by Jax Hart
28
Christine
My hands tremble as I turn on the jets. Just when I had become accepting of my life in the cellar—he came. I still can’t wrap my head around it. I thought for sure he was dead. That the mob put a hit on him for falling for me. I was so close to putting him and Salvatore away. But Salvatore was never my prize. Johnny was. I lied to my bosses, hid my truth. My revenge against the Lamatti’s was personal and had nothing to do with my sworn oath of my badge. But the way his hands felt on my skin. The way he commanded me with his kiss… or the way his brow would furrow while trying to solve Sudoku on Sunday mornings while we both sipped dark roast… those are the things I wasn’t counting on. The damn, stupid fool really fell for me. And for a moment I was free falling too. I let myself forget for the moments I soared while pinned under him until my brother reminded me with autopsy pictures what was at stake if I failed. My mother was Irish and my father the one with Italian blood and connections to Sicily.
Jack.
My head hangs. He believes they won. That I’m a ghost. I suppose in a way I am. If I escape Johnny, I doubt I’ll make it far unless I can get to a Fed safehouse. I try not to crumble under the hot spray as I remember my keeper. He kept me prisoner, but he was kind.
“Be strong. Get out of this. You are a survivor.” I wash my hair that’s now down my back wondering just what kind of sweet torture Johnny has in mind. I need to throw him off his game. I could seduce the fuck out of him and hope to escape when he’s asleep somehow. Or kill him. I could break a glass, knock him out. I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t kill him. I just can’t. Turning off the taps, I grab a towel and venture into the bedroom. With my towel firmly tucked around me I try the door. Just as I had suspected he locked it from the outside, on my bed are piles of new clothes. Soft, clean, and warm. My fingers run over the softest pair of jeans, but I just can’t. I won’t be his dressed up and kept whore. Held prisoner for my crimes against his heart when he’s the legit criminal here. Not me. I pick up my old clothes, giving them a good shake before squaring my shoulders and rapping on my side of the door. “You can let me out now.” I press my palm flat against the door, bowing my head when I hear the deep rumble of his voice coming from the other side. “You gonna be a good girl? My good girl?” That’s what he used to call me in more playful moments.
My voice cracks when I answer. “I can’t promise you that. I can’t promise you anything,” I answer truthfully. The lock unclicks and when I open my eyes, his are right in front of me.
“Why? Why baby? We were so good together. Why couldn’t you just come clean to me and change your mind?” He bites his lip as if his words pain him. My eyes shutter remembering the way he tasted. He’s also freshly showered, and the delicious smell of his skin has me biting back a moan of my own. This man could undo me, and I always knew it.
“You killed my parents.” My words erase the web of desire building between us. His face twists into crisscrosses of lines. Worry fills his eyes. I want to melt. Melt straight into a man who almost made me forget my purpose when I soared in his arms. He’s so big. Warm and strong. I often pretended to be someone else when I was with him. I could sleep nestled in his embrace for hours, sated and content. The damn oaf cherished me and in return I broke him. “I was twelve and you were sixteen. I know it was you.”
“Is that what this is about then?”
I lift my chin.
“Come,” he gently takes my hand. “We’ll eat. Talk… sort this out…”
“Sort this out? You killed my family in cold blood. There’s nothing to sort out except for you to turn yourself in and let me go back to my life.”
“There’s no going back. There’s still a price on your head.” He tugs me forward, but I feel heavy; my heart is full of concrete.
“There’s no way out of this, is there?”
His head turns over his shoulder, “Just take my hand for now. Right now, in this moment… we are okay.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
He doesn’t respond as I despondently follow him down the stairs through stunning rooms decorated in soft grays with touches of pastels and into a large homey kitchen. The kind you immediately feel at home in. He pours me a steaming mug of coffee and puts a homemade roasted turkey sandwich in front of me. I take a whiff. “Fresh baked bread?”
He shrugs. “Uber eats. The woman who runs this place owns a café in town as well.”
“You didn’t kill her?”
He shrugs, “Nah. I just hogtied her and put her in the basement after she handed over the food.”
I push my plate away. “I can’t eat this.”
“Babe. I’m kidding.”
His easy banter and the way he rakes his hand through his hair makes me nostalgic. We used to share so many comfortable small moments like this. “Well in that case…,” I move the plate back in front of me.
“I know I’m no one’s first choice,” he sighs. “Women always came to me to be part of something… a VIP club scene. Or for the thrill of having me as their lover. My power was a turn on. But you—dammit I just wanted you to want me for me. You really fucked me up and now I just don’t know what to do with you.”
He looks so broken and vulnerable it’s hard to hate him. “I can’t get past murder.”
“Is Christine even your real name? I can’t confess to something without knowing all the facts.”
“It is. But my last name is Vitelli.”
He presses a hand to his eyes. “Geno Vitelli’s daughter?”
I nod.
“He wasn’t a good man.”
I get up so fast my stool crashed to the floor. “Is that all you have to say? Are you fucking kidding me? You tore my life apart. Murdered my parents in cold blood all because ‘he wasn’t a good man?’ Fuck off Johnny! You are much worse than he ever was!”
