by Bethany-Kris
Worth it.
He found himself saying that a lot about this woman. And he didn’t even know anything about her. He had to wonder if that was part of the draw—that she didn’t know fuck all about him, and he knew less than zero about her life, too. It made this thing, whatever they were doing together, easier than if both their baggage needed handling, too.
Instead, they could just have fun.
Enjoy all of this.
There was no need to get deep.
Right?
“You can have me wherever,” he heard her say as she headed for the left staircase, “but only if you can catch me.”
Well …
Bene did like a challenge.
He managed to finally catch Vanna on the third floor of the mansion, crowding her against the decorative table while he kissed the air right out of her lungs. She didn’t seem to care a bit that she had lost their little game, not when her hands slipped into his pants, and under the line of his boxer-briefs to find his hardening cock.
All it took was tight stokes …
Her fingertips gliding over the head of his dick …
And then her getting to her knees.
She took his pants down with her, the head of his cock finding its way between those pink lips of hers to find the heat of her mouth, and fuck. He couldn’t breathe, but he could see. It was a hell of a sight, too, with her on her knees, surrounded by so much fucking wealth, and sucking his dick like it was the only thing in the world she wanted to do. His fingers tangled into her hair, holding tight while moans of her name fell from his lax mouth.
Yeah.
Perfect.
“Have you picked a room to sleep in, yet?”
Vanna didn’t turn around from the painting of his mother and father that she was currently admiring just outside the hallway on the second floor. “The one at the end here, I think.”
“Good choice. The principessa room.”
She did turn to peek over her shoulder at him, then. “The princess room?”
“You speak Italian?”
He didn’t miss the way her throat jumped at that question, but her gaze remained calm and unbothered as she shrugged. “It’s not hard to guess what principessa means, is it?”
“Your last name is also Falco—that’s Italian.”
He wasn’t stupid.
And he could push the line until she snapped.
“I know a little.”
“Catholic, too?”
Vanna smirked a bit. “Of course.”
Goddamn.
Who was this woman?
She was perfect in every sense of the word.
She turned her attention back to the painting of his parents, tilting her head to the side a bit as she took in the plaque underneath it that stated the artist, and people featured. All the paintings in the mansion had that little plaque.
“Your parents have a lot of art.”
“One whole hall is dedicated just to pieces of our family.”
“And a lot is just … expensive art, Bene.”
He nodded, coming to stand beside her. She wasn’t wrong. Paintings decorated the walls of the mansion. Statues and different pieces his mother and father picked up along their travels over the years filled every nook and cranny. That was before he got into everything else. From the imported rugs to the custom tapestries. Or his mother’s library—filled with rare, first edition books. His father’s three garages, brimming with custom vehicles.
Guzzis had expensive tastes.
It came with the lifestyle.
Never was there a better show of their wealth, however, than inside their homes. None of his brothers were quite as showy as his parents, but they were still pretty … excessive. Yeah, that was as good of a word as any.
“A good way to hide vast wealth is in material things, or that’s what my father always says. Sure, we’ve got a lot of money in the bank, and spread across investment portfolios, but you’ll find the real money in my parents’ properties, and what’s inside those properties.”
“Like the art,” she replied.
“Exactly.”
“Why, though?”
Bene cleared his throat, shifting from foot to foot. “That’s … not an easy answer.”
Because it had to do with his legacy.
Their family name.
The business.
Mafia.
A lot of his father’s illegal business brought in more money than any person would know what to do with, and so to hide what he couldn’t launder to make clean, Gian often spent it. He donated money, too, but Cara was the one who chose which charities their money would go to at the end of the year. Mostly, money just got spent. New homes. Lavish vacations. Pieces of art. Renovating. Things.
It was easy to hide it.
Easy to liquidate.
“We have a lot of money,” he settled on saying.
Lamely, too.
It didn’t matter that he liked this woman, or that for whatever reason, being with her seemed easy even though they barely knew each other at all. None of that factored into this for him.
