by M. Robinson
The scarred man seemed to read my thoughts and stepped forward, a sober expression dousing the last of his humor. “I was not playing you, Elena. I simply wanted to establish a connection with you based on who I was as a man and who you were woman. As individuals. I was under the impression you preferred to be viewed as independent from your family, as do I.”
He was a curious man and that was my weakness.
My eyes slid over his shoulder to Dante, whose eyes gleamed in the darkness. He enjoyed watching me think. Once, he’d told me it was the sexiest form of foreplay.
“You do not associate with your family, Mr. Morelli?” I asked finally.
A sad, twisted excuse for a smile pulsed between his cheeks then flatlined. “Oh, I do. But a man is not his parents, is he?”
I could tell from his pointed look that he knew about Seamus Moore. He couldn’t know I’d been the one to kill my own father, but it was enough that he understood the chaos the man had wrecked on my life.
I resolved to do some digging into the Morellis.
“Come to the ball, Elena,” he said, completely ignoring my husband, the full force of his focus on me. “I believe you’ll change your mind about taking me on if you agree to attend.
That didn’t happen often in our circles, most men wanted to defer to my husband because he was a man, a large one and a powerful one at that.
I appreciated Tiernan’s effort.
“I hope you don’t plan to ply me with eggnog in hopes it’ll make me more amenable,” I said drily. “I can’t stand the stuff.”
“Vin Brulé,” Dante offered in Italian then, “Mulled wine is the better choice.”
“Noted,” Tiernan nodded and stepped forward to extend his hand again. “I’ll see you soon, Mrs. Lombardi. A presto, I think they say in your mother tongue.”
I eyed his hand, the calloused fingers and the pale scars bisecting his palm and up his wrists from untold fights.
The Morellis were a prominent family, one of the families who ran the city. If Tiernan went against him, that meant I was taking on a fight at an epic scale. One that could mean I lost my newly minted law firm, my reputation, and perhaps, my life.
But I’d always been a fighter.
Dante’s lottatrice.
And I was intrigued, which was dangerous because I’d never been able to stymy my curiosity once piqued.
“This isn’t a promise to represent you,” I warned him as I took his hand in mine with a firm grip. “But I’ll be at the party with my husband. And this is a promise. If you touch either of us without permission again, I’ll scar your right cheek to match the left, capisci?”
Tiernan Morelli shook my hand and laughed, but the sound was hollow and rang though the empty offices like an echo in a haunted house.
Chapter Three
Elena
Bishop’s Landing was the kind of place I’d dreamed of when I was a girl in the cramped, urine-scented streets of Naples. I thought all of America was exactly like that absurdly expensive strip of ocean-front land outside of New York, with its epic mansions and quiet streets dotted with exotic cars.
The Morelli Mansion was the epitome of it all.
The wealth, the glamor, the glittering American Dream.
Only, I wasn’t a girl anymore.
I knew better than to be taken in by the silk brocade fabrics and elegant furnishings. I knew enough to be wary of the beautiful bodies clad in enough jewels and designer outfits to fund a third-world country for a year.
It was all so pretty, and all so very fake.
Before Dante, I would have made myself sick worrying about fitting in with the upper echelons of society present at the Morelli Christmas party. I wanted almost nothing more than to be exactly like them.
Perfect.
But perfect wasn’t even a dream; it was a nightmare so many people spent their lives subscribing to, never content, always reaching.
My life was imperfect, but it was mine and I’d earned it.
“You are stunning when you overthink things.”
Dante’s breath heated my ear causing goosebumps to ripple across my skin. I shivered delicately as he bent too close for polite company and bit into the junction of my neck and shoulder. The dress he had bought me, a habit of his, left the entire expanse of my shoulders bare, the heavy swoops of black velvet fabric hooked loosely around my biceps. The bodice was tight before the gown flared into slight train over my spiked heels, tall enough I barely had to crane my neck to capture my husband’s lips in a searing kiss.
Around us, a few people muttered comments about our lack of decorum.
Dante banded a strong arm around the base of my back and tugged me flush to his front in response.
I laughed into the kiss, loving the way it flavored his tongue.
“You are a bad influence, capo,” I scolded him, but I didn’t move away because he smelled like Amalfi lemons and ocean spray.
Because being against his massive body, cradled so gently in his man killing hands made me feel more like a princess than my designer gown or expensive diamonds ever could.
“It is you who looks too good to resist,” he chastised somberly, but his eyes danced. “We should go home immediately so I can peel you out of this gown and dress you again with kisses.”
Warmth pooled between my thighs at the thought of his tongue exploring every pleasure point on my body. It continued to shock me that just a few years ago I’d suffered from anorgasmia and now, the very thought of Dante sliding his tongue, fingers, and thick dick inside took me to the edge.
“Aurora is at Mama’s for the night,” I mentioned slyly just to hear his raspy chuckle. “It’s been a while since you played me while I played the piano.”
“We’re leaving,” Dante decided definitively, clasping my hand so he could begin tugging me back toward the grand staircase leading out of the ballroom.
