Maximo: A Second Chance Mafia Romance (Mob Daddies Book 3)

by Alexa Hart

  “You mean like the mafia?” I blurted out and suddenly we were both laughing very, very hard. The wine mixing with the heightened emotions and adding to the absurdity of anyone ever desperately wanting to be a part of “the business” was overwhelmingly funny. And not funny at all.

  After a while we quieted down, far from sober but coming back to the reality of the separate miseries we faced. The wine was gone and my head was spinning.

  “Don’t take him from me, Natalia... Please? I don’t have anything else. I don’t want anything else.”

  I wondered if Maximo could see her right now – like this – if he might not be able to fall in love with her after all. I also inherently knew there was a rather permanent reason why he couldn’t seem to fall in love with her or anybody else. She knew it too. That was why she came here.

  “Lucy, I promise you, I am not here for Maximo. I didn’t come to take him from you. I didn’t come to stay.” I said these words slowly and carefully, making sure she heard them, and making sure I meant them.

  I was almost positive that I did.

  The evening ended with me calling Lucy a cab. She didn’t live far, but she wasn’t in driving condition, and I wasn’t convinced she could make it walking either. When I awoke in the morning, her car had already been retrieved and the conversation seemed very unreal.

  “She’s always flirting with you right in front of me! You think that‘s not on purpose?” I had screamed in his face.

  Max had taken my face in his hands, smiling and kissing my eighteen-year-old forehead. “I don’t want Lucia. I don’t want ANYONE. I ONLY WANT YOU.”

  Chapter 10

  Maximo

  Maybe it was midnight, maybe it was 4 am. The pounding at my front door woke me from an already subpar sleep, and I was instantly grabbing my gun from the side table drawer. Nic was safe in his bed, white noise machine on, seemingly undisturbed so far.

  This is the shit. This is the shit that I can’t stand. Always on alert. Always on fucking alert.

  I neared the door stealthily, taking deep breaths and preparing for whatever nightmare was waiting on the other side. Then I heard her voice.

  “I know you’re hooome, Maximo. I can see your caaar. It’s right theeere.” It was Lucy, and she did not sound even slightly sober.

  I opened the door quickly to avoid any more knocking that might jar Nic awake. He didn’t need to witness whatever the hell was about to happen. When I actually saw Lucia, I was more convinced than before that the sight of this would scar Nic for life.

  “Why the fuck do you have your guuun? You wanna shoot me, Max?” Lucy shouted at me, holding her hands up in mock terror. I pulled her inside with one arm, and guided her to the couch.

  “I’ll be right back. Lemme put this away for God’s sake,” I said, letting her slump slowly into a heap on the cushions. I had witnessed Lucy drunk many a time. This was a new extreme.

  Gun replaced and Nic checked on, I reluctantly returned to the pile of human mess that was Lucy. She was staring at the ceiling, head dropped back on the couch arm. Her face was a conglomerate of what looked to be a layer of messed-up make-up on top of a deeper layer of messed-up make-up. The curls that had been so carefully arranged hours ago were hanging in wild, rebellious tangles – long lost from their original, meticulous paths.

  She turned her head towards me, sensing my stare. “Yes. I’m drunk as fuck. I’m a mess. Whatever. Whatever!” Her eyes were blazing with anger... but also something else. Something painful.

  “Lucy,” I said quietly, sitting beside her stretched out body on the couch, “Nic is here. He’s asleep. Can we please keep it down?”

  She looked ashamed then. I almost never had her at the house at the same time as Nic. I wasn’t ready for that relationship to happen yet – I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready. The few times she had been around Nic were short and sweet, and she had always been on her best behavior. I knew she wanted his approval as badly as she wanted my mother’s, and we both knew she stood a much better chance of actually winning it from Nic.

  “What happened? Why are you so drunk?” I asked gently, marveling inwardly at the fact that she could be this disheveled and still be so pretty.

