by Sienna Mynx
“It will be okay. I promise,” he reassured her.
“Okay.”
The rocking and swaying of the boat made her feel lightheaded. She went below. Lorenzo waited with two men pointing guns at him. He was smiling and sharing stories about mutual acquaintances. He seemed unbothered by the risks.
“I want to talk to you. Finish our talk.”
“Later,” Lorenzo dismissed her.
The men glanced up at her and gauged her response. If she insisted, it would reveal the rift widening between them. And as their Donna they would force Lorenzo to respect her wishes. She didn’t need any of the men to believe she was caught between Armando and Lorenzo. Armando joined them.
“Are we ready?” Armando asked.
“You have the satellite phone?” Lorenzo asked.
“Yeah, but before you call your friends tell me about these Armenians.” Armando asked.
“The less you know the better.”
“I won’t ask you again,” Armando said and the man next to Lorenzo raised the gun and put it to the side of Lorenzo’s head.
“You need me more than I need you right now. My only ticket out of here and to getting my wife back is my relationship with the Armenians. We do this my way,” Lorenzo said.
Catalina touched Armando’s hand. “You both need each other. We have to trust him Armando. Please.”
He glared at Lorenzo for a moment. She put her hand to his back and waited for him to withdraw his threat. Armando nodded to the man next to Lorenzo with the gun, and then turned and started to the back of the boat. Catalina glanced to Lorenzo who winked. She went after Armando and found him in a room with a bed and bathroom. It had a television too. It was modern enough for a bar and lounge chair to relax him during the long trip.
“What is it?” he asked. “Why do you keep stepping in between me and him? He’s fucking with me. Leading me by the nose.”
“Lorenzo? Okay, maybe. But what power does he really have? He can barely walk. And guess what?”
Armando stopped pacing.
She smiled for him. “I know the Armenians too.”
He blinked at her. “You do?”
She nodded. “I do. They are more loyal than any clans we know. And that loyalty is to my brother. Lorenzo is pretending at having power over you. He’s no more in control than any of us. Let him play his games because he has to be confident with the Armenians to convince them to turn on Giovanni.”
“Are they open to negotiating? If they are loyal to Giovanni why would they? The news has spread like wildfire about Giovanni’s recovery. This is a risk.”
“Maybe. But I’m thinking that Lorenzo has one card to play. It might work. He and Carlo solved a problem for the Armenians years ago. And then Carlo needed a favor in America, and the debt was repaid. I heard Dominic and Lorenzo talking about it. My guess is Lorenzo is going to backdoor Giovanni. Make a new alliance. That will give him enough manpower to go after Marietta. But you are the one he needs. He doesn’t have the connections you have.”
“My connections are shit right now. Thanks to your brother.”
“Not for long bambino. The heat will switch from you to the Mafiosi. You aren’t there, they will have to answer for the guns. Let Lorenzo play God. I’m your wife now. Giovanni is awake. When he finds out we are married that is a game changer. Think about it. His wife is half Mancini, his sister is now married to Don Mancini. Do you think he can give a shit about you over Lorenzo and what he’s done?” She cupped his face. “Let me tell you my plan.”
“I’m listening.”
“We give Giovanni, Lorenzo.”
“What?” Armando frowned.
“He and Marietta tried to kill Giovanni. That cannot be forgiven. Can it?” Catalina asked.
Armando stared at her.
“When he starts this double dealing with the Armenians you get a private meeting with them on your own. Bring me. They won’t let me in the room unless you insist. And then I will tell them the best plan. That is the plan were we all atone for what has been done to my brother. If you bring Lorenzo to Giovanni the power shifts, you and I have a real chance at happiness, and my brother gets the justice he deserves. I want my family back, and I’m willing any price to do it. I’m not protecting Lorenzo and Marietta. What they have done is unforgivable.”
“My sweet, Catalina.” He chuckled. “You are indeed my wife.”
He swept her up against him and half spun her in the small cabin. She welcomed the strong possessive nature he had. His mouth was on her neck. Catalina shivered when the unshaven hairs along his jaw grazed her skin. He yanked down her shorts and the button snapped to the front. Armando dragged the shorts and her panties down her legs until the dropped to her feet and she stepped out of them. He kissed her as he directed her hand to his sex.
“You feel that?” he breathed.
“Yes.”
“That’s for you,” he said.
“Mmm, let me see,” she said and tried to bring down his zipper.
He stopped her. She glanced up into his eyes.
“We never had a real honeymoon,” he said.
“Yes we did,” she chuckled.
He laughed. “I want another one now.”
“I want one too. But first I need you to get us to safety.”
He nodded.
“Take the rest of your clothes off and get in bed. Wait for me.”
“Okay,” she said.
He kissed her one final time and then left. She looked to the bed and then to the door. She sat down on the bed bottomless. She stared at her ring. Its sparkles were so beautiful. Catalina smiled. She was happy.
Mirabella returned.
She was anxious to meet with Giovanni again, but to her surprise, so were his men. She opened the door and interrupted a closed door meeting between Giovanni, Umberto, Leo, Nico and Renaldo. Dominic and Carlo weren’t present.