I laughed as he started to weave through the bedazzled crowd, but I knew it was too good to be true. We had only been there for twenty minutes, said the requisite greetings to our hosts, the fierce-eyed Bryant and vacant-eyed Sarah Morelli, and I hadn’t even seen Tiernan yet.
But, when you speak of the devil he often appears.
“Dante, Elena,” he said, stepping in front of Dante smoothly, without flinching when my six-foot-five husband almost barrelled into him. “I’m so glad you could make it.”
“We were just leaving,” Dante told him as he tugged me into his side and slid a heavy arm around my hips, his fingertips dipping too low, feathering at the top of my pubic bone through the velvet.
Tiernan raised a thick brow, eyes sliding down my figure coldly, devoid of appreciation. “I understand the desire, but I still need to talk with your wife. Samuel Patterson is here. I know you’ve been wishing to discuss a potential property acquisition with him. Last I saw, he was talking to my brother, Lucian, by the patio doors just over there.”
It was a clear dismissal and a lesser man might have taken offense, but the wonderful thing about my capo was that he rarely did. He was secure enough in his power and abilities to remain unmoved by most mind games.
“Va bene,” he agreed, easily. “But Tiernan, if my wife still does not wish to represent you after your conversation, I will have to…insist that you leave her be.”
A smile flickered around Tiernan’s scarred mouth. “Of course.”
Dante turned to me then, sliding both large hands up my back into my hair to tug my head back by the fingers he tangled there. Those black eyes were soft with love, a slight smile on his ruddy mouth that illustrated his pride in me.
“You know you will take him on,” he whispered against my mouth, uncaring that my blood red lipstick was transferring to his own lips. “But make him work for it a little, lottatrice mia.”
My laugh was a more an exhale that became a sigh as he fused our mouths together, his hot tongue sliding between my lips. He ate at my mouth standing there in the middle of one of the most prestige homes in Bishop’s
Landing with almost the entirety of New York high society in attendance.
He couldn’t care less about anything in that room except me.
The headiness of his attention and unwavering regard made me weak in the knees.
“I will find you when you are finished,” he said against my damp mouth. “Do not take too long or I won’t be able to wait until we make it back to the apartment to take you apart.”
“Is that a promise?” I teased, smoothly my hands down the lapels of his suit to buy time while I recovered my shaken equilibrium.
“Sempre,” he said with a wink before jerking his head at Tiernan and turning on his heel to melt back into the crowd.
For a large man, he assembled with the masses quickly and seamlessly. Before I could even turn around, I saw him start a conversation with a man I had no doubt was Samuel Patterson.
I wasn’t the only one doing business that night.
When I turned to Tiernan, he was watching me with the keen patience of a predator hunkered down in the grass.
“Shall we?” I asked with an arched brow.
Tiernan answered by turning on his heel and stalking through the crowd toward the black abyss of the night shrouded garden through the open French doors at the back of the room. I followed.
We were almost at the doors when Bryant Morelli stepped into Tiernan’s path. Despite his age, he was still a profoundly attractive man with the kind of dark good looks that spoke of his Italian ancestry. Though, no amount of perfect symmetry could make the scowl on his heavy brow anything but domineering and mean.
“Tiernan, I need to speak with you. Come to my office,” he ordered brusquely, the way a general commanded a common soldier, as if his obedience was guaranteed.
“I’m in the middle of something, Father.” His words were cold and dispassionate, but a muscle jumped at the corner of his jaw.
I could feel the tension from three paces back.
The other man’s scowl deepened. “End it. I need you in my office in five minutes for serious business.”
Tiernan just stared at his father implacably. I’d never known a silence to be such an obvious form of rebellion.
Bryant gathered himself, chest puffing out, shoulders straightening, growing bigger in an effort to intimidate his larger son. He reached out to grip Tiernan’s forearm too tightly, tugging him closer. “You do as I say, Son. Is your memory so poor you forget why that this?”
I sucked in a sharp breath as I witnessed the clear animosity between father and child. It reminded me all too poignantly of my own relationship with my deceased father. The way he had bullied and cajoled our family in equal turn. The way he had taken advantage of us the very same way it seemed Bryant wanted to use his son.
And just like that, my heart began to ache for Tiernan.
This was why I was careful with my heart and my shields. A bleeding heart needed protection or else it would love every half-broken soul.
“I forget nothing,” Tiernan assured him aloofly, shaking off his father’s hand. “As I said, I’m in the middle of something.” He jerked his head toward me and Bryant’s gaze followed, his gaze warming slightly as it lingered over my figure. “I’ll be with you shortly.”
Bryant pursed his lips, eyes narrowing on me before cutting to his son. He stepped closer, a slight sneer tucked in the corner of his mouth like a secret he wanted to hide from his guests.
“There is no place for independence in this family, Tiernan. You’d do well to remember that. You don’t want to be a disappointment to me again, do you?”
Tiernan’s face was pale, his scar a glaring white line across his face from the tension in his clenched teeth. He was hurting and I didn’t care why so much as I cared that it stopped.
No one deserved to be antagonized by their own family.
“Excuse me,” I interjected, stepping up to slip my arm through Tiernan’s. He stiffened, but I was undeterred. “I’m afraid I have to steal Tiernan away.”
