by LJ Shen
“Not a word,” I warned Sterling as Francesca went to get her jacket.
She zipped her lips with her fingers.
Francesca appeared at the kitchen door. I turned around, lacing her arm in mine. We poured into the starless Chicago night.
“Villain?”
“Yes, Nemesis?”
“Do you think Smithy might be able to teach me how to drive?”
She wanted her wings back.
She had every right to them. I knew since I wanted her protected from everyone around her. Including me.
“Fuck Smithy, Nem. I’ll teach you.”
THE REMAINING WEEK BEFORE OUR wedding, Wolfe came to my bedroom every single night.
We did not have sex, but he did lick me down there until I came. Every time I reached a climax, he’d suck my lips—the ones between my legs—and laugh like the devil. Sometimes he would rub himself against my stomach through our clothes, then retire to my bathroom. When he came back to the bedroom to kiss me good night before he left, his cheeks were always tinted pink.
One of the times, he asked if he could come on me. I said yes, mainly because I wasn’t entirely sure if it meant what I think it meant. He rubbed against me, and when he was ready, he took himself out and climaxed between my breasts, all over my nightgown.
A part of me wanted to sleep with him to show him that I forgave him because as much as I hated to admit it—and despite myself—I did forgive him. But another part of me was terrified of having sex again. I was still sore from the incident, and every time he rubbed against me, I remembered the awful night he drove into me in one go. But then I’d push the memory aside and force myself to think happy thoughts.
As much as our relationship had improved after our engagement party night, we still weren’t a real couple. We slept in separate wings of the house, something he’d warn would happen for the rest of our days. He limited his attention toward me to only the nighttime. We would have dinner together, then retire back to our designated rooms. Then, a short hour after I showered and slipped into a sexy nightgown, he would knock on my door, and I’d be ready for him, with my thighs open and the thing between them aching for his touch and tongue and mouth.
I felt dirty for what we did. I’d been taught that sex was a way to get pregnant and please your husband, not something you should desire to do so frequently. Yet having Wolfe lick me there was all I wanted to do, all day, every day. Even now, when I went to college and made a conscious effort to meet new people and get a grip on my class schedule, the only thing I could think about was his nose and mouth buried deep inside me as he mumbled filthy, degrading things about my body that made more and more wetness leak from me.
I didn’t make an effort to make friends, or to open up, or to form a life of my own. I wanted to do my homework, attend all my lectures, and have the Big, Bad Wolfe eat me out.
The day before our wedding, Wolfe was in his home office and I was gardening outside when I heard the doorbell ring. Since I knew Ms. Sterling was upstairs, reading one of her less-than-innocent books (I was no longer in a position to judge her, though), I took off my gardening gloves, rose to my feet, and made my way into the house. Through the peephole, I saw it was my father and his bodyguards. My pulse quickened. Was he trying to make amends?
I flung the front door open and was pushed to the side. My back slammed against the door as he stomped in.
“Where is he?” he clipped. His two bodyguards trailed behind him. I furrowed my brows. He didn’t even say hello to me. After everything he’d done at our engagement party—inviting the dodgiest people the state had to offer to try and hurt Wolfe’s reputation, not to mention throwing Kristen and Angelo into the mix—he didn’t even afford me an offhand pleasantry. What a jerk.
I closed the door behind them, straightening my back. I felt oddly secure in my domain. I had no illusions about Wolfe’s feelings for me, but I did know that he would not have anyone disrespecting me in my own house.
“Is he expecting you?” I drawled, playing dumb. Truly, I was sick of him. Sick of him cheating on my mother and selling his daughter to the highest bidder. My father was selfish, and he allowed it to hurt his family.
My father sneered, “Get him here. Now.”
“Do you or do you not have an appointment with Senator Keaton?” I braved my fear, raising my voice slightly.
I am the wind. Strong and evasive and everywhere. He can’t touch me.
He scanned me head-to-toe. “Who are you?”
“Wolfe Keaton’s future wife,” I answered with faux obedience. “Who are you?”
“Your father. Though you seem to have forgotten that.”
“You haven’t been acting like a father. Maybe that’s why.” I folded my arms over my chest, ignoring the reddening faces of his two guards. He looked intoxicated, swaying a little, his face a shade too red for it just to be the summer weather.
He waved me off impatiently. “I’m not the one who has changed, Francesca. You’re the one going off to college and talking about getting a job.”
“Being independent is not a disease,” I gritted out. “But that’s not your issue with me. Your issue with me is that I now belong to a man who wants to ruin you, and you are no longer sure where my loyalty lies.”
The cat was out of the bag, and even though I stood behind every word, it didn’t make it any less painful. He took a step toward me, and we were nose to nose. We felt different at that moment. Equal.
“Where does your loyalty lie, mascalzone?” Rascal. He used to call me that when I was a kid. It always made me giggle because in Spanish it sounded like más calzones. More underpants.
I stared deep into his icy blue eyes, leaned forward, and whispered into his face.
“Me, Papa. My loyalty will always be with me.”
