to thank you so much for all that you have done for us, and at the same time, I hope that you will join me in the effort to make sure that the organization continues to function as it has for the past twenty years.”

  Again, there was a low, awkward wave of mumbling in the room, signifying the general consensus that the crowd agreed with Mama Romano’s sentiment.

  “So, for that reason, I believe it’s crucial that we take a vote. Here. Now. Not wasting any more time. We need to vote for an executive officer of this company!” She grinned again, lifting her glass in the air before bending her head back to take a deep drink.

  “Wait, what?” Vince said as soon as he realized what his mother just said. “What are you talking about? We already have an executive officer.”

  “Hmm, what, dear?” Mama Romano said as she finished taking a sip of her champagne, looking like she was celebrating at a wedding rather than the aftermath of a funeral. “Oh, yes, we have an interim executive officer, and that’s you. You’ve done a fine job holding down the fort the last couple of days, but now the time has come to look to the future.”

  “Interim? That’s not what Dad wanted, Ma,” Vince protested, helplessly looking around the room in hopes of finding a friendly face. “He named me as his successor. Not the temporary one but the permanent one. So
why are we even talking about this?”

  “Hmm,” Mama Romano murmured before handing her drink over to the nearest servant in the room. “I’d hoped we could avoid a public confrontation like this. But I’m afraid we have no choice. Honey, you’re a very smart man. So talented.” She paused, smiling at him in an unnatural, almost saccharine way that had him cringing back from her, almost stumbling into Guido by mistake. “But this job isn’t right for you. We need somebody who’s a thinker, not just a doer. We need to have strategies in place for the new age of the Romano Family, and the man who can form them is…well, he’s standing behind you.”

  “Hey, brother,” Guido whispered into Vince’s ear. Vince flinched back from him, but in between his mother and brother at the center of the crowd, there was nowhere he could go to escape. He had to face his little brother, who grinned at him as though he’d finally won. “I just want you to know that we’ve really enjoyed having you around the past couple of days. Really. We want to see more of you. But…in a different position, maybe.”

  “Fuck you,” Vince spat out automatically, his anger getting the better of him.

  “All right, then, I guess we’ve got to take it to a vote!” Mama Romano announced, lifting her arms in the air until all the mumbling in the room came to a halt. “All in favor of displacing Vincent in favor of Guido for the head executive position of this organization, please say aye—”

  Several people lifted their arms in the air to vote, but Vince shook his head and yelled out, “Bullshit! This is fucking bullshit! You can’t conduct an official vote here. Half of the members of the board aren’t even here!”

  Mama Romano shrugged. “Well, dear, if they’ve chosen not to come to the funeral, doesn’t that say it all about their loyalty to this family and to this business?”

  Vince was stumped for an answer, his mind scrambling for an explanation as to why all the senior members who liked him were missing from the room. There had to be a reason. There just had to be. They wouldn’t all skip on the same day like this unless…

  Unless Guido and Mama pulled something together behind my back, Vince realized with a cold, unbreakable certainty. He knew it happened as soon as the possibility occurred to him. He’d been betrayed. The company was being stolen right out from under him.

  But for the moment, he couldn’t come up with a way to convince the other men in the room of that fact. Instead, Mama Romano called for a vote again, and this time, Vince was all out of words, stumped for a solution as one after one after one, the board members voted to replace him with Guido.

  “That does it! Guido is the new head of the Romano organization. Congratulations, son!” Mama Romano said, clapping her hands together until the other people in the room caught onto the idea and gave a round of applause for Vince’s little brother.

  Vince, feeling his stomach turn over like he was about to be sick, tried to shove his way through the crowd to head toward the nearest bathroom, but before he could get away, a hand came down on his shoulders, stopping him from moving. He turned around to face Guido, who was positively beaming at him, shining like he’d swallowed a handful of stars. “Aren’t you going to congratulate me, man? This is what I’ve always dreamed of!”

  More like what Mother’s always plotted out, Vince thought silently, glaring at his little brother, whose happiness couldn’t be dampened.

  Guido kept talking, reaching over to take two glasses of champagne off a passing waiter’s tray. The room had cleared out a little in the aftermath of the vote, but Vince still felt rooted to the spot, like some part of him insisted on receiving punishment for his failure to keep the company. He deserved this, feeling this powerless. He’d wasted crucial time, all because he was hung up on some girl he only fucked once. He was pathetic.

  When Vince’s brain zoned back in, refocusing on the words coming out of Guido’s mouth, he heard his brother say, “Anyway, things will be better now. I’ll be easier on you than Dad ever was, that’s for sure. Hey, I can even undo whatever Mama did yesterday. That’d be nice, huh?”

