“Why lie about that?” she asks, looking wounded.
“I didn’t want you to worry, to realize how much pressure was on your father to keep you safe from mine. But you deserve to know, and I’m sorry I kept it from you.”
She nods slowly. “It’s okay, Enzo. You haven’t exactly been in the world’s easiest position, here. Honestly, my role is a whole lot easier. I just have to sit around and let my knight in shining armor keep me safe. You’re the one making all the sacrifices and taking risks.”
I give her a half-smile. “That’s how it should be. I don’t want you to feel any more stress than we can avoid. I’d never forgive myself if something happened with the pregnancy.”
She’s about to say something but I silence her with a raised hand. “I need to finish. I need to tell you what I did. The reason they call me that....”
She closes her mouth and swallows audibly.
“Despite what you might think about the mafia, murder isn’t taken lightly. There are usually one or two guys in an entire family who are responsible for that kind of work, guys who have nothing to lose and no conscience. All the other muscle may end up doing a lot of gun-waving, making threats, and using intimidation, but the vast majority of the guys have never even shot their guns at someone.
“Bribery can cover up scuffles and brawls and all kinds of corruption, but it’s hard as hell to cover up a body, no matter how much money you have to throw around, especially when you’re the first place cops will start sniffing around.
“That’s why the guy I killed made an impression,” I say, watching her reaction. I haven’t admitted to killing anyone in front of her before, and I expect to see a kind of light go out, like she’s turning away from me once and for all, casting me off because she knows how deep my corruption went. Instead, I see only sympathetic interest and pain, so I continue telling the story.
“He was a Toretti. Even though there has always been a rivalry between our families, it had gone on long enough without any serious blow-ups that it wasn’t unusual for our guys to talk to their guys, give them shit, fuck around, that kind of thing. I was young back then, eighteen and hot-headed, but I had big ideas. I wanted to turn the family legit even back then. I saw all the money we took in and how we wasted it, just letting it sit in dusty briefcases hidden in stashes and in safes. I knew we could invest it and turn a profitable business into an explosive one. I figured if we did well enough, we could all leave the crime behind us and just enjoy it.
“That’s where Adrian Toretti came in. He had been talking shit about my ideas. Thought I was a pussy for wanting out of the hard life. He made it his mission to convince as many people as he could that I was soft. I ignored it for a while. Then my own guys started giving me shit, too. They were calling me soft.
“There is no favoritism when it comes to my father. Whether you are blood or a recruit, you have to earn your place in the family. A big part of that is by reputation. So trashing my reputation was trashing my spot in the family, chipping away at it bit by bit until I was slipping farther down the social ladder.
“I got drunk one night and ended up walking into this dive bar most of the Toretti’s used as a kind of hangout. I was just planning on kicking the shit out of Adrian, but it got out of hand. Once I had landed a few good punches on him, half his crew jumped in and started trying to fuck me up. I felt one of them going for my gun, so I flipped. I don’t even remember deciding to do it. All I know is my gun was in my hand and there were holes in Adrian that didn’t used to be there, blood splattering the wall behind him.” I pause, looking down at the table as I’m overcome by the memory, the smell of the smoke in my nose and the ringing in my ears.
“Oh, Enzo,” Neela says softly. I’m surprised to hear sympathy in her voice instead of condemnation.
“The story that made it back to my guys was that I’d marched straight into a Toretti hangout, gunned down one of their most promising young captains, and somehow walked out of there with just some cuts and scrapes. They got even more crazy for the story when no cops ever came asking about me. Turned out, the diner was loaded with drugs and dirty money, so the Toretti covered up the murder to protect themselves.
“So I got a reputation as a cold-blooded killer because I was a dumb kid with a temper.”
“It sounds like you regret it, though,” she says.
"I do. The only good that came of it was the way it made me more sure I wanted to find a way to get the family out of the old ways. If I had a son someday, I wanted to raise him better, so he wouldn't be a loose cannon."
“I think you will,” she says. “You made mistakes, and you’ve done terrible things, but you’ve learned from them. If we couldn’t make amends for our past, then what would be the point of living on once we’ve made a mistake?”
I grin. “I don’t deserve you.”
She quirks an eyebrow. “Who said I was yours?”
“You want proof?” I ask. “You have five minutes,” I say with a smirk. “Follow me into the manager’s office within five minutes, or I walk out of here.”
I stand up, leaving her gaping at me in amused astonishment as I walk toward the manager’s office, tracing the same steps I took four months ago but with an entirely different set of thoughts rumbling around my skull this time.
This time, no part of me hopes she’ll run. I want her to follow me into the office with every fiber of my being.
19
Neela
I watch with dumbfounded amazement as Enzo opens the door to the office, says a few words and makes a quick gesture out of the room with his thumb. A man in his forties shuffles out of the room looking scared.
I shake my head, wanting to roll my eyes but already feeling the familiar warmth pooling between my legs, the unmistakable draw he has over me. I want to go straight to him, to rip the door open and claw his clothes off, but instead I decide Mr. Cocky can sweat it out a little bit. I check the time on my phone and go to wait by the door to the manager’s office.