Bryant Morelli’s entire countenance changed in a flash, the cold, brutal patriarch replaced with a jovial host. He smiled broadly at me and gestured magnanimously for us to carry on. “By all means. Just don’t keep him too long. He has duties to our guests he shouldn’t shirk.”
Without replying, I pulled a stiff Tiernan the last few feet to the doors and out into the bitterly cold night. Snow was falling, muffling the noise of the party behind us and creating a kind of intimate bubble around the two of us as we moved to a heat lamp on the palatial patio and leaned over the marble balustrade.
“Thank you,” he said after a few moments of silence, the words stiff and formal; reluctant.
I stared into the snow laden garden, giving him a modicum of privacy. I had a feeling Tiernan wasn’t a man used to emoting.
“I had a difficult relationship with my family until recently. Even now, it’s strained sometimes,” I admitted.
“I doubt it is quite as fucked up as my own family drama.”
“My boyfriend left me for my little sister.”
A long silence.
I listened to the din of the party and looked into the cold night, finding peace and beauty in the contrast. It felt strange to air my family dirty laundry after years of keeping secrets, of being ashamed, but there was also something strangely freeing about it.
“Okay, you might have me beat,” Tiernan conceded wryly.
I laughed a little, peering at him from the corner of my eye, his scar catching my attention. “May I ask what happened to give you that beauty mark?”
“One of the many reasons I want to hire you,” he murmured opaquely.
“I was of the impression the Morellis worked with another attorney already.”
“They do, but after that conversation you just witnessed, I think you can understand why I might want someone on my team, and my team alone.”
My eyebrows cut into my hairline. “A Morelli turning against Morellis?”
He only stared at me, one eye pale in the light from the party and the other all black from the night darkness.
I sighed, but giddiness had erupted in my belly. A good David versus Goliath story never failed to entice me. Coupled with my reluctant empathy surrounding his black sheep status with his family, I had already made my decision to help him.
But as Dante had said, it didn’t hurt to have him work for it a little.
“What is it exactly that you want, Mr. Morelli?”
Laughter exploded close to the doors and we both turned to see Bryant chuckling with a group of older gentlemen. Outside in the cold dark, I keenly felt Tiernan’s separation from his family and felt it ache alongside my own.
“I want to be more than a Morelli. I want to be my own goddamn man. That means getting out from under him.” He spat the word like the taste of his father’s presence on his tongue was bitter poison. “And I have a plan to do so. I just need you to help me find a woman by the name of Aida. I believe she once lived in Upstate New York.”
“Why would you need to find her?”
“She’s the key to ruining the Constantine family’s sterling reputation.”
The Constantine family. I’d met Winston Constantine once and didn’t exactly yearn to again. They were one of the most powerful families in the state and one people generally didn’t fuck with.
“And that in turn is the key to separating yourself from Bryant?” I ventured.
A flash of a smile like a blade catching the light. “I believe so, yes. You see, Aida was the late Lane Constantine’s mistress.”
My heart clenched at the word. Mistress. Like Giselle was for Sinclair.
Was no one capable of monogamy anymore?
“And what, you’ll seduce her and learn all his secrets through the lips of his mistress?” I pressed. “I can’t help you with that, and I wouldn’t even if I could. I’m a lawyer, not a seedy private investigator.”
“I don’t intend to cause her harm. In fact, I intend to pamper her. I just need you and Ricardo Stavos to fin
d her for me. And then, when I learn what I need from her, I want you to help me leverage it to make sure my business is safe from Bryant’s interference.”
He turned to face me and even though I was tall, made statuesque by my six-inch heels, he still loomed over me.
“You wanted to know about this?” he asked, running a thumb along the long line of his scar, ear to mouth. “My father gave this to me.”
I swallowed the bitterness of bile on my tongue.
I understood villainous fathers.
After all, I’d been forced to put a bullet through the heart of my own.
No one deserved to grow up under the threat of violence the way I had, the way Tiernan clearly had, too. He was appealing to every weakness I had and I wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it.
All I knew was that the scarred man before me had my compassion. I doubted he’d ever had a champion the way I had Cosima as a child, and Dante as a woman.
The opportunity to pick up my sword and fight beside him was oddly gratifying.
“If Bryant is the man I’ve heard rumors about, this could go badly for you. Playing against him,” I pointed out.
“Yes,” he agreed instantly, easily, with a shrug of one shoulder. “But I’ve never been able to resist danger. Or temptation for that matter.”
I grinned at him. “Me either.”
“So, then,” he said, and his voice was warmer than it had been, filled with something like hope. “You’ll help me take this on.”
“I will,” I agreed. “But you should know, I take a special interest in my clients. Most of the time, they become something like friends.”
He blinked at me and I knew it was a micro expression of shock. This man wasn’t used to kindness, to offers of friendship and warm smiles.
He was used to this, being cold, left outside in the dark like some feral hound.
“We have our own Christmas party,” I went on to say. “There’s considerably more red wine and less fanfare. The crowd is mostly men, a lot of them criminal. But something tells me you’d get along just fine.”
Humor hooked his mouth into a high curl. “I think I can handle that.”