He couldn’t tell her the truth.
Simple as that.
Vanna, of course, surprised him. “Is what they say about the Guzzis true?”
His gaze darted sideways to her, but she didn’t look away from the painting. “And what do they say about us, huh?”
“Sorry—did I touch a nerve there?”
Bene arched a brow when she finally met his gaze. That was one of the things he found he liked about her, though. She wasn’t afraid to outright say the things that were on her mind. Like when she stated about his wealth, or that day in the bar.
Vanna was frank.
Straightforward.
He respected it.
Even if it made conversations tough.
“What do they say?” he asked again. “And you never thought to mention to me that you recognized my last name when I introduced myself?”
She shrugged. “What difference would it make? I clearly wasn’t interested in your last name, was I?”
Well …
He gave her points for that.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
Vanna’s expression didn’t change. “I haven’t figured out how to phrase it.”
“Try anything.”
“Your whole family is all over the society rags.”
“As much as we try to avoid it, sure.”
She smiled a bit, murmuring, “They only hint at things.”
“Because my father has a team of lawyers that will sue them into their graves if they try to state something about us as though it were a fact.”
Even if it was a fact, and Gian would eventually lose in court, it didn’t matter. His father had more than enough money to just throw into lawsuits with magazines that tried to spread information about their family. More disposable cash than the society rags had, anyhow. He didn’t mind spending more than enough to bankrupt them in the process, even if he would fail at winning his case, and that’s what mattered the most. The rags knew it, too. The game of the wealthy was not for the faint of heart.
Bene learned that lesson well.
“But the hints …”
“Mmhmm,” he urged.
She sighed, turning back to the painting. “They make it seem like your family isn’t all that it seems, I guess.”
“We’re not.”
Vanna continued staring at the painting of his parents. “Oh?”
“No, we’re far more.”
And that was all he would say about it.
She didn’t seem to mind.
“So,” Vanna said, spinning on her heel and heading down the hallway with Bene following after her, “the bedroom at the end, then?”
“If that’s the one you want to use.”
She grinned over her shoulder, as if their previous conversation hadn’t happened at all, and she moved onto something else entirely. “I noticed speakers everywhere—can
you turn music on, or connect the system to my phone?”
He arched a brow. “I can. Why?”
“I want to dance.”
Bene groaned.
Fuck, yes.
“I would love to see you do that.”
“You know, I do have to feed you.”
Vanna, wearing nothing but his shirt from the day before, peeked over her shoulder at him as she raised up on her tiptoes to reach for a book on a higher shelf. She looked like absolute sex and sin standing there in the library, hair still mussed from the way she’d let it dry naturally after jumping into the shower with him that morning.
Instead of heading to the kitchen with him, she asked if she could explore. He didn’t see the issue, simply said to stay out of the rooms that were closed, like his parents’, or his brothers’ old rooms. She didn’t mind agreeing.
“Do you cook?”
Bene chuckled. “Well, I can try.”
“You said feed me. Not make me cook for you, Bene.”
“I can make a mean bacon and eggs.”
She grinned. “Is that all?”
He was a little distracted by the way his shirt rode up over her bare ass, and how he could see just a sliver of flesh between her thighs when she leaned forward a bit. Teasing and tantalizing him like nothing else ever had.
“Pardon?” he said, meeting her gaze.
Vanna’s smile deepened. “Am I really that good to look at?”
Didn’t she know?
“Donna, you drive me crazy. Yes, you are that good to look at.”
A sweet pink tinted her cheeks, and even with the shyness she dared to show, a heat still lingered in her stare. He’d bitten her plump lips a sexy red that morning when he woke her up already hard between her thighs, and ready to go.
The shower was round two.
He was looking for round three any fucking time.
Let’s go.
Vanna looked ready for it, too.
