by V. Domino
You might like to read The Italian Obsession first to connect with the characters better with the elaborate backstory, but it’s not necessary.
This book features explicit depictions of sex and other material that may offend some audiences. Therefore, is intended for adults only. All characters depicted are over the age of 18.
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How could she be so happy?
The love struck face my eighteen-year-old sister had while she danced with her groom for the first time baffled me.
About a year ago, I’d danced with that man, and I, too, had a smile on my face, only because I thought he was our protector, our savior, a better father than the shitty one we had, not the reason we’d been living in fear for years.
My brother-in-law, my sister’s powerful, wealthy, handsome groom was Don Sebastiano Bellomo. Tino as he liked to be called.
A Mafia boss.
A killer.
A stalker.
A kidnapper.
A psycho monster creep with the face and body of an incredibly sexy, strong, beautiful man—even at forty—that made smart girls turn into brainless love-struck puppets.
To my sister, he was the hero that saved her. From our fucked up dad who liked to touch his own girls. From the miserable destiny awaiting an orphaned twelve-year-old with no family or future. From her ex fiancé—his own psycho fuck son.
To me, he was the thief that brainwashed my sister and stole her from me.
The dim lights brightened as the bride and groom’s first dance ended, and someone announced it was time for the rest of the wedding guests to join on the dance floor.
As mobster couples in glamorous dresses and dashing tuxes—the reception was swarming with Mafia families from every state and from Italy itself—took the floor, a prick that had flirted with me earlier and I’d pushed away approached my table.
What the fuck?
The nineteen-foot asshole with hazel eyes, plump lips and body straining his tux—that looked a lot like Massimo Torricelli—had introduced himself as Domenico Lanza. The San Francisco Mafia boss’s cousin.
As if that would have enhanced his chances of getting me to drool all over him and flirt back. He didn’t know I avoided mobsters like the plague. I avoided all men like the plague.
Could you blame me? Every man I’d ever come close to was a monster in disguise.
Domenico put his left hand out, flashing a set of perfect teeth at me. “Shall we dance…Nicky?”
I blinked at the way he drawled my name in the end with his Italian accent. Once. Then I shook it off, rose to my feet and took a step back; I hated that I had to look up to meet his eyes, and I needed to level with him.
Unlike my sister, who looked like a kid in the arms of her husband and not just because of her age, I was five foot nine and worked my ass off in the gym to have this body. And in heels, I could look this Massimo’s doppelganger in the eye with zero intimidation. “Nope.”
“Nope?” he exclaimed as if he’d never been rejected before.
“Yeah, nope, and one more pass at me—”
“And what?” He interrupted. “What would a little kitten like you do to me?”
Little kitten? Little fucking kitten? I placed a hand on his shoulder, hiding the surge of rage bubbling up inside me under a fake smile. He smirked at my hand, and then at me, giving me a lustful once-over. I leaned in for a whisper, holding my breath so that the sexy as fuck scent of his expensive cologne wouldn’t mess with my head. “The little kitten will do this.”
As my knee clashed against his balls, he bent, bawling a few curses, his chin almost landing on my shoulder. I stepped back, patted his back and sauntered away.
In my entire life, I’d held two babies. Lina, my sister, and her baby boy, Niccolino—Nick as I liked to call him. She insisted on naming him after me.
I’d never thought, not once in my life, my only sister who was two years younger than me would become a mother at nineteen, and I’d carry her babies before I even finished college.
The little crapper was the spitting image of his dad, except he had Lina’s eyes. Beautiful green instead of the bottomless dark blue. I hoped he’d look more like her as he grew. At least, on the inside. We’d learned the hard way how crappy the offspring of Tino Bellomo could turn out to be.
Leo Bellomo was the devil’s son. A psycho creep like his father but worse. The fucking bastard that tried to—
The nursery door opened, and Lina dashed toward it, throwing herself into her husband’s arms. They kissed with urgent passion as if they hadn’t seen each other in weeks when he was right here this morning.
