Donati Bloodlines: The Complete Trilogy

by Bethany-Kris

  “You,” she hissed.

  “Whoa.” Calisto backed into the door, hands up. “What in the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Did you do that tonight just to piss me off, Cal?”

  “Do what?”

  “You know what!”

  Calisto flinched at the level of her voice. “Quiet down. Just because this bathroom is supposed to be off-limits for the guests doesn’t mean that they all follow the damn rules.”

  Emma glared. “The girl, Cal. Your date.”

  She practically spat the word at him.

  Calisto finally understood what Emma’s problem had been all night. She wasn’t as angry as she was jealous.

  Crazy jealous.

  It burned in her eyes and set her mouth into a tight frown. Her fists clenched at her sides, and her nostrils flared.

  Goddamn.

  She looked good like this.

  Calisto didn’t want to admit how much that affected him.

  “Kelsey,” Calisto said.

  Emma’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

  “Affonso’s daughter.”

  He said the words slowly, drawing every syllable out for Emma to hear. Her fight left her eyes and defensive stand almost instantly.

  Calisto chuckled. “Not so jealous now, huh?”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “You were. You were damn jealous. You wanted to rip my throat out and ask questions later.”

  Emma fiddled with the diamond necklace she wore, avoiding his gaze. “I didn’t know that’s who she was. He didn’t say.”

  “He didn’t know, either.”

  “Oh.”

  Calisto liked that Emma had been jealous, but he didn’t know why exactly.

  Maybe because it proved something.

  Something important.

  She wanted him to be hers.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Calisto slid two fingers under Emma’s chin, and tilted her head up. An uncertainty flickered across her features. The vulnerable side of Emma was one of her best parts, he decided. The woman was strong as hell, and she didn’t show much off to the crowd. She had to know how beautiful she was when she was unsure.

  But she probably didn’t.

  “I was jealous,” Emma admitted. “I shouldn’t have been.”

  “Why not?” he dared to ask.

  “You’re not mine. I can’t expect you—”

  Calisto held up his other hand, quieting Emma instantly. He knew what she was going to say. She didn’t expect him to be faithful to something that didn’t exist.

  “Sorry,” Emma whispered.

  “Don’t be. You’re right, I’m not yours. I can date if I want to, fuck who I want to.”

  Emma cringed. “Yeah.”

  “But I’m not,” he said gently.

  Her stare flew up to his, silently questioning again.

  His confession came far too easy.

  “I think about you too much to be worrying about someone else,” he said.

  Emma blinked, and a sliver of wetness coated her bottom lashes. “Why, though?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Calisto hadn’t been able to give an answer for that, even to himself. He tried, but failed.

  “That’s not a good answer, Calisto.”

  “You got under my skin, Emmy. I liked that you were there. I couldn’t cut you out, even if I tried.”

  “How messed up is this?” she asked.

  Calisto laughed. “My whole life has been something of a mess. I’m not surprised I’ve found myself in yet another one.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But I don’t mind it,” he added.

  Emma smiled just a bit, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Calisto could tell something else was bothering her. Whatever it was, it was pushing her fragile shoulders down with its weight.

  “Emmy?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “You can tell me anything.”

  “Can I ask you anything?”

  Calisto shrugged. “Same difference.”

  “When did you learn that Affonso was your father?”

  Her words had come out quiet but sure. They still hit Calisto in the chest like a ton of bricks had just been dropped down on him. Out of instinct, he tried to move away from what Emma was saying, but his back hit the door again.

  “I don’t know what …” Calisto clenched his teeth, willing his angry denials away. Emma watched him through her thick, long lashes, silent and waiting. “How?”

  It was the only thing he could ask.

  Anything else could kill him.

  “I heard some things, he did some things.”

  Affonso.

  Calisto wet his lips. “Like what?”

  “The hospital, for one. The day after. I heard you arguing with him. It took me a while to figure it all out. I felt so stupid.”

  “Don’t feel that way. Only a handful of people know. Three of them are dead. I even have two birth certificates. One listing my father as deceased. The other listing my father as Affonso Donati with his signature. The nurse who forged the documents for Affonso the day I was born got thrown in the bay after he had her hands cut off.”

  Emma’s cheeks drained of color. “Oh, my God.”

  “My mother refused him, you see. He wanted to sign, and she hid as much about the pregnancy as she could from him. Right up until the day she gave birth. She didn’t want his name on my documents as my father. She never did.”

  “Why?”

  Calisto’s truths pressed up his throat, wanting out. “She didn’t want him around me after all he had done.”

  Emma chewed on her inner cheek. “Oh.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “She was the one woman, wasn’t she? You told me once that he hurt a woman. You only knew of one that he’d done something to that made him a monster.”

  Calisto nodded. “She was the one. She trusted him—she found a friend in him when her husband was running with all sorts of women all over the city. Affonso took it as something else, and one night, he took it too far. She hated him, and I never understood why.”

  Emma drew in a deep breath. “But you do now.”

