“Yes! Oh god, fuck me,” I moan, closing my eyes as I lose myself to the shocks of pure bliss radiating through me. I revel in Bruno’s ridiculous strength, his ability to hold me up and fuck me so hard with ease, like I weigh nothing at all.
“I know you love it like this,” he growls through gritted teeth, leaning forward so that his lips brush against my ear. “You love it fast and hard, don’t you, baby?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” I murmur, feeling a third orgasm coming on. The head of his cock is slamming into my g-spot while the friction of our bodies pressed up together stimulates my clit, combining into an indescribable pleasure.
“I want to hear you come, mia passerotta. I want to hear you scream for me,” he commands softly, sending ticklish shivers down my spine. “Tell me how good it feels.”
He fucks me faster, the slick slap of his balls against my ass resounding in the quiet room as my pussy clenches tighter and tighter. “Oh my god, oh my god,” I moan. “Bruno, it feels so fucking good. You’re so deep! Oh fuck.”
“Si, dolcezza,” he whispers. “Tell me more.”
“Bruno, you’re gonna make me fucking come. Oh god, it’s too much— I-I can’t take it. It feels so good. I love it when you fuck me like this. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t—” my words break off right as another orgasm shatters across my body and I shudder, my legs shaking uncontrollably as Bruno keeps going, not slowing down even for a second. A moment later, he bellows my name and holds me close as his own orgasm explodes, shooting hot spunk deep inside my pussy.
He rests his forehead against mine, both of us breathing heavily as we struggle to recover from the overwhelming pleasure. Then, without a single word, Bruno carries me into the bathroom and turns on the shower, setting me down.
“Fuck,” I mumble, brushing the hair back out of my eyes.
“Indeed,” Bruno agrees, an exhilarated smile on his face.
“Merry Christmas,” I tell him, laughing breathlessly. We both step into the shower and he starts washing us off, starting with me, as usual.
“That was the best Christmas gift I could ever ask for. Who needs anything else?” he says, lathering soap over my shoulders as he leans down to kiss me.
After we shower off, we eat a quick dinner and get ready to climb into bed, both dressed in warm pajamas. Bruno looks ridiculously handsome in his plaid flannel pants, his shirtless chest powerful and glistening with post-shower dew. Just as I’m pulling the sheets up over myself and about to turn off the bedside lamp, Bruno comes over with his hands behind his back.
“I know we said we weren’t doing gifts, but I did get you something,” he says.
I sit up in bed, confused. “Oh, but I didn’t get you anything!” I lament.
He shakes his head. “Don’t worry. This gift is as much for me as it is for you.” He hands me a little golden box about the size of a standard book. I take off the lid to reveal two navy blue passport books. I frown at them in confusion, then look up at Bruno, who’s smiling warmly.
“What is this? I already have a passport,” I ask.
“It’s a chance at a brand new start,” he begins. “Those passports contain new identities for us to take on. I’ve been in contact with some of my people, and they’re arranging for us to be smuggled out of here. I’ve done some research and found a quiet, beautiful town just over the border in Canada where I think Bathing Beauty would do very well. We could finally be free and safe to live our lives, Serena. We could stop hiding here in the woods and be regular people again. We could be together without so much paranoia and fear. We can start over.”
“Oh my god,” I breathe, thumbing through the pages of the fake passport made for me. It looks completely authentic, identical to the one I already have except that it has a different name. I recognize the names as the Shakespearean character aliases I jokingly selected for the both of us weeks ago. “Are you serious about this?” I ask.
“Dead serious. All it takes is one phone call tomorrow morning and we’ll be on our way to freedom and safety, Serena,” he explains.
A million thoughts race through my head as my logical side argues with my romantic side. However, this time all the questions raised by fear are squashed back down with hope. My mother has a passport. She can visit us anytime. Rafaela and Nico can visit, too, and Raf always talks about wanting to see Niagara Falls anyway. The shop is doing well enough that I could probably afford to open a new location, maybe even keep the New York shop open, too. I can send money home to my mother, and the house should be paid off within the next few years anyway.
We could stop living under the shadow of fear. We could be free to walk down the streets hand-in-hand, knowing nobody could recognize us. Nobody would know our names.
My heart skips a beat. This dream… it could come true.
“What do you say?” Bruno asks, and I detect a slight hint of nervousness in his voice. I give him a smile, climbing out of bed to hug him tightly, pressing my face against his chest.
“I say yes. I say let’s do it. Tomorrow,” I tell him earnestly.
O n Christmas morning, I wake up to the smell of bacon frying in the kitchen. As my brain comes awake I remember our discussion the night before, the fake passports, the plan to escape to Canada. I can’t help but smile as I bound out of bed and out into the living room. I see fluffy pancakes, maple syrup, a bowl of fruit, and a plate of bacon on the table waiting for me, but no Bruno. I walk into the kitchen to find him standing by the pantry, but when I catch sight of the serious look on his face, my smile fades away. He’s holding his phone to his ear, and I realize that’s why he’s hiding out over here by the pantry. Weirdly enough, through a lot of boredom and trial and error, we determined that the only spot in the cabin where we can get any hint of a signal is right by the pantry door. At first, I think that he must be making the call to his people to get us smuggled into Canada like we talked about, but when he hangs up, the pain on his face only intensifies. He looks over at me with baleful eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, worried.
He sighs, running a hand back through his hair. “Change of plans. Something awful has happened. I have to go back to the city.”
BRUNO
I t’s a risk to get so close to the crime scene, but I can’t hold myself back. I have to see this with my own eyes. We pull up to the sidewalk around the corner and down the road, far enough that nobody would suspect us, and I pull out a pair of binoculars to look at the building down the road from us.
My heart sinks at what I see.
“Bruno... I’m so sorry,” Serena whispers, putting her hand on my arm.
Uncle Carlo’s workshop has police tape wrapped around the whole perimeter and over some of the shattered windows. The walls are riddled with bullet holes, there’s broken glass all over the ground, and I can see the door has been kicked down. I can even see shells on the sidewalk, and a few uniformed people are walking around the place. They’re too busy with their work to look our way. I can just barely make out some of the inside of the shop, and I see splintered wood: signs of a fight.
And there’s blood on some of that wood.
I lower my binoculars, and I can feel the color leaving my face. The message I got in the cabin was that Uncle Carlo’s place had been hit. I wasn't expecting something like this.
“And Nico didn’t say…?”
I shake my head. “He just told me the shop had been hit. I... I don’t remember anything else, it got hazy after that.”
“Should we go up there and see…?”
“We can’t,” I say through a tight jaw, clenching the wheel so hard my knuckles turn white. “Even after those investigators leave, there will be someone watching this place. They’ll be waiting for us. Disguises won’t matter.” We’re both wearing sunglasses and hats now, but my frame is easy to recognize this close to where I’m being looked for.
“Those bastards,” Serena says in a thin voice, and even as she does, I’m looking at the place and seeing glimpses
of the past. I see myself running away from that shop my first few weeks here, only to end up back there shortly after. I see my friends and me wrestling in the back. I see Uncle Carlo teaching me how to defend myself, how to be an American, how to work to support myself. I see him being a father to me when my father couldn’t be there.
Then the image of him getting shot alone in the darkness flashes into my head. I feel something hot on my face, and I realize a tear is running down my stony cheek. Serena must have noticed, because I feel her small arms wrapping around my bicep and resting her head on it.
We’re quiet for a long moment.
Then there’s a tap on the car window.
Instinctively, my hand goes to the gun at my side, and my eyes snap to the window, ready to fight whomever it is, but I only see Nico looking down at us, putting his hands up after seeing my gesture.
I let out a sigh, tension leaving my shoulders, and I roll the window down.
“Jesus, try to be here more than an hour before you get arrested again,” he says as I relax my hand, and I unlock the door, nodding for him to get in the back. He does, and I roll the windows back up once he’s safely inside.
“Hey, Nico,” Serena says, smiling apologetically back at him.
“Sorry to get the jump on you,” he says, running his hand through his hair. “Wish I could have said more over the phone, but I don’t know who’s being listened to anymore. We’re going through burner phones like water.”
“What happened here, Nico?” I say, my voice gravelly. “Where is Carlo?”
“He’s alive,” Nico says first, and I see Serena visibly relieved. I am too, but my anger makes my emotions hard to read. “But Bruno... he’s not in a good way. He’s comatose in the hospital. We’ve got our men keeping an eye on him, but the police aren’t making it easy. They keep trying to question our guys.”
“This was a setup,” I growl.
“No doubt,” Nico says grimly. “I heard about what happened here a few minutes after it went down. One of our guys happened to be at the gas station down the road and heard the shots. Weren’t any cops around for a mile.”
“Oh my god,” Serena says, her eyes widening. “They were in on this?”
“Price,” I say.
“The cops have been putting on more and more pressure ever since you got out, Bruno,” Nico explains. “They tried to be subtle at first when you got out: nobody wanted word spreading that someone broke out of Sterling. That’s why your face hasn’t been plastered on every TV and newspaper in the country. So instead, Price has been leading an investigation that’s been twisting our arms.”
“Have there been arrests because of me?” I ask, turning back to look at him for the first time.
“No,” he says, “turns out that you keeping out of Costa business while you were in prison really helped us out. They can’t make the connections they need to start making arrests. But they can harass us so much we can hardly move, and that’s what they’ve been doing since you got out. The Cleaners are getting bolder, and the cops are making it easy, since Price is in their pocket.”
I rub my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. This is too much. How could everything have boiled over so much so quickly?
“We shouldn’t stay here too long, speaking of,” Nico says, glancing out the back window. “Let’s get to the Room With a View.”
N ico did good with his share of the heist money. He and Rafaela have fully rebuilt and renovated the Room With a View to look better than it ever had been before. While Serena and Rafaela throw their arms around each other and hug warmly, Nico and I take a seat by the bar.
“Cleaners were beyond mad about the heist we pulled off,” Nico says in a low tone. “They needed that money bad. They can’t prove we’re involved, but they can throw a fit.”
I clench my fist and feel my teeth grinding. “This is my fault. I should have planned better.”