He sneered, brushing a lock of hair off my forehead gently. Imperial as ever, even drunk. “Tell me, figlia, does it not bother you that your future husband encourages you to get an education and a job? Do you not think perhaps he doesn’t want to keep you long enough to take care of you, so he makes sure you can take care of yourself?”
I opened my mouth, then clamped it shut. When I wanted to marry Angelo, I also knew that my father would always have this power over him. He couldn’t divorce me, toss me aside, or wrong me. Wolfe, however, did not answer to Arthur Rossi. He did not answer to anyone.
“That’s what I thought.” My father laughed. “Take me to see him.”
“I will not…” I started, then stopped when I heard the sound of heavy feet behind me.
“Arthur Rossi. What an unpleasant surprise,” my fiancé said from behind me. I turned around, hating the butterflies that took flight in my chest when he arrived. Hating that the first thing I saw was how much taller and more impressive he was than Papa. And absolutely despising how my thighs clenched and my panties dampened at the sight of him.
Wolfe descended the stairs in leisured steps, passing me by without acknowledging my existence as he came face to face with my father. They stared each other in the eye. I instantly knew that something else had happened. Something much bigger than the stunt my father pulled at the engagement party.
“You raided the pier,” my father hissed, getting in his face. It was the first time I saw my father lose control over his voice. It was brittle around the edges, like a wrinkly piece of paper. His face was so swollen and red, he was barely recognizable. The last few weeks had obviously been eventful between them, but it only showed on one of them. “You sent cops when you knew we’d be there. Thirteen of my men are in jail.”
Wolfe smiled, plucking the handkerchief from my father’s blazer’s pocket and using it to dispose of the gum in his mouth, tucking it back in neatly and patting the pocket. “That’s where they should be. Francesca, leave,” he ordered me, his tone steel. He was a different man from the one who visited my bedroom every night. Not even related to the man who took me to eat waffles in the middle of the night, then came back to lick me again and agai
n until my thighs squeezed his face.
“But…” I started. My father turned around from Wolfe to snap at me.
“I sent you an obedient, well-mannered girl, and look at her now. She’s wild, talks back, and doesn’t even follow your orders. You think you can crush me? You can’t even handle my teenage daughter.”
Wolfe was still staring at him, smirking and not paying any attention to me, when I shook my head and, deflated, made my way outside to the garden. I put my gardening gloves back on, then lit a cigarette. As I crouched down, internally cursing my father and my fiancé for treating me like a dumb kid for the millionth time, I noticed something peculiar peeking from the edge of the vegetable garden. A rusty door leading to what I assumed was the mansion’s pantry. It was laced with ivy, but I could tell that it was recently used since the ivy was torn around the edges. I stood back up and sauntered toward it, yanking the handle. It opened easily. I took a step in, realizing that it did not lead to the pantry, but to the laundry room right next to the foyer. My father and Wolfe no longer had the privacy of the double-glazed balcony doors. I could hear them through the thin, wooden door of the laundry room. I wasn’t supposed to eavesdrop, but I figured they deserved it for keeping so many secrets from me in the first place. I pressed my ear against the door.
“Where I come from, Senator Keaton, words have meanings, and deals are honored,” my father hissed. “I gave you Francesca, yet you seem adamant about ruining what’s mine.”
“We seem to be in the same boat. I have a briefcase missing with your fingerprints all over it.” Wolfe chuckled darkly.
“Not my doing.”
“Aren’t men in the Chicago Outfit supposed to pride themselves in never stabbing a man in the back and always telling the truth?”
“I’ve never stabbed anyone in the back,” my father said cautiously, “and Murphy’s was an unfortunate incident, which I am sure the Irish will benefit from once the insurance kicks in.”
“Let’s talk about the pep rally,” Wolfe continued. The one where there were shootings? I heard about it briefly in the news but knew that nobody got hurt. A deranged kid who played too many violent video games, they said. It was on the same day the stock market fell, and no one made a fuss of it.
“What about it?” My father crushed his teeth together. I could hear it clearly even past the door.
“You’re lucky you’re still out and about, and not locked up with the shooter,” Wolfe said.
“I’m out and about because you have no proof.”
“Neither do you that I had anything to do with the pier. But the cherry on the shit cake wasn’t my attempted assassination. No. That was half-baked and completely amateur. It was the engagement party.”
I choked on my own saliva. My father tried to assassinate my husband. And my husband didn’t even tell me. He hid it from the world, essentially protecting my father. Why?
“Are you seriously comparing sending off my frivolous daughter to flirt with her childhood crush at a party to locking up thirteen of my men?” Arthur Rossi spat out. It was the second time his voice rose. Real rivalry did change him and not for the best.
“Your daughter is neither frivolous, nor is she a flirt. She is, however, my soon-to-be wife, and I’m growing tired of you disrespecting her. I will also not have you push her into anyone’s arms, much less someone she was fond of when she was younger. In fact, for every time you act up concerning Francesca, or put my reputation in jeopardy as you did during the engagement party, I will kill one of your businesses. The pier. A restaurant. Perhaps a poker joint. The list is endless, and I have the means and the time. Get this past that thick skull of yours—she is mine now. I decide if she works, where she studies, and in what positions I want to fuck her. Furthermore, eliminating me from the equation will not work. Not only did I spread the evidence on you in different places, secured by different people, but I also have written letters instructing my trustees what to do in case of my untimely death.”