The men all looked to her. Giovanni didn’t. He told them to the leave.
“Good night, Donna,” Umberto said, as did Leo and Renaldo. She tried to appear unfazed, but the three of them knew her comings and goings the best. And if she knew her husband, he now had all the facts she wanted to spoon feed to him. Even a few she hoped she wouldn’t have to share.
“The doctors said you have to take it easy, Gio. So many visitors can exhaust you.”
“I thought you were running away from me?” His gaze slipped over to her.
“I wasn’t running. I was upset. Plus, I had to get to the hospital and see to Rocco.”
“How is Rocco?”
“Better, stronger, I think, but he has a long road ahead of him.”
“I feel like I’m still in a dream. Like none of this is real.”
“It is real. Took me a while to accept it,” she said.
Giovanni extended his hand. She took his hand into hers and he pulled her to him. She climbed over in bed and lay next to him. She was careful to not put too much pressure on him. He didn’t mind her touch.
“I hate that we argued. I mean, I can understand why. I told you about Rosetta and Catalina in one conversation, and then Vito, now Rocco. Plus, I got Marietta in villa Rosso. I...” Mirabella stopped. Giovanni did nothing, said nothing. He rubbed her arm and listened. She closed her eyes and tried not to sound so scattered brain. “Do you have questions for me?”
“I’ve spoken to the men, and to you, I have all the answers I need.”
“Are you still angry with me?”
Giovanni touched her chin. He tilted her face so she could look up into his eyes. “You are so beautiful. Mia Bella. Angry? No. I am more in love with you than I have ever been. You aren’t me. You were never to be me. I don’t care about how many mistakes you make, what I care about is losing you... to this. I should have prepared you. I didn’t. And you survived. That’s difficult for me to accept. Not your survival, Bella, but my blindness to your strength, to the truth that you can go on without me.”
“I can’t. I can’t do any of this w
ithout you. I only tried...”
“Shhh...” he said, and then his lips brushed hers. “Stop trying. I’m here now.”
The words he spoke were soaked in appreciation. Despite all she knew he had yet to learn about his family, and the anxiety it caused her, it was hard to ignore the tinge of warmth the comfort he offered gave her.
“I just want to hold my wife. Be with my wife. Is that okay?”
She slipped her arm around his waist and pressed her head to his chest. He rubbed down her back. She drifted to sleep.
Chapter Forty
Resolution
The Sea
Catalina felt him return in the darkness. She rolled over and was captured by his embrace. The warm crisp male scent, splashed with a bit of the ocean unfurled in her nostrils.
“Sleep,” he said in a deep whisper that promised protection.
“I can’t. I don’t want...”
Armando’s tongue pushed past her meek protest. Soon she was on her back and kissing him. Her thighs were parted by the hard nudge of his. And his hands went above her head. They both pressed flat to the wall. She looked up into his eyes. He then lowered his face between his arms to further the teasingly sweet kiss. There were no demands with the touch of his lips. Just an erotic thrill and a deep swirl of his tongue.
Catalina ran her hands down the sides of his torso and then around and down to his clenched buttocks. She squeezed as tight as she could to drive him into her. It did not work. Armando retained control, always. For him to enter her he must first rise to the occasion. So his hips lifted a fraction and he went in deep. Catalina was ready for what was to follow. With him looking down at her, and her barely able to keep her eyes open to look up at him he thrust into her. Armando swirled his hips, screwed into her slow with shallow strikes and took even deeper plunges. His hair now in his face and the strong muscled definition of his chest brushing over her skin. He kept drilling into her harder and faster.
Her brain emptied of all coherent thought.
Lazy heat warmed the skin between her thighs, and spread all the way into her core. Her breath hitched in her chest, and her legs and buttocks trembled. She felt the claustrophobia close in on her from her confined position. The boat’s glide over the ocean waves seemed to match the timing of his cock diving in and out of her. She clawed at his back for release, with her nails scraping and breaking skin. Armando’s love making went from tender to urgent.
There was gravity to him. The way he kept crashing upon her. She could barely move to keep up with his timing. Making love to someone so consuming was like sticking a hairpin in an electric socket, surviving the charge, and then coming back for more.
“I love you, Catalina,” he said and kissed her brow.
“I love you too, Armando,” she confessed.
He froze. She panted beneath him with sweat covering her face like a silky sheen, and his cock buried inside of her. Why had she said it? Did she mean it? She thought she did. It was possible. Wasn’t it?
“Do you?” he asked.
She nodded her head.
“Then say it again,” he said.
“I love you, Armando.”
She’d never seen him so happy, so completely happy. His smile was like that of a kid at Christmas. He dropped on her and tickled her side. She laughed and they rolled around in the bed with his dick slipping out of her. She landed on his chest. There she soaked in the feeling of pure bliss.
Armando woke.
The boat had stopped.
He lifted his arm and saw the time. It was too soon to be docked. They had another four hours before they reached Spain.
“What is it?” Catalina moaned and reached for him.
“Nothing. Go to sleep, cara,” he said and eased out of bed. He went to the bathroom and took a needed piss. He flushed and then splashed water on his face. He listened and heard nothing aboard.