As he finished devouring my sister’s mouth, he tilted his head at me. “Nicole. I didn’t know you were here.”
Of course he knew; Don Bellomo knew everything. Not that it’d have made any difference. Having me in the same room wouldn’t have stopped him from fucking my sister’s mouth with his tongue. It’d probably make him do more than that. Ten months and the territorial wolf was still making his claim; he wanted me to know Lina belonged to him now.
I stood and put the baby in his crib. “I was just leaving.”
“Leaving? Christmas is two days away,” he said.
“So?”
“So you gotta stay. Spend the holidays here with us, your family.”
Family? The only family I had left was Lina, and he took that away, too. I spun to face him. “Don Bellomo, if you hadn’t knocked up my sister two months before your wedding, and Lina’s pregnancy hadn’t been exactly an easy one and she needed my constant help till today, I wouldn’t have been coming here as often as I have. I wouldn’t have been coming here at all, let alone stay for days.”
“Nicky…” Lina sighed.
I kissed Nick goodbye and headed for the door. “Good to see you, Sis.”
As I reached the stairs, something grabbed my arm. I twisted, and the dark blue eyes hit me. “This ridiculous feud needs to end,” Tino said.
I jerked my arm out of his grip. “I don’t like to be touched.”
He stared at me in disbelief. “Even by me? Nicole, I’ve looked after you for years. You’ve always been like a daughter to me, and now you’re my sister-in-law. What have I ever done to you to hate me this much?”
A classic psychopath. Oblivious to his crimes. “Why do you care?”
“What did I just say? You’re the daughter I never had. I don’t want you to hate me. I want to be there for you, give you the best, just like I do for Angel.”
Angel. We all called her Lina, but he called her Angel. His Angel. I despised that name he called my sister as much as I despised him. “The best?” I snorted. “My sister and I are totally different. Your charms and mind tricks somehow worked on her, but I’d never fall for those, Don Bellomo.”
He rolled his eyes. “First of all, call me Tino. I’m your family whether you like it or not. Second of all, yes, I’ve given her the best, and I’ll continue to do so as long as I’m alive. What Angel and I have is real and pure and strong, more than you can understand. More than anyone can. But you don’t have to understand to believe. Look Angel in the eye and ask yourself one question. Is your sister happy?”
She was delusional like he was. He’d convinced her that his sick obsession with her was bigger than love, and all the awful things he’d done to get her were justified, and she believed him. Yes, he treated her like a queen, and he protected her and Nick with his life, and I had to admit he’d always looked after me, too, but he was still the psycho stalker murderer fuck who killed, maimed, stalked, kidnapped and God knew what else in the name of his obsession of her. How could she fucking love or trust him? “Is there a third of all?”
He exhaled roughly. “Yeah. Your sister is crying because you won’t spend Christmas with her. It’s the first year ever you two won’t be together during the holidays. I don’t want her to be sad, especially at this time of the year. Can we put our differences aside for one fucking week? For Angel?”
Emotional
blackmail. Trying to win a point on my expense, Don Bellomo? He, the caring husband who was trying to do everything he could to make his wife happy, and I, the evil bitch that wouldn’t suck it up for a week to be with her sister on the holidays.
No. I wasn’t gonna let him win.
Not to mention, my own heart was torn that I wasn’t gonna be with her on Christmas for the first time ever. Before this man, we were inseparable. The Baldi sisters versus the world. Leaving her was one of the hardest things I had to deal with, and God knew how much shit in our lives both of us had been thrown at us.
I lifted my chin, my eyes daring. “Sure we can. For Lina.”
He smirked. “Bellisimo. I’ll send Michele to your apartment to get your things.”