  “What happened? Are you serious?” She emphasized every word as though I were the most dull-witted idiot on the planet. “Natalia happened!”

  And there it was. The answer I had already known even as I asked the question. “Natalia,” I repeated, waiting for her to continue.

  “Natalia came home and you immediately lost your shit. That’s what happened,” Lucy accused, still looking like an angry she-devil but now forming what quite possibly were real tears in her swollen green eyes.

  It occurred to me that only one of us currently looked like they belonged in the “lost my shit” category – and it wasn’t me. But as much of a disaster as Lucia was, laying there like a human car crash on my couch, I knew she wasn’t wrong.

  I had lost it. Immediately.

  “Say it, Max. Just say it,” she spat at me, attempting to lift her head and then letting it drop back down on the couch arm. I genuinely didn’t know what she wanted me to say – but she clarified that very quickly, not giving me a chance to answer. “Just say you still fucking love Natalia!” Her eyes were blazing now, and her inebriation in no way had hindered her ability to focus a razor-sharp glare of contempt directly on me. I felt the weight of it – but I also saw a certain level of anguish in Lucy’s eyes that I knew I was responsible for.

  “Lucy...” I hesitated. I had a soft spot for this girl, and we had spent a lot of time together in the last year. It wasn’t that she meant nothing to me. It was the simple fact that she wasn’t Natalia.

  “I went to see her tonight, you know. We drank a bottle of wine and talked. And that talk fucked me up even worse because now I can’t even just call her a bitch and hate her, Max!” Lucy was almost crying now, swiping at her eyes and not looking at me anymore. “I went straight to our bar after that visit. Old Man Spencer was drunk as hell and buying everyone rounds of shots every three seconds...” She almost smiled then – and I almost smiled with her. Mr. Spencer was one of the more loveable neighborhood drunks, and he was always at the same bar. “Our bar”, as Lucy called it.

  And it was certainly where this had all started, so I hadn’t ever protested the name.

  Now I wished I had.

  “Tell me you still love her, Max. I need to hear you say it – to my face,” Lucy looked at me then, bracing herself but still trying to look so much tougher than she ever had actually been.

  “I still love Natalia,” I said quietly, but clearly.

  She was nodding, but just barely. Her tears were spilling over now – apparently hearing it was different than just knowing it. She sat up a little, pulling her knees to her chest and leaning her forehead against them.

  “She’s leaving, Max. She said so herself,” Lucy murmured now, still not looking at me. “And the worst part is that it doesn’t even make me feel better. You’ll still love her whether she’s here or in fucking Antarctica.” She looked up at me now, still crying quietly. “This was just never going to go anywhere was it? I mean, it just never could, right?”

  I felt like the world’s biggest piece of shit. Putting a hand gently on her back, I shook my head. “Lucy - if I could make myself just stop loving that girl...” Now I was tearing up. “I can’t. I’ve tried. I don’t know how.”

  She was conceding – I could see that. Lucia Costa knew when she was done for. And though I hadn’t ever articulated the words or even the thought that “we should end this right now, tonight”, I knew it was ending. Right now. Tonight.

  We hugged, and holding her little body I felt how deeply I had wronged this girl. Maybe I had wanted to believe it was fine because she was Lucy, and she could handle it. She was a tough little rich bitch who didn’t have a heart to break. But I had known from the start that the image we had all always shared of her wasn’t the truth. The small glimpse of her h
eart on that first night had been what sparked my genuine interest towards her to begin with.

  Suddenly I felt her little hand working its way down into my pants, and she was kissing my neck softly. There was no controlling the physical reaction that my unthinking lower half immediately had... But my upper half could still process things clearly, and I knew the last thing that would help this situation was a good lay.

  She pulled back, looking mischievous – and still a complete wreck, but a hot wreck. She took one of my hands and placed it on her nearly already bare breast, which felt warm and soft and “Lucia Costa large”. And then she was straddling me, grinding her body slowly – and fucking firmly – against mine. Those breasts were going up and down sweetly against my chest and I started to falter.