  “What?” Vince asked, furrowing his brow in confusion. His mother hadn’t done anything to him yesterday, except make thinly veiled threats about this sudden coup.

  “I just mean,” Guido started to say before stopping himself, looking around and over his shoulder before he stepped closer to Vince and dropped his voice as he resumed speaking, “you know, about that hot piece of ass you’re nailing. I know Mama intimidated you into firing her or whatever. We all noticed that she left the compound crying yesterday.”

  “What?” Vince said again, seemingly incapable of coming up with any other word at the moment. Fiona left crying? What the hell?

  Guido shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t stop her to ask or anything, but I just assumed Mama handled it. I know she hates her. But look—” He paused to clap Vince on the back. “Mama won’t care anymore now that I’m in charge. She’s already told me she’s going to Paris soon, and she won’t even be around to notice if Fiona is working there. I know you like her, so go ahead and hire her back.”

  “Mama…did something?” Vince forced out, the wheels in his brain slowly turning, his thoughts coalescing as he processed the information that Guido gave him.

  “I guess so,” Guido said with a shrug, clearly losing interest in the conversation. “I saw Mama coming out of your office when Fiona was in there alone, right before I stopped by to say hi. I guess she must have convinced her to quit. Look, I’ll talk to you later, okay? Just let me know what you decide about your most recent fuck-toy, and I’ll help you out, all right?” Guido disappeared into the crowd the next second, going to hobnob with various old friends of Paulie.

  Vince was frozen to the spot for at least several seconds, staring blankly ahead as multiple people attempted to politely talk to him. He ignored all of them, his brain abuzz with static as he absorbed the reality that his mother coerced his new lover into leaving him behind.

  “Ha! That’s good!” Mama Romano’s laughter rang out from the other room. She was clearly feeling the champagne, in addition to the victory she’d accomplished over her eldest son and the will of her late husband.

  Vince felt his stomach broil over in rage, feeling like huge flames were licking the inside of his body, making his blood pump furiously through his veins, urging him into motion.

  He didn’t know where he was going, except that he had to get out of his mother’s house. If he stayed here any longer, he couldn’t be confident that he could restrain himself from flying across the room and pulling his mother’s beautiful, brilliant chandelier from the ceiling. And he couldn’t afford to fuck up anymore. God knew that he’d done that a thousand times over the past couple of days. Right now, he had to follow his instincts. He had to find Fiona.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Fiona was huddled up in the blankets, staring at the blank emptiness of the wall across from her bed, for the second night in a row. She’d gotten up a few hours earlier to force some chicken soup and crackers down her throat, but otherwise, this was how she’d spent her time as an unemployed person, wallowing in self-pity. So far, it was all she could force herself to do. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she’d get up and look for jobs. But not yet. Not until the deep sadness in her bones leaked away, at least a little bit. She needed her strength if she was going to find another way to provide for her father.

  There was a distant knocking sound, somewhere on the other end of the apartment. Their unit was small, with thin walls. It was probably something the neighbor was doing. Again, Fiona couldn’t fight off the thought that if things had gone better, she’d be in Vince’s dark playroom right about now, learning what her true limits where, learning what she was really capable of. So much for that little experiment in freedom. She should have known better than to even try to become somebody she actually wanted to be.

  The knocking got louder, so Fiona just flipped the blanket over her head, muffling any sounds so that it felt like she was underwater. Safe. Away fro
m anything and everything that might harm her. The way I felt when I was being held in Vince’s arms, cared for after we had sex… She cut herself off from indulging in that thought, forcibly shutting her eyes and focusing on the deep blackness of her own eyelids until all coherent thought faded away. Sleep beckoned her again, tempting to walk forward to the edge of oblivion and slide off into sweet nothingness, sweet emptiness that would ask nothing of her…

  But before she could slip off into sleep, she heard the distinct sound of her door swinging open. She froze under the blanket, hoping that if she pretended to be asleep, her dad would leave her alone and let her rest in peace. But it didn’t work. Her dad cleared his throat and said, “Honey. I’m sorry to bother you, but someone’s at the door asking after you. He says he’s your boss.”

  “I don’t have a boss,” Fiona mumbled, probably barely audibly to her dad’s older ears.

  Her dad didn’t say anything right away, even though she half-expected him to ask what she meant. He hadn’t asked her any questions the past two days, even though she’d spent the entirety of the time drinking and sleeping and generally doing nothing. He had to put two and two together and figure out that she lost the job, but he was kind enough not to push her on it. Still, he didn’t disappear as quickly as she expected him to, instead lingering in the doorway, breathing heavily until she finally threw the blanket off her head and huffed out a response. “What?”