AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Giving Paolo a proper send-off, and then the boss will go and let the widow know the news. She just had a baby a few months ago,” Elio continued quietly.
I swallowed a sudden, intense urge to cry. “That’s horrible.”
Elio simply nodded as we reached the stairs and started upward. “That’s life.”
14
RENATO
Hours later, I stepped into the walk-in shower in my room at Casa Nera and let Paolo’s blood wash down the drain. Visiting a widow with her dead husband’s blood drying on my clothes might be macabre, but in my world, it was a mark of respect and admission of responsibility. His blood was on my hands as the boss, and I’d support his family from now on. His widow, Elisia, had been inconsolable. I’d brought Carmella with me to speak to her. She had enveloped her in the kind of comforting hug that she excelled at, and I’d stuck to the facts. Her husband was dead, killed in the line of duty, with honor. Because of that, she would live on the compound, provided for, as long as she wanted.
I sluiced water through my hair and reached for the bodywash. The smell of blood and the stink of the lowest level of Casa Nera was trapped in my nose.
As I lathered the gel between my hands, the faint scent of jasmine floated to me. It reminded me of Charlotte.
Charlotte Burke.The sight of her standing in my overly large jacket, her face pale, her usual sass and defiance dimmed by the sight of the dying man, filled my head. She’d been wearing unremarkable, shapeless clothes, her long brown hair screwed up in a topknot, her face devoid of makeup, and yet she was the most compelling sight I’d ever seen.
Her kind of simple, unspoiled beauty wasn’t common. It was rare as hell, and I wanted to see more of it. It was an indulgence; I shouldn’t be getting distracted. There was work to be done. Commissioner Reynolds, and his slimy friend, Judge Ellens, had been causing problems for me at La Leonora, and the Castillos were still trying to undercut me and steal my clients. There was a lot to think about, and yet, as a man who had always appreciated the classics, letting my mind linger on Charlotte was a temptation too strong to resist. I allowed myself to image her soft curves as I ran the suds down my body, palming my cock.
After death, men wanted to fuck to remind themselves they were alive, or so history would tell us. In my case, there was no way I’d rather celebrate still being alive than to sink inside Charlotte and fuck her until she screamed my name.
Memories of the first night we’d met took over my mind. The thought of her kneeling at my feet again, begging, promising to do whatever I asked had precum leaking from my tip. I spread it around the head and pumped myself, long strokes up and down, picturing her sweet, upturned face. I imagined pushing between her lips as her first task to keep her and her sister out of trouble.
I’d made my darkest fantasies a reality, and soon, I’d have her roaming the halls of Casa Nera in easily-pushed-aside dresses of thin silk, ready to sit on my lap, spread her legs on my dining table, or crawl beneath my desk and open her plump lips wide whenever I was home and hungry for her. I was a careful, meticulous man. I was calculating and measured. That was how I’d built myfamigliaup to the kind of power it enjoyed today, and to become that man, I’d never let emotions cloud my judgment. I rarely allowed myself to want.
But I wanted her, and I’d have her, every single way I desired, any time, any place, for as long as we both shall live. She’d fight me on it at first, of course; the woman didn’t know how to be meek. Soon, she’d understand that the tension between us was nothing ordinary, and she’d give in and become mine, mind, body, and soul. A couple of fat, happy babies would keep her from hating me too much.
The thought of sinking into Charlotte and ordering her to bounce on my lap while I worked had my cum boiling in my balls. But it was the thought of my soon-to-be wife round with my baby, her nipples large and her breasts heavy with milk, that had me finishing against the wall in ribbon after ribbon of white, coming so hard my balls ached a little in the aftermath.
I rinsed off, my breath as heavy as my conscience after Paolo’s death and made my way out of the shower.
I wanted a bedroom for us renovated, a nursery created, and of course, checkups for her health to be conducted, to make sure she was ready to be pregnant. Making sure she was off any kind of birth control was a top priority.
For the first time in years, I was making plans that involved my private life with something other than jaded nihilism. She had blazed into my life, and now I couldn’t remember it without her. I’d been waiting to meet her all along, and now, with my captive bride locked up safely inside, with no possibility of escape, I was as close to happy as I’d ever been. Content with her company or obsessed with possessing her.
They both meant the same to a man like me.
15
CHARLIE
“Lucy? You haven’t eaten anything.” I nudged my sister where she lay in a lump under the covers. She was sleeping so much, she had to be falling into a deep depression, but I had no idea how to fix it.
She ignored me, though I could tell she was awake. She was disappointed in me, I suspected. All her life, I’d taken care of her, provided for her, and been larger than life in her eyes, like a parental figure. Now, she’d seen that I was just a person, like her, and I had no magical powers to fix things. In fact, my fix was awful: Marrying into a mafia family to keep us alive. Lucy’s delusions about the safety of the world and our place in it were being spoiled, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“I have to go downstairs. I’ll be back in a little while,” I told her.
She didn’t answer. She was grieving the loss of the life she’d imagined for herself, and I got it. We’d both lost a lot in recent days.
I headed down to the lower level of Casa Nera, for once taking every correct bend in the corridor and ending up in the second drawing room, where my presence had been requested by Elio’s batshit crazy sister, Giada. The woman from the charity benefit, it turned out, had been a member of Renato’s inner circle and not a girlfriend. I didn’t know how to feel about that. She was a lot to handle.
I knocked and stepped inside, and then froze. The beautiful dark-blue-and-gold room looked different. The velvet couches and side tables had been pushed to the side, and a huge set of mirrors had been set up, with a raised dais in the middle.
“Finally, you’re here. I nearly finished the bubbly while I waited,” Giada huffed. She was leaning back on a couch, her heavy boots perched on top of a gleaming, polished mahogany table. She hefted the heavy bottle toward me. “Here, have some.”
I approached her warily. “What’s the occasion? Is this a wedding dress fitting?”
Giada snorted. “What gave it away?”