After only two minutes have passed, Enzo shoves the door open and steps out, glaring around until he spots me. “Get in here,” he growls, yanking me in by the arm as I giggle. He pulls the door shut behind us and presses me to the wall.
“I thought you wanted my submission,” I tease between kisses.
“Right now, I just want you.”
I kiss him, trying to memorize the taste of him and his scent—that woodsmoke smell with a masculine undertone. I drink in the moment until I can’t hold anymore, until there’s only now, until there’s no room for what might happen after today or what will happen with the baby.
He kneels down, kissing his way down my body in too much of a hurry to even take my dress off. He stops at my slightly swollen belly, kissing me there against the tight skin before he kisses lower and lower, lifting the hem of my dress like he’s about to put his mouth on me the same way he did four months ago.
I find myself too impatient, too hungry to have all of him to wait. Screw submission. If he just wants me, he’s going to get me.
I push against his shoulders, urging him to lay back against the hard ground in the office so I can climb on top of him, straddling him just below his erection. I reach to unbuckle his belt and then his zipper.
“This is highly unsubmissive,” he says with a grin.
“Deal with it.”
He runs his hands along my legs, pushing my dress up so that it bunches around my waist, giving him a clear view of my already-wet panties.
I shift around a little until I am able to slide his pants down enough to unleash his swollen cock. It flips out with a slap against his skin, heavy and fully erect, just begging to be inside me, hopefully not for the last time.
I’m about to try to maneuver getting my panties off when he sits up slightly, grips them by my hips, and rips them apart. I raise an eyebrow. “That’s one way to do it.”
“Give me that fucking pussy,” he growls.
The heat in his voice makes me chew
my lip and blush, feeling sexy like only he can make me feel. Feeling dirty in the best way.
I take him by the base of his cock and slide my hips forward until I’m moving my wetness across his length, not pushing him inside me yet, but teasing him just enough that I get to watch the building impatience in his face.
I can tell he’s hardly able to hold back from just lifting me up and—
He takes me by the hips, lifts me like I'm weightless, and adjusts himself so that his cock lines up perfectly with my opening. I gasp as he stops holding me up, causing me to slide down on him and fills me with nearly every inch of him in a single motion. The suddenness of it is oddly pleasant, and once the shock has faded, I find I've already adjusted to his size as much as I can. He fits inside me so fully that it feels like if he were even the slightest bit larger, I wouldn't be able to take him all in, like he stretches me just enough to give me the pleasantly intense friction, but not so much that it hurts.
I dig my palms into his strong chest, squeezing the hard muscle there and using him for leverage while I grind my hips into him. I’m already so slick that I can hear the sounds of our sex, wet and so wonderfully dirty.
I bend down over him so that my hair makes a wall around both our faces and I can see into his green eyes that take on an almost golden hue in the right light.
“I love you,” he says up to me, even as he’s gripping my ass and working himself into me.
“I love you too,” I breathe. I’ ve grappled with the question of whether I did or not before now. I’ve gone back and forth, wondering if I could love someone who might be bad for me, who might be dangerous. But right now there’s no doubt. No question. Nothing that feels so good and so perfect could be anything but love. He’s the father of my child. He’s the man who has done everything in his power to protect me, no matter the cost. He’s the man I love.
He takes a fistful of my hair, kissing me roughly, face held in a mask of intensity. He flips me over then, just carefully enough that I know he’s being cautious of my pregnant belly, but quickly enough that I know he’s also turned on out of his mind.
“I fucking love you, Neela,” he says again, his mouth crashing into mine.
I would respond, to reaffirm my feelings, but he doesn’t seem to want to give me a chance. By the time he pulls his mouth away from mine, his pace is so fast that all I can do is moan and gasp for breath, wrapping my legs around his hips and urging him deeper inside me with my heels, wanting nothing in that moment as bad as I want his cum inside me.
He fucks me like it’s our last time, and maybe it will be. He doesn’t hold back, doesn’t take his time, doesn’t toy with me.
We are a tangle of reckless passion.
My brain feels like a wash of white light, like little bursts of ecstasy are going off as fast as fireworks, casting everything in such a blindingly bright light that there’s nothing else, only the pleasure of friction and sensation.
My orgasm comes without warning, making my body tense and my hands tighten around his taut shoulders. I feel my core clench around him, and it must be all the push he needed, because he makes a deep sound in his throat, pushing himself as deep as he can as his cock pulses with each wave of his hot release.
We lay there together, tangled up and unworried about the fact that we’re in a public restaurant, separated from the polite company of nearly a hundred people having an expensive meal by nothing but a flimsy wooden door. We don’t talk. We don’t need to. He sits against the wall and I lay my head on him, letting him stroke my hair.
“So all that’s left is for you to kidnap me again,” I say after a while.
He still strokes my hair, silent for a moment before he responds. “If only. Now is the part where the story changes.”
20
Epilogue - Enzo
The trial is a circus. There haven’t been any big cases involving organized crime in decades, and when the news agencies found out the Luciani family dirt was being dug up for everyone to see, it meant that every court hearing was held in front of a full crowd and every participant was ambushed by photographers and reporters immediately after.