He talked as though he was going to do terrible things to me. But I didn’t believe him. Not anymore. This past week, he had put my physical needs before his own. He obviously said these words to piss my father off, but I no longer cared why he’d said them. If he truly cared about my pride, he would stop flaunting our sex life like that in front of my father. I heard something smash—a vase or a glass—and Wolfe chuckling enigmatically.
“What makes you think Bishop and White will let you get away with it?”
“The fact that they are letting me get away with it. I have the upper hand in this game of cards. You will play by my rules or lose your hand. There is no other option.”
“I will take Francesca away,” my father threatened, his voice lacking that same icy authority that usually laced his speech. I swallowed back a scream. Now he wanted to take me back? I wasn’t a toy. I was a human being who had grown oddly attached to my future husband. Besides, no one in The Outfit was going to want to have me now, especially after Wolfe had taken my virginity.
Only, my father didn’t know that.
Even if he suspected it—he obviously didn’t care.
Wolfe did. Wolfe had the potential to ruin my life now. He got what he wanted. My virginity and reputation. He could end this today. It would be enough humiliation for my father. Sweat clung to the back of my neck at the thought. It took forever for Wolfe to speak again.
“You will not.”
“How are you so sure?”
“You love The Outfit more than you love your daughter,” he said simply. An arrow of venom pierced my heart. This is why humans invented lies, I thought. No other animal in nature lies. The truth is ruthless. It cuts you open, shoving your face into the mud. It forces you to look reality in the eye and deal with it. To feel the real weight of the world that you live in.
“And you?” Papa asked. “How do you feel about my daughter?”
“I feel positive she will be a delight to fuck and decent arm candy, which I can quietly replace when her expiry date arrives,” Wolfe said good-naturedly. I wanted to throw up. I could feel the acid bubbling in my stomach, making its way to my throat. I was about to open the door and confront them both. How dare they talk about me like this? But the second my hand grasped the door handle, I felt someone clasping my shoulder from behind. I turned around in the darkened room. It was Ms. Sterling. She shook her head, her eyes almost bulging out of their sockets.
“He is aggravating your father,” she enunciated every word, slating her chin down and forcing me into eye contact.
There was a commotion outside the door. My father was shouting, cursing in Italian, as Wolfe laughed, the provocative, throaty tilt of his voice dancing on the walls and ceiling. I heard the screeching of my father’s shoes dragging along the marble floor and knew that his bodyguards pulled him out before he embarrassed himself any further. It was loud enough outside for me to confront Ms. Sterling without them hearing us.
“How do you know that?” I asked, wiping away angry, hot tears from my eyes. I was crying again. I could count on one hand the number of days I hadn’t cried since Wolfe walked into my life.
“Because I know how he feels about your father, and right now, his hatred toward your father trumps his affection for you. But things are shifting, my dear. All the time.”
Ms. Sterling had to drag me back outside, closing the secret door with precise, careful movements so Wolfe wouldn’t hear us. She glanced around to make sure the coast was clear, before grabbing my wrist and ushering me to the pavilion. She parked her wrinkly, bluish hands on her hips, sitting me down in front of her. For the second time that day, I felt like a punished kid.
“How can Wolfe even like me when he hates my family with such passion?” I dragged a hand through my hair, wishing I had a cigarette.
Ms. Sterling looked down, momentarily speechless. I made a good point. Her sheer white bob danced here and there as she scratched her head.
“He is halfway in love, Francesca.”
“H
e is in hate with my father and in lust with me.”
There was a beat of silence before she spoke again.
“My last name is not Sterling, and I am not who I seem to be. I actually grew up not too many blocks from you in Little Italy.”
I looked up, frowning. Ms. Sterling was Italian? She was strikingly pale. Then again, so was I. So was my father. My mother was darker, but I inherited my father’s looks. Another reason I feared Wolfe hated me. I kept quiet, listening to her.
“Something I did when I was young and confused made me start over. I was to pick a last name, any last name, and I picked Sterling after Wolfe’s eyes. I’m not proud of some of the things I did to young Wolfe Keaton when he was too defenseless to stand up for himself, but he still forgave me. His heart is not as black as you think it is. It beats fiercely for the ones he loves. It just so happens that…” Ms. Sterling blinked, choking on her words, “all the people he loves are dead.”
I began to pace in the pavilion overlooking the garden. The summer flowers burst in purples and pinks. My vegetable garden grew nicely, too. I injected life into this little land, and I hoped—perhaps even foolishly believed—that I could do the same with my future husband. I stopped, kicking a little stone.
“My point is, Francesca, his heart has taken quite a few hits. He is calloused and mean, especially to those who have wronged him, but he is not a monster.”
“Do you think he can love again?” I asked quietly.
“Do you think you can?” Ms. Sterling retorted with a tired smile. I groaned. Of course, I could. But I was also a forlorn dreamer with a lousy reputation of a person who insisted on seeing the good in almost everyone. My father called it naiveté. I called it hope.