“You don’t know what you are saying—you were a kid.”
“I wasn’t much younger than you were. How old were you when you made your first kill?”
He sighs, then leans his elbows down on the other side of the counter. His meaty biceps pop as he naturally flexes. “Do you want to hear the truth about your parents?”
“Your truth is hardly the real truth…”
“Come on Christine, you are the one woman I gave pieces of myself to that I swore I’d never… Your father was a made man. He was making extra cash on the side selling something my family did not want a piece of. He sold babies. Your mother worked at the clinic. Your father gave the doc a cut. The babies lived… sold to someone else…”
“Stop!” I cover my ears with my hands. “They were good parents... they loved me…”
“Babies weren’t the only thing he traded. He scoured shelters, the slums, looking for the broken souls he could lure with the promise of money and a full belly…”
“You’re sick… Telling me lies! Trying to justify the blood on your hands.”
“I was there, but I didn’t pull the trigger.”
My chest gets tight. My throat constricts. I can’t breathe through the pain choking me. I slept with this man. Let him take me a million times in as many ways and he was present when both my parents were killed in cold blood. I hate myself.
“Don’t do this. Stop picturing it; taking it apart…” he demands, huskily, rounding the counter.
I hold up both hands. “Stay away. Don’t touch me.”
“I can’t stop myself. I’m dying to touch you. Baby,” he breathes, grabbing me tight. I’m in his bear-like embrace. He’s so big. So strong and smells so damn sexy. My nipples ache as I’m pressed against his chest. My palms curl into fists, refusing to hug him back. “Sometimes people aren’t who you think they are…,” he drops off realizing what he’s said. He meant my parents but when spoken aloud applied to me.
I’m tired. Hungry. Confused. Weak. Memories I’ve locked away slowly escape. Memories I purposefully pushed aside. The babies mom brought home from work telling me she was making extra money taking
care of the newborns until their mama’s felt better. I was a little girl. I took my mother at her word no matter thinking it a bit strange. What he said makes total fucked up sense. Tears fall like pouring rain. I choke on the flood.
“Baby, I’m so sorry.” His meaty hands stroke the back of my head and I snuggle into his warmth by laying my head against his chest as the sound of his steady, strong heart—the one I broke, comforts me.
“This is so fucked up. We are so fucked up,” I rasp, clinging tighter to him.
“Tell me about it,” he murmurs as he pulls back to cup my chin. My eyes shutter as his lips kiss away my tears. It’s not long before his mouth is on mine and all the hate between us dissipates into pure passion. It’s an explosion of longing after a long separation. I forget he was my mark, my enemy and just remember the lover he was to me. The lover he still could be if I let down the walls erected around my heart.
“Christine, baby. I thought you had gone forever,” he murmurs against my throat as he hoists me up using his large palms on my ass. I wrap my legs around his waist. He turns depositing me on the counter. One large palm moves under my shirt, cupping a breast. He feels so good. Johnny always was the best lover I’d ever had. He’s earthy, bold and gives zero fucks about anything but pleasure. “I need to taste you baby. It’s been so long.” His lips and tongue move across my skin. He moves back, spreading my knees apart. My black yoga pants are peeled down my legs. Seconds later Johnny’s face is buried between my thighs, hungrily feasting on my core like it’s a five-course meal. He’s loud. Brash and when his tongue and lips find my clit, I’m a goner. My hips lift on their own needing to fuck his face. I come, shattering into pieces, still hating myself for how easily I come for this man.
I push off the counter. His face is flushed. He breathes hard with clenched fists as he stares after me. “Go run, little girl. You know this shit between us is inevitable, not over. Do you hate yourself for wanting me? Get over it. I’m not the monster. Your father was. And you almost got us both killed for some fucked-up misguided revenge. When you’re done with your self-pity. We’ll talk. Or fuck. Hell, we’ll do both.”
“I hate you.” I yell, raising clenched fists of my own.
He smirks, with lips still slick with me. “Hate away, baby. You’re stuck with me. Forever. You know that.”
I respond buy running away and slamming my door. He can lock me in. I need sleep and a plan on how I’m going to survive my new captor. I fall asleep by sobbing for all I’ve lost.
29
Johnny
I crack my knuckles then snap my neck to the right feeling the comforting pop. I’m too worked up to sleep and although I wanna make my princess pay, I won’t go up there. Not the way I currently feel. I’d only tear us both apart. I’m a conflicted man. All of me burns for her but part of me burns to make her pay for her lies and the other just wants to brand the fuck out of her and get back to where we were before my world ended.
My phone vibrates in my hand. “How’s the reunion going?”
“Fuck off,” I sneer. Then I press a hand to my forehead. “It’s fucking torture. Wanting the one who betrayed you. How did you do it? How did you forgive Romina?”
“It wasn’t a choice. It was a foregone conclusion.”
“She’s fucking me up.” My right hand goes through my hair as I pace around the great room.
Roque sighs heavily. “Maybe it was a mistake to let her live.”
“What do I do with her?”
“What I did. Marry her. A ring around her finger is as good as a gag order. She can’t snitch on you and you’ll own her forever.”
I snort. “She’ll never vow to love and cherish my ass.”
“You better figure something out. You can’t stay at the Inn for long. Work it out or send her back into the basement with Rog. Either way, just get some peace.”
“Love is the opposite of peace.”
“Depends on where you are on that journey.”
“She’s a lot like your woman.”
“Ah, so my Romina is growing on you then, eh?”
I twist my mouth. “I still think she’s too much. But I love her for your sake.”
“I wanted to kill Christine. But I didn’t for your sake. Go easy. Use your head this time. The one upstairs.”
I shrug. “I’m trying. Haven’t punished her yet.”
“Go workout. Get rid of some tension that way. You have a week to get her right or I’m pulling the plug on this whole reunion of yours.”
His words ring in my head as I enter the gym. It’s small but state of the art. I get on a row machine and row my fucking boat. Sweat almost blinds me after twenty minutes. I grab a towel and my cell opening the app to the security camera I hid in her bedroom.
She’s huddled under the comforter, hiccupping in her sleep. I zoom in on her face, rubbing my thumb across the screen. “Sleep tight my little damsel in distress. Tomorrow you’re mine and I want you to beg forgiveness for what you broke. My heart. I’ll make you fall in love with me again. Despite what you said, I know we were there, babe.”
I slam my fist into the punching bag over and over. I lose track of time. All I want is to be her number one guy.
She’s playing possum. I know she’s awake. She’s testing me. Trying to figure out if I have cameras in her room. I do babe. But I’m not letting on. Instead of crawling into bed and pressing my lips to all that sleep-warmed skin, I sigh willing my cock to go down and decide to make breakfast.
The skillet sizzles as I crack an egg into the pan. I lay a pound of bacon down in a frying pan then brew a pot of coffee. My baby girl can eat, and I know she’s starving. I unlocked her room before I came down and sure as shit, it’s been less than five minutes and I hear the tell of the fifth stair creaking. My girl can’t resist the frying bacon. I know her. Despite all her lies. I know her.
I resist the urge to turn around, instead I scramble the eggs then fake a yawn, so I have an excuse to flex my biceps. I’m wearing my loose gray pajama pants and I sleep bare chested. It used to drive her wild. I remember many mornings when she’d sneak up behind me while I was at the stove, just to snake her tiny hands down the waistband and cup me.
I almost cry, I miss those days so much. “Fucking pussy,” I mutter under my breath, pressing a hand to my eye,
“Johnny? Are you?”
“What?” I spin around. “Just some grease splattered in my eye.”
“Uh-huh.”
Damn she’s beautiful. Her hair is tousled. Her cheeks still pink from sleep. Her eyes are not hard but soft in the early morning light. I’m frozen, staring at her still not quite believing she’s real. That she’s here. That we have another chance at this.
“The eggs are burning.” She smirks, moving to take the spatula from me.
“Don’t. Get away. Get away from me right now or I swear on everything I am I will take you right here, right now.” My nostrils flare, seeing her peaked nipples through her tank. I close my eyes. My body shakes with need, my cock tents in my sleep pants.
“Fuck!” I drop the spatula, turn off the stove, stalking past her.
“I’m lost here, too!” She cries out from behind me. I look over my shoulder. And damn, was that a mistake. Her eyes are wet with unshed tears.
My fists clench..“Can you just forgive me, and I’ll forgive you?”
The cords in my neck are strained. She swallows hard, looking away. “He was kind to me. You killed two men in cold blood yesterday. Sure, maybe Salvatore deserved it but the other was good to me. He used to bring me a homecooked breakfast almost daily. We’d read the paper together and play Sudoku. I-I’m sorry but I’m grieving for him. He was kind.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Christine?!”
“It was a hoax! Roger is married! He kept you locked down in that cellar for Salvatore for free. Never asked any questions. And you’re pining for that old man? The fuck? I’m right here, baby,” I point my index finger into my own chest. “I’m the ma
n who would go to hell to retrieve you and bring you back. I’m the man who would kill for you. Who cherished you… but you know what? I’m sick of this shit. I’m sick of being second. From now on, I’m the number one guy? You got that? Not number two.You put my needs, my wants first and right now I want you to get that ass over here and take care of my cock!”
I didn’t mean to scream at her but I’m barely holding my shit together. I never thought she’d catch feelings for Rog. I’m gonna go over to Sassy’s and break his damn face later. Or maybe I’ll just fill his wife in on what he hid under her nose for a year. I’m sure Devon will bust his balls better than I could.
“Whatever. I need a good fuck. It’s been a few years.”
My chin lifts. There she is. My girl. My woman full of fire who was never afraid of me but met me head on every damn time.
“Come to me,” I gesture, beckoning with one hand.
“No. You come to me,” she challenges, hoisting herself up on the counter and spreading her legs.