  “A few months before she died, I was going through her things. We knew her heart disease wasn’t going to give her a whole lot of time—she was diagnosed late, after a minor cardiac arrest—but we thought she had a bit. She wanted to have things settled.”

  “Keep going,” she said when he quieted.

  “I found some papers. Letters from Affonso to her. He apologized. I don’t know why she kept them. I confronted her like it was her fault. I went at her like she had been the one who had done wrong. I didn’t have a clue, but I was so angry because they all lied to me. I didn’t realize how badly she hurt, or all the years she’d turned her cheek to the monster who kept her son too close because she didn’t have any other choice.”

  Emma reached out, and snagged his hand with hers. Calisto let her.

  “I adored him for years,” Calisto continued, rubbing a hand over his face. “I thought he was a king, but he was just … a wolf in sheep’s clothing. When I refused to marry the woman he wanted me to marry because I was angry over his lies and what he had done, he put a gun to my head and laughed.”

  Emma bit down on her lip hard enough to draw blood. “Really?”

  “Yes. He didn’t even flinch. In fact, he asked me how much I loved my mother. Did I love her enough to get myself killed for the sake of pride? Was I willing to do that to her just to punish him for the past?”

  “He’s always saying to leave things in the past,” she mumbled.

  Calisto scoffed. “It’s his favorite thing. I can’t out him for what he did without outing who I am to him. I can’t get away from him without losing something. I won’t give him what he wants—I can’t get what I want, either.”

  “I’m sorry, Cal.”

  Her words washed over him with a peaceful serenity. He’d needed to tell someone, and now tha
t he had, he wasn’t sure what to do. Calisto was glad it had been Emma who figured out his secret. She had her own to hide. He kept them for her, too. She wouldn’t tell his.

  “My mother died,” Calisto said, ignoring the thickness building in his tone. “I was angry, grieving, and guilty. It was constant. I couldn’t get away from it. I’d loved the man who hurt her—I idolized him without knowing the fear and pain he’d caused her for years. She let me grow up without ever having said a bad word about him; she never told me the truth. Instead, she let me need him, want to be him.”

  “Do you know why?”

  Calisto let out a bitter laugh, but it hurt.

  Deep in his soul, burrowed in his heart, he hurt.

  It would never go away now.

  “Of course.”

  Emma squeezed his hand. “Then why?”

  “Because he would rather have a dead son than no son at all, Emmy. That’s what he spent years telling my mother—his victim.”

  Calisto

  Emma reached up and cupped Calisto’s jaw in her hand. Her thumb swept under his eye softly, and she tilted her head a little to the side.

  “How long has it been?” she asked.

  Calisto wished the thickness in his throat would leave. “Since what?”

  “Since you cried like this.”

  He blinked, feeling the tears fall from his lashes. Never had he cried in front of someone else. Not even his mother after he had grown from a boy into a young man. In his anger and his grief, he pushed back his tears and swallowed them down.

  Calisto flinched away from Emma’s thumb when she wiped more of his tears away. “Leave it, please.”

  Hurt flickered across Emma’s features.

  “I must have been a big ‘fuck you’, huh?”

  Calisto froze. “I beg your pardon?”

  “What we did together. Even now. It’s a way for you to tell Affonso to go fuck—”

  “No,” Calisto said quickly, and harshly.

  Harsher than he intended, if Emma’s wince was any indication.

  “Never,” he added softer.

  “I would understand if that’s all it was, Cal. You don’t have to save my feelings. It seems I’m getting used to being hurt by other people.”

  Calisto’s lungs burned with every breath he took.

  “This …” he trailed off, waving between their bodies, “… me and you, Emmy, has never been about him or my past. I hate him—every part of me hates him—but this isn’t about him. I was drawn to you when you defied the rules people were setting out for you. You were so strange to me, but it was interesting, too. The more I was around you, the more I wanted to know. There hadn’t been a woman to turn my head in a long while. I had been stuck in a black hole for a year after my mother died, and then you came along. You were supposed to be nothing more than this hired-bride. You were everything except what I expected. It was all you, he didn’t mean a thing.”

  “No?”

  “He still doesn’t,” Calisto said honestly.

  Emma’s hand tightened in his. “What is this for you? You and me, what are we?”

  Crazy.

  Stupid.

  Reckless.

  “Something,” Calisto settled on saying.

  “Something,” she echoed.

  Something wonderful, maybe.

  Something doomed, probably.

  He knew what it was.

  He’d known for a while.

  It was the same thing that woke him up night after night from the same goddamn dreams. It was his constant concern and anxiety over a woman he couldn’t help any more than he already had. It was the hunger he felt whenever he was near her—the need he felt to have her closer.

  Somehow, it infected him.

  She was all through him and she didn’t even know it.

  Calisto tried denying it; he wanted to push the feelings away.

  He loved her.

  But it was hopeless—they were hopeless.

  Calisto couldn’t tell Emma how he felt without taking it away at the same time.

  How was that fair?

  “Were you leaving the party?” Emma asked.

  “I was.”

  “What if I don’t want you to?”

  Calisto tugged her closer. Without a word, she wrapped her arms around his middle and buried her face into his chest. He held her tight because having her closer was far better for his selfishness.