“Are you there?” she squinted in the dark, holding the sheet to her breast. Armando came out of the bathroom with a rag to wipe down his face.
“Where else would I be?”
She pushed her hair over to the side of her face. She grinned at him. He turned on the bathroom light so he could see more of her face. “Have you been to Spain?”
“Many times,” she said.
“What’s your favorite city?”
“San Sebastian, my Patri would take me when I was a kid. I love the beaches.”
“Then that is our first stop. Where we will go for our honeymoon.” He tossed the rag to the sink and came out of the bathroom. “And I’m going to pour honey all over that sweet body of yours, and lick it clean with my tongue.” He came out of the bathroom and grabbed her foot through the blanket. He gently pulled. She went flat to her back. She blinked up at him and he smiled down at her. He massaged her foot. “I’m going to give you the world, mia Donna.”
“The world is too small. Give me the universe!”
Armando chuckled. Damn he loved the way she thinks.
“So you agree. We fix this and give Giovanni Lorenzo? We start our lives over the right way with my brother, our families. United.”
He sighed. “I don’t think it will be that easy. I could deliver the Pope to Giovanni for a blessing and he still won’t agree to my having you.”
“It’s a start.”
“It’s a start,” he said and kissed her. “Let me go up and see what the idiots are doing. We shouldn’t be stopped.”
“Hurry,” she lowered the blanket. “All that talk of honey got me wet.”
“I won’t be long.”
He dressed while watching her. She talked about Spain and her memories. He loved listening to her voice. He didn’t ask or mention her profession of love, but he did want to. If she said it again, without him inside of her, he might have the courage to believe. Right now he’d hold tight to the memory.
“Be right back,” he winked and then left.
At some point in the night, normalcy returned between him and his wife. Giovanni vaguely remembered his request that she stay with him, or if he asked at all. She removed her clothes and settled on nothing more than her panties before she slipped under the covers to be comforted by him. Or was it the other way around? That was often the case in their marriage. Her seeking his comfort, him eager to offer it. Last night, the feel of her soft warm skin next to his wasn’t enough. He had to find a way to escape his rage.
Morning had come. He laid still with the slow moving rays of a new day slipping in through the windows. He was thinking.
Though the fog had completely cleared from his mind, his body was not in step. He was weak, his limbs only moved with the encouragement of helping hands. His breathing was hard at times. The soreness to his back spread painful heat inward, and then outward to cover his torso. He could no longer tell where he was shot. Just that he was. And thanks to the assassin’s bullet, less of a man because of it.
Nico, Umberto, Renaldo, and then Leo had all met with him while Mirabella and Dominic were out running his business. They gave him the unfiltered truth of his wife’s rise to power. The clandestine meetings with the Camorristi. The time she spent with Piero, and returned with her clothes in disarray. Dominic’s descent into drunkenness, and his stolen moments of slipping away with his therapist to fuck her against any wall he could find. Though he may have been in a coma, his men remained his eyes and ears.
Mirabella stirred awake. She groaned and stretched against him. He rubbed her ass, and then gave it a smack. Her eyes stretched open. She lifted her head and peeked up at him. The grin she wore put a small smile to his lips as well.
“Ow,” she gave a pretty pout.
“I want you,” he said and started to run his hands all over her curves. In the past, sex with his wife always calmed him enough to be rational. His dick worked. He discovered that the first moment her nipple brushed his arm. He had to lie with her with an erection all night.
“We can’t, Gio,” she groaned when he eased his hand into her panties. He stare
d at her parted lips. Her sweet tongue bridged the rim of her teeth. She arched her back, and her blackberry nipples peaked. He eased a finger into her and she gasped for him. She grabbed his wrist and stopped him.
“We can’t, not yet.”
He groaned in his throat and pulled his hand free. Anger returned. He closed his eyes and kept his mouth shut to keep her from knowing the depths of it.
“I guess that means you’re feeling better?” she asked. “I want to stay like this forever,” she said, and kissed his chest. She sat up and looked around the room. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“There are things I need to do,” she turned to the side of the bed. Giovanni traced a finger down the line of her her spine.
“Like what, Bella?”
She eased out from the bed and bent at the waist to collect her clothes. The thin silk panties she wore slipped between the cheeks of her ass. Its perfect symmetry held up by her shapely thighs, made the heat spreading in his chest go down to his groin once more. He watched as she dashed for the bathroom with her buttocks jiggling. At first it was a distraction. Even his dick was trying to revive. But hearing her hurry about dressing, drew him back to reality. His brows lowered over his angry gaze, and he worked again to keep his temper in check.
“Bella?”
“Yes?” she answered in that sweet voice of hers.
“I want to talk to Marietta’s doctors. The ones you are using to commit her to that mental institution up north.”
“What? Who told you about that?” she walked out of the bathroom, zipping up her jeans. Giovanni kept his gaze trained on her. He waited for all the competing emotions to settle within her before he continued. “I know everything about your plans for your sister. If stress puts the baby in danger, it’s the wrong choice.”
“I’m handling it. The baby will be fine if she calms down and does what the doctors say.”