“None of that bullshit,” Nico says, pouring us a couple glasses of limoncello. “You and I both know what those fuckers are capable of. If it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else. You killed Lorenzo Abruzzi.”
It feels like a lifetime ago that I killed that wretch. Mafia royalty in his own right. “Wonder how he’s enjoying his little corner in hell.”
“Not as much as we’ll enjoy ours,” Nico says, and we clink our glasses together and drink.
Serena and Rafaela come over to join us after their quick reunion, and we all sit together at the bar. For a moment, it feels like old times.
“Bruno, one of the boys sent me a picture of your uncle from the hospital to let me know he’s still hanging in there,” Rafaela says gently. “If you want to see, for peace of mind…”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t want to see him like that. He wouldn’t want to be seen like that.”
“No problem,” she says with a quick wave of her hand. “Anyway, good to see you both. Life’s treating you two alright, I see,” she adds, looking our outfits up and down.
“Helps to blend in,” Serena says.
“Not anymore, though,” I say. “Someone found us up there. I took care of it, but we can’t keep running like this. If we go further, more people will just keep getting hurt here.”
Serena nods in agreement. “Now we just need to figure out where to start.”
“We could try to mobilize some of the Costas,” Nico says, leaning on the bar. “You’ve still got a lot of friends here, Bruno, not just me and Rafaela.”
If I’m honest, I want even less to do with the mafia now than ever. I want to leave that life behind me, and I plan on making that happen. But now isn’t a good time to try and burn that bridge, not while we’re recouping here with two good friends who still have close ties to the Costas.
Much like Italy, the mafia here is a complex web that isn’t always so easy to work around.
“This is personal,” I say simply, “and I don’t want to fan the flames of another war. Enough blood is getting shed without my help. Besides, we know now that things are going the way they are because of Price and his lackeys in the NYPD.”
The others nod in agreement. “The police are untouchable, though,” Serena points out, “it’s not like another gang where you can go in and just start fights until things go our way. How do you go up against a detective?”
A confident smile crosses my face. “I have a good idea of where to start.”
SERENA
“A re you sure about this?” I whisper to Bruno as we walk up to the nightclub. The bass is booming, making the very pavement outside vibrate to the beat. I’m wearing a tight black dress, dark hosiery, heels, and a black leather jacket, and I’m shivering in the cold winter air. The city is wide awake and pulsing with life, from the neon signs to the honking horns and shrill laughter of a bachelorette party group filing clumsily into a bar across the street. It’s strange to be back in New York after our stay in the cabin, to be surrounded by so much noise again. Back to the real world, where all our fears still live, waiting for us to walk back into focus.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. I’m definitely scared.
“I’m sure. This is the way we have to do this,” Bruno answers me in an undertone. The bouncer stands up as we approach, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He’s a big guy, but still not as tall as Bruno. However, he looks infinitely meaner, with his shaved head, scowling eyes, and face tattoos. He seems a little rough to be working the door at a nightclub like this, but I suppose the more exclusive the club, the more aggressive the door guy has to be.
He opens his mouth to inevitably tell us to fuck off, that the club is at full capacity, but then he stops short, his eyes falling on me. He gives me a quizzical look for a second, like he’s trying to figure out who I am. My heart starts racing, worrying that maybe he recognizes us somehow, that maybe I’m known as an accomplice to Bruno the fugitive. But then he smiles.
“S—Serena?” he asks haltingly. “That you?”
&
nbsp; “Uh, yeah,” I answer, confused. He nods slowly.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s me, Damian. We took that comp sci class together in college, remember?”
It dawns on me that I have actually shared a classroom with this guy before. Maybe I can use this to our advantage. I give him a big grin. “Oh yeah! Hi! How—how are you?”
“Great! I’m graduating in the spring, but for now I’m doing this job to get by. Crossing my fingers I get picked up as a CPA somewhere. Just tossin’ out a million resumes right now, ya know. Gotta follow the grind, man,” he explains cheerily. I remember him as a scrawny computer nerd type, but I guess in the past few years he’s either hit the gym five times a day or possibly gone through some miraculous second puberty.
“That’s awesome, Damian. Good luck!” I tell him, amused by the spontaneity of this interaction. I mean, who would’ve guessed it? Sometimes even New York can feel like a small town. Damian moves aside, gesturing for us to go inside.
“Thanks! Well, it was good to see you, Serena. Go on in and have a great night!” he says brightly as we walk into the club. I can feel Bruno’s eyes boring into my head and I look up at him, stifling a laugh. He’s shaking his head, eyebrows raised.
“That was lucky. Good thing you’ve got a memorable face,” he says, grinning.
“Yeah, talk about kismet,” I laugh. We make our way over to the bar and Bruno orders a couple shots. I shake my head, and he doesn’t push me, taking both of them in quick succession. The seriousness of what we’re about to do tonight is flooding back into my mind. Bruno obviously notices my tension, and takes me by the hand, leading me out onto the crowded dance floor. The last thing I want to do right now is dance, but he’s insistent.
Bound to the Mafia (Bound to the Bad Boy Book 2) Page 20