The idea of his bodyguard rummaging through my apartment wasn’t acceptable. Enough that Tino still sent him after me everywhere—like he used to send him after us before he married Lina—keeping taps. “No, thanks. Keep your hound where he belongs. I’ll go get them myself. Will be back in an hour or two.”
“As you like.” He strode back to the nursery.
I climbed down the stairs and stalked outside, calling an Uber as I headed for the gates.
A car cruised in. But then it stopped, and the windows rolled down. “Nicky?”
I squinted at the man in the backseat, and irritation bubbled up the second I recognized his face. What the fuck was Domenico Lanza doing here?
“Nice to see you again,” he said.
“Is it?”
He chuckled. “Where are you going?”
“None of your business.”
“That happens to be on my way. Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, thanks, and by the way, you’re not funny. What the hell are you doing here anyway? It’s Christmas. Shouldn’t you be with your family in San Francisco?”
“The whole family will be here for the holidays.”
“What? Why?”
“Tino invited us all to spend the holidays in his mansion, and Enzio, our boss, accepted.” He winked at me. “Isn’t that awesome?”
My idiot brother, Stefano, nudged me in the ribs, as we sat for the Christmas dinner. “She kicked you in the nuts, and you still look at her like she has a magic pussy. Che cazzo?”
I glared at him, but then my eyes, as if they couldn’t bear a second away from the wild, blonde kitten that hadn’t left my mind for months, returned to study her beauty.
Nicole Baldi. Twenty-one. Studying architecture at IIT Chicago on a full Bellomo scholarship. The sister of Tino’s obsession, and she’d been under his protection and care for the past seven years—after he killed her fucking father.
The athletic, feisty blonde with the perfect round tits I was dying to squeeze and the ass I couldn’t wait to smack while I made her scream my name wasn’t as strong as she pretended to be. Underneath the challenging eyes, the smart mouth, the proud chin, and all the attitude, there were pain and anger and wounds and scars.
I didn’t know what drew me to her more, her beauty, the challenge of bringing a strong girl to her knees or the vulnerability deep below that made my protective instincts go haywire.
It was like I wanted to tie her to my bed, shove my cock in every hole in her body, make her submit to me, only to me, and show her the consequences of rejecting Domenico Lanza, but at the same time, I wanted to wrap her in a fuzzy blanket, hold her and shelter her from all the evil in the world.
In the past couple of days, I’d pretty much done nothing but study Nicky, learning the details as if she’d been a target I was set to hit.
Her favorite color was purple. She had no trouble showing off the curves of her body in fit dresses, smiled at the attention, but she cringed at any touch, friendly or not. Her smart mouth dripped with scalding sarcasm and sass, and she giggled like the whole world couldn’t get to her. But I saw the darkness below this whole façade. The aches that seared once all the distractions faded and she was left with nothing but herself and the past.
Above all, I saw the way she looked at Tino, her sister and their bambino. The way she looked at my cousin, his wife and son.
Nicky might have said she hated the Mafia and the men that belonged to it to the core, but in fact she was jealous.
Yes. Jealous of all the love, protection, care and attention a Mob wife and child could get. Jealous of how a man like Tino or Enzio would stop at nothing to get the girl they wanted. Jealous of the happiness Angel and Bianca felt despite everything they’d suffered to have their happy families. Jealous of the family itself, the one she wouldn’t allow herself to have because she was too scared to open up to anyone, too proud to admit she needed to feel the same way even with a dangerous Mafioso.
If I was being honest, I was jealous, too. I wanted what my cousin had. A family that would survive anything. A wife that would love her man despite the impossibility of it.
Enzio Il Tagliatore was a merciless psycho sadist that liked to cut people to death. He didn’t care if it was an enemy or a family member. If anyone crossed him, they’d go under his knife. Still, Bianca found it in her heart to love him, even though he’d killed her first husband, his own brother.
Tino Il Lupo got the girl he’d stalked since she was a child, the girl his son almost married, and she looked at Tino like he was a fucking god and gave him another son instead of the piece of shit that almost disgraced our family by breaking his engagement with my cousin. Leo Bellomo, too, was obsessed with Nicky’s sister and almost destroyed the Bellomo family because of it. But in the end, it all worked out.
The psycho bastards Il Tagliatore and Il Lupo found their happy ever after. Why couldn’t I have mine?
I didn’t ask Nicky to dance this time, even though her one glance at me when her sister started playing the violin told me she expected me to. And when she eased out to the pool area before the music stopped, I knew she was disappointed I didn’t give her the chance to blow me off. In fact, I hadn’t spoken to her at all since the day I saw her leaving the mansion and refused me for the second time. I could tell it infuriated her.
It didn’t mean there had been a moment in the past days that I hadn’t thought about her.
I listened to the music. Angelina Bellomo—Lina as Nicky insisted on calling her sister till today—did play like an angel. This was the third time I’d heard her play live, at her wedding, today, and almost two years ago at Tino’s restaurant before they even got married. That was when I first laid eyes on Nicky.
I never spoke to her that day or made any indication I liked her. She was dancing with Tino, and he was very protective of her. I thought she was the girl he was obsessed with and tried to get her out of my mind, thinking she was taken.
Tried.
Imagine how thrilled I was when I found out she wasn’t.
Imagine how pissed off I was when I learned what had happened to her when she was a kid.
A round of applause yanked me out of my thoughts. I clapped with the rest as Signora Bellomo took her bow. She joined Tino in a dance as more music streamed from the sound system in the walls. My gaze traveled to the French doors that opened to the pool. Nicky was still out there.
I took a deep breath and headed out. I’d made her wait long enough.
She was sitting by the pool ladder, eyes closed, elegant heels lying next to her, golden cascades swinging down her back as she moved her head with the music, sparkling light blue fabric inched up her long legs, the water reaching her knees as she splashed it.
Beautiful. So fucking beautiful.
I wanted to hike her dress all the way up and take her right here. Many times.
My cock stiffened at the thought, so I cleared my throat, hiding my desire for now. “Nicky.”
Her head whipped toward me as her foot jerked in the water, making a louder splash. “The fuck? You startled me. What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here all alone?”
“I asked you first.”
I chuckled as
I got out my vape and waved it at her. “Your turn.”
She shrugged. “Getting some air.”
“Air? It’s an indoor pool.”
“And it’s twenty-five degrees outside. Here is the only place I can be by myself away from your kind without freezing my ass off.”
My kind? I smirked. “Well, this ass is meant for much better things...”
She grumbled and cursed. I bit my lip on a laugh. She was so hot when she was angry. “Domenico, you’d better get back inside.”
I got out my vape and took a drag. “Or what? You’ll kick me in the nuts again?”
“Yeah.” She glared at me through the smoke, her nose crinkling. “Hey… What’s that you’re smoking? It doesn’t smell like tobacco.”
I dragged one of the recliners to her side and sat. “Hash.” I offered her the vape. “Wanna try?”
She arched a brow, her face incredulous. “You sure you’re one of those mobster guys with all the crazy, uptight rules around their women?”
“I’m a Lanza and a capo, so yeah, definitely one of those mobster guys.” I leaned in. “But you’re not my woman.”
Something flickered in her eyes, something furious. “Damn right I’m not.” Then she yanked the vape and sucked in a breath.
Her lips hung apart for a second before a puff of smoke came out. I licked my lip reflexively, big twitch in my cock.
“Good stuff.” She held the vape out, the tips of her fingers at the bottom, like that would prevent me from touching her hand if I wanted to.
Although I wanted to tease her and feel her tremble under my touch, I took it back without touching her fingers. A girl like Nicky needed to be treated with care even when teased. “How do you know it’s good?”
Her jaw twitched for a second before she put on her stern face back. “I’m in college, and I don’t give a shit if you tell Tino.”
“Who said I’d tell?”