  “Lucy,” I whispered, gently trying to pull back from her spider-locked embrace.

  “One more night, Max – just one. We deserve one more night. Just to say good-bye,” she whispered back, her tongue now in my ear making slow circles and her hand beginning to pump my all-too-responsive cock with dedicated care.

  She lowered down smoothly off of the couch, now pulling my sweats off and placing her beautiful little face between my legs. My body was wanting things so badly now that I was struggling to remember why this was such a bad idea.

  Shouldn’t we say goodbye? Was this such a horrible way to do it?

  She had slid my boxers slightly down – just far enough – and was writhing her way towards what I knew from experience was going to be an A+ blowjob. Her breasts were completely out of her sweater and she rubbed them on my shaft slowly. Up, down. Up, down. And then she was lowering her sweet little mouth to my tip, tongue poised and ready to devour me.

  Natalia’s image shot through my brain with a jarring clarity. Sapphires. Those irreplaceable sapphires.

  My hands went to the sides of Lucy’s face and I gently pulled her up from the position she was assuming. Her eyes met mine and she instantly knew I wasn’t going to be won over this time.

  “Fine, Fanucci. Have it your way,” she stated haughtily. She was pulling her sweater up, straightening the rest of herself the best she could, and still weaving and wobbling as she did so.

  “Sleep here, okay? You can have my bed – I'll take the couch,” I offered carefully. It was incredibly late, I was positive she had only made it here by cab to begin with, and I wasn’t going to just chuck her out the front door like a bag of trash.

  I cared about her. She could hate me forever, but it wouldn’t change the truth of that.

  “I’m not too good for the couch, Maximo. Just get me a goddamn pillow,” she replied, already curling up into a little drunk ball and pulling a blanket over herself.

  In the short time that it took me to retrieve the pillow and an extra blanket, Lucia had nearly passed out entirely. She looked at me with sleepy eyes while I gingerly wedged the pillow under her head.

  “She’s going to leave, Maximo. She said so herself. She won’t stay for you. You have to accept that someday.” All of this was murmured kindly – no ill intent for once – and I saw the tears gathering in her eyes before she rolled away from me, ending the evening as well as whatever we were or might have been, for good.

  “You’re not going to try to stop her, Maximo?” My mother had said, watching me sit, head on her kitchen table, lifeless and surrendered to the heartless bastard that other people called “Fate”.

  “I tried, Ma. I’ve tried for the last two weeks. She’s going. I can’t stop her. She won’t let me. I’ve triiied.” I was a full grown 21-year-old man, crying like an infant, completely exhausted from the effort and the begging and the arguing. I had fought so hard to convince her. So. Hard.

  “Maybe you can’t stop her. But you can keep trying until that car disappears down the road. Then you will always know you did everything you could. She will know it too, Maximo. And someday that might matter a lot more than you think,” Elena had spoken calmly and with little emotion. But I knew she was heartbroken that Nat was leaving as well. She’d spoken to her herself in those last few days – not to attempt to persuade her (that was not Elena Fanucci’s way) – but to assure Natalia that she was greatly loved here. She was family. And to remind her that even amongst the business matters, love and family were still very real and very possible to sustain. She had needed Nat to know that she would always be there for her, regardless of her decision – that she loved Natalia like a daughter.

  I had looked at my mother, noticing alarmingly clearly for one of the first times in my adult life that she was aging, and thinking how she had quite the collection of her own personal pain to carry around with her every single day – alone. She knew a little something about losing people, this woman.

  You can keep trying until that car disappears down the road.

  As I had approached Oak Street, I saw her pushing her trunk lid down repeatedly and with great aggravation, to no avail. I walked calmly towards her car, not knowing exactly what to say that hadn’t already been said. But she was still here. She was right in front of me. And that meant there was still time – even if it were a sliver.