My attorney warned me that it would be extremely illegal for me to talk to any witnesses at this point in the trial, but when the witness who started all this offered to meet me at his place, I knew I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity, especially when he’s set to testify tomorrow.
He’s in a new house now, likely because he told witness protection I had found him at the apartment he was in before. His new house is in a suburb, of all places. I sit down at a scratched and half-broken table in his kitchen while he grabs me a beer from the fridge.
I knew him a lifetime ago, before I started distancing myself from my father’s side of the family. He was my father’s go-to for anything violent. Everyone just called him Ice, because he never batted an eyelash when it came to hurting people or even carrying out hits. He looks different than I remembered. There’s a permanent crease of worry in his forehead, like whatever it was that hardened him to the world years ago wore off somewhere along the line.
He sits down. “Glad you came,” he says. His voice is heavy and has a slight Italian accent. “I’m going to take your offer.”
I try not to show the explosion of relief that floods me. If he was just going to take my offer, why’d he want to talk to me first? I wait for him to tell me more.
He takes a swig of his beer and sets it down, clutching it with hands that are so big they’re more like paws. “You know I had a daughter a few years back. That was when I tried to get out. Michael Luciani doesn’t let men like me just walk away though. He held my past over my head and said he’d get me the lethal injection if I ever tried to leave the game. I don’t remember when it was exactly. Maybe a dance recital or something like that,” he says, a faint, reminiscent smile on his lips. “But I knew it was time. If he wasn’t going to let me go, I’d find a way. So I went to the feds. Told them I’d spill the Luciani family secrets wide open if they gave me a deal, as long as it was fair.”
I nod my head. I hadn’t put much thought into why someone like Ice would suddenly turn rat, but it makes sense, especially after the way learning about my own impending fatherhood changed my perspective on things.
“I asked you to come here because I wanted to tell you I’m going to keep you as clean as I can, Enzo. I heard your girl is pregnant. I know you’ve been trying to make a better life for yourself a long time now. I respect that, and I don’t want your kid to grow up with their dad behind bars, if I can help it. And hey, the money doesn’t hurt either,” he says, flashing a yellow-toothed smile.
I grin. “No, it doesn’t hurt.”
“Your dad though? He’s fucking buried.”
The entire trial process takes three months. Within a few days of Ice’s testimony, my father was taken into custody. Within a month, almost every strong-arm and tough guy he had was brought in, too. His guys tried their best to repay the favor by ratting out me and anyone loyal to me they could think of, but I’d helped Ice by making sure his testimony covered all our crimes, which were primarily more than ten years ago. The combination of how long it had been and the lack of any other witnesses all-but negated the effect of finger-pointing from my father and his men.
We placed the blame first, and everything that came after just looked like desperation.
In the end, the only thing they could pin on me was related to the questionable acquisition of some of my funding. I’d managed to keep most of it under the radar, so I was slapped with a year of probation, some community service, a mark on my file, and a fine that didn’t even qualify as a slap on the wrist.
I could barely believe it when my attorney finished translating the judge’s ruling to Neela and I. “That’s it?” I ask.
“You’re sure?” Neela asks, doubtful.. She’s over seven months pregnant now and adorably swollen. She doesn’t seem to appreciate any mention of how big her belly is though, so I keep my amusement at he
r pregnant waddle strictly to myself.
My attorney, a man in his fifties with a severe face, nods. “Your father’s men even did you the favor of putting a catch twenty-two on your alleged past crimes. Because you were cleared of them during this trial, you can’t be tried for them again. So long as you stay clean, Mr. Luciani, you’re a free man in the eyes of the law. Absolved of your past.”
Neela looks like she might faint from relief. “You’re absolutely sure?” she asks again.
My attorney laughs. “Yes, Miss Crowley. I’m sure.”
We meet my brothers and Luke back at the club, which has become our de-facto place to meet ever since the whole ordeal with Neela’s kidnapping began.
My crew is smaller now. I let a few of Chase and Niko’s crimes slip into Ice’s testimony, which landed both of them jail time. Even Cade, the guy who helped set up my blind date with Neela through Cassie ended up getting slapped with jail time. Neela was horrified when I explained the truth about that to her, but of course, being her, she forgave Cassie. Under the circumstances, I guess I can’t blame her. Cade was threatening to release nude pictures of Cassie to everyone she knew, so the girl felt understandably desperate.
Of the three in my original crew, I might’ve pegged Luke as the most likely to betray me if given the opportunity, but oddly enough, he has proven to be the only one who stayed loyal. Go figure.
Gino and Angelo are already playing a “celebratory” game of cards, but I know they’d be playing a mournful game of cards or a confused game of cards if things had turned out differently. The two of them always find a reason to play.
Neela’s sister, Jess, is here too. I expected her and Angelo to have hooked up by now after the way they were looking at each other those first few days, but something seems to have happened between them that neither wants to talk about, because ever since, Jess has mostly kept her distance from him.
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