  “I wouldn’t go,” he told Emma.

  “Even though you have to stay on the other side of the room?”

  “Yes.”

  She could wear her mask.

  He would watch from the shadows.

  “Don’t go,” Emma said. “Stay for a little while longer. I like it when you’re around.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. Even when you’re pissing me off.”

  Calisto chuckled under his breath. “I didn’t mean to, bella. The girl was harmless. She’s my half-sister. I take care of my siblings because our father couldn’t care less about them. I’m the only one he ever gave an ounce of attention or time to. And unlike them, I came from the violence he hides. That’s how he made me. Violently.”

  His father was a man who had held his mother down, ignored her pleas, and took from her without care. Calisto didn’t know how to deal with that. He was a by-product of his mother’s pain, of her fear and shame, but she never loved him any less.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Your guilt again.”

  “Duty, Emma.”

  “That, too. What about Richard?” she asked.

  “I grew up being told he was my father. When the rest of this came out, my mother told me that Richard never questioned her on the paternity of the pregnancy. He was happy—she was ashamed of what had happened. She was scared, but she thought it would be okay with him.”

  Emma’s teeth clenched. “Affonso was jealous.”

  “He’s always jealous. Even when something doesn’t belong to him.”

  “It wasn’t a motorcycle accident that killed Richard, was it?”

  “It was,” Calisto said, shrugging. “But my mother insisted that Richard would have come home alive, had Affonso not gone out with him. I only know what he’s told me.”

  “I get it,” she said.

  Knowing better, but unable to help himself, Calisto kissed her forehead. She shuddered in his arms, but pressed her body even closer to his.

  They were playing with fire like this.

  It would always be like that.

  “I’ll stay, Emmy,” he said.

  “I knew you would. You can’t say no to me.”

  “Does it scare you?”

  “A little,” she said. “You might not always stay when I ask you to.”

  Calisto doubted it.

  Calisto wasn’t sure he had ever seen Affonso as drunk as he currently was. The man had always enjoyed his bourbon before bed, his wine at dinner, and a cold beer whenever the urge stuck, but he was blasted tonight.

  It was a strange feeling to put Affonso to bed while the Thanksgiving party was starting to wind down and people were taking their leave.

  Affonso tossed and turned in his drunken stupor, mumbling incoherently and going on. His eyes were shut, and he was sleeping, but he still went on and on.

  How did Emma put up with this nonsense?

  Calisto wondered if Affonso’s recent drinking was a result of the pressure he felt. The man needed an heir—Calisto constantly refused. It could almost be seen as a failure on Affonso’s part if he was forced to give up his Cosa Nostra to someone who didn’t share his last name.

  Pity was a worthless emotion. Calisto felt none for Affonso. The man had done this to himself.

  For now, Calisto planned on keeping an eye on Affonso. The man had plans to move Calisto up in the rankings of Cosa Nostra. A boss had to step down first to make another boss.

  Affonso wasn’t ready to step down.

  Still, Calisto didn’t trust him.

  T
urning off the lamp on the bedside table, Calisto eased out of the bedroom with a stealth that was a learned trait of any man in the mafia business. Being able to come and go without being seen or heard was a virtue.

  He sure as hell didn’t want Affonso waking up. Affonso was far more irritating when he was drunk.

  Calisto closed the door with barely a click to be heard and let out a sigh. He didn’t want to be the one left tending to Affonso, but it was shameful for the boss of the Donati famiglia to be seen acting like a drunken fool.

  It was unacceptable.

  “The house is almost empty.”

  Calisto’s shoulders jumped at Emma’s whisper. He hadn’t noticed her follow him when he came upstairs.

  “Oh?” he asked, turning to face her.

  She stood in the doorway of the room directly across from the master bedroom. Her hip rested against the doorjamb, and she must have kicked off her heels. She stood barefoot, and looking more tired than ever.

  “I said goodbye to the people who mattered. The rest were being shuffled out by Carter. He knows the passcode to lock up.”

  Calisto swallowed thickly, wondering what Emma was dancing around.

  “He’s out for the night,” Calisto told her. “Someone needs to take his alcohol away.”

  “As long as he stays away from me, I find him a little more bearable when he is drunk,” she confessed.

  Calisto shook his head. “That’s awful.”

  “It’s the truth.” Emma turned on her heel to enter the bedroom, but shot a glance over her shoulder. “Would you make sure the house is empty, Calisto?”

  Her tone dropped a level.

  Just enough to be inviting.

  Calisto should have refused her right then.

  “Of course, Emmy,” he said.

  “The bedroom you used when you stayed here—it’s on the third floor, right?”

  His heart raced at her innocent question, and his blood heated.

  Were they going to do this again?

  Here in this house?

  Like this?

  Calisto knew how wrong it was.

  How foul.

  It was a whole new level of low.

  But fucking hell, he hadn’t been able to forget how much he liked having Emma underneath him. His memories didn’t do her justice. He’d wanted to fuck her again from the very second he’d came inside her the last time.