  She saw me coming and froze, letting go of the stubborn trunk. I had smiled at her and slammed it down effortlessly with one hand. Problem solved.

  Good job. You just made it easier for her to leave.

  But I intended to make it much harder.

  “Max, I can’t – I can’t do this again. Please don’t make this worse. Please.” She was begging me with those sparkling eyes, and I could see the exhaustion – emotional and physical – that had overtaken her recently.

  “I’m not going to try to convince you to stay, Nat. I’ve done that already. You just have to know that...” I had stopped then, realizing I was going to say the exact same things all over again. She was looking at me, tense and pained, ready to flee and yet – I could clearly see it – wanting me still. Loving me still.

  I grabbed her then, pulling her into me and kissing her like I would never see her again. I memorized her lips and her tongue, which nearly instantly returned my passion regardless of her words – regardless of the fact that she was leaving. They were soft and at the same time clinging frantically to mine – willing this moment to last forever.

  Quit the business, Max.

  But I couldn’t.

  It seemed like the longest kiss in the recorded history of mankind. And yet it still passed like every other countless kiss with Natalia had. I could kiss her a million times, and perhaps I had over the years. But each time, there would be an ending.

  And this time, the ending was her leaving.

  I had held her face in my hands when our lips finally parted. We looked at each other in silence, both of us crying and neither of us caring.

  “It doesn’t matter where you go or how long you stay away. I will always love you. Always.” My voice had nearly given out while I spoke these last words, still holding Nat’s face, and watching her tears fall freely.

  She nodded, her lip trembling. Then she had hugged me – so hard, and so fast – and was getting in her car, shutting the door, pulling away.

  I had no way of knowing if she looked back once or a thousand times that day, but I stood stone-still by the curb and watched until her car had disappeared down the road.

  Chapter 11

  Natalia

  I had never been so nervous for something as simple as a “run” since the high school track finals. If I had known how to cancel, I would have. But I didn’t know how.

  And you don’t really want to.

  My conversation with Lucy had convinced me of two things. First, Lucia Costa wasn’t the pure minion of evil that I had always assumed she was. Second, it wasn’t fair to be spending this time with Max when I knew I was leaving. And soon.

  It was fucking him up. I knew this because it was fucking me up.

  I was going to talk to him today. Whether Pop made it another week or another month, it was a very bad idea for Max and I to keep hanging out. It wo
uld never be “as friends”, because we’d evolved past that point in our relationship over a decade ago. Evolution wasn’t something you reversed at will.

  I went to tell Pop I’d be back, and he was just waking from what had to have been his third or fourth nap of the day. “Going for a run,” I told him, kissing his cheek and feeling more bone than flesh.

  “With Maximo?” He asked, smiling like a little old devil. “Your brother told me.”

  I made a mental note to punch Dario when I got back home.

  “Yes, Pop. With Maximo. As friends. Just friends,” I replied, shaking my head and giving him a loving grin. He’d had to have an extra dose of pain meds last night – intravenously given by his nurse. His eyes seemed incredibly glassy today, and I longed for the time when they had been clear and confident – strong.

  “Sweet Natalia,” he had chuckled – with effort and a mild coughing fit following. “You and Maximo will never be friends, my love.”

  Well at least we agree on one thing.

  A long hug, another kiss to his cheek, and I was on my way.

  I heard him chuckling still as I walked down the hall, and smiled to myself.

  My Pop...

  I was already outside when Max pulled up to the curb. 3:58.

  Here we go. You can do this.

  He was holding the door open for me and looking especially good-humored. Again in tight running sweats, as he had been the day I arrived, his muscular body was basically one beautiful outline of godliness.

  Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

  I attempted to ignore the heat that was igniting somewhere very south in my body, and returned his smile. “Hey.” I slid carefully past him, allowing him to shut the door, and noticing his grin seemed to be permanent in nature today.