She finally found the book she wanted on the higher shelf, and pulled it down to flip it over as she turned around to face him. Leaning against the bookshelves in his mother’s large library, she turned pages, and while he couldn’t see what book it was from his position in the doorway, that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the sight of her smiling over whatever she was reading on the pages. One could always tell a bookworm simply by the way they stared at an opened book in their hands. Pure joy.
“Was this a room I wasn’t supposed to be in?” she asked.
“Was the door open?”
Vanna shrugged, peeking up at him. “Yeah, but it’s … different in here.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, for starters there’s a wet bar near the window and a whole wine fridge. Also, there’s a glass bowl with a bunch of bracelets in the reading nook. Someone must like Lindor chocolates because there’s a whole selection to choose from in the corner. A journal, too, but I didn’t look inside.”
“Not so much a journal,” Bene replied, glancing at the leather-bound notebook his mother kept on her stand, “as it is something for my mother to keep notes of what she’s reading, and what she thinks about it at any given time. She goes back to her notes sometimes—anonymously reviews for a newspaper twice a month, actually.”
Vanna’s eyes widened. “For the Toronto Tribune?”
“I don’t read them.”
“Are you serious?”
Bene laughed. “What?”
“It’s like the only book reviewer in a newspaper anymore. At least, in Toronto. Everything is online now, and that’s one of the only papers still thriving. The fact she gets two entire columns for her reviews is amazing. And she’s anonymous, so it isn’t even her name drawing in readers for her reviews. An actual, physical newspaper. I read it every second Sunday just for her reviews on the latest releases.”
He smiled. “Small world.”
Something changed in Vanna’s gaze—he couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but he didn’t miss the way her stare darkened a bit, a tiny knot forming in her brow as she glanced down at the book in her hands again. It hid her face from his view, but he decided not to ask her what was wrong because she spoke first.
“So, this library is your ma’s?”
“My father uses it as an office sometimes, even though he works more in the one upstairs. But yeah, it’s hers, and no, she doesn’t mind someone else enjoying the books in here. No worries on that, I promise.”
Vanna nodded, but continued staring down at the book in her hands. “You love her a lot, huh?”
“My mom?”
“Yeah.”
Bene wondered if that was a strange concept for her … considering how she reacted to talking about her own mother the night before. “I mean, we all love our ma. Growing up, our dad kind of put Cara on a pedestal, and nothing less would do except the very best for her. She was always there, too, didn’t matter if she had shit going on, or was sick … none of that mattered to Ma, she was just there for us when we needed her. The first person to tell us to go and get something, if we wanted it. How can you not love that?”
“Yeah, I get that.”
Now, her voice turned faint.
Her head stayed turned down.
Bene wondered why.
“Anyway,” Vanna said, closing the book and looking up with a bright smile. All that strangeness was gone, and in its place was the sweet, but sexy woman who caught his attention, and had yet to lose it, even if he wasn’t willing to dig into the whys quite yet. “Food, you said?”
He could have pressed on her behavior.
Or the change in demeanor.
Instead, Bene just said, “Yeah, let’s get some grub.”
The mansion was wired to the nines. Every single light in the place could be shut off with a press of one button from Bene’s phone—or any of his other family members, he explained. A camera rested in almost every high corner, keeping watch on hallways and main rooms. The security in the place was top notch, no doubt about it.
Yet, even knowing that, Vanna didn’t hesitate to slip out of the bed she shared with Bene for the weekend once he was passed out, to take another walk through the mansion. After all, he promised he would clear out all the footage of their time in the place, and he didn’t even have to look at it to do it, just select dates he wanted to wipe from the memory. Which meant, for the most part, she had free reign when he fell asleep to do what she wanted.
And needed.
Apparently, his parents wouldn’t appreciate them being there when they … well, weren’t, basically. Bene had been quick to explain that wouldn’t even matter once he got rid of the footage of their time there. Vanna found that amusing.
A little.
Vanna only felt the slightest tinge of guilt when she headed past the library about what she was doing. Mostly because she had never felt any connection to the Guzzi family except through the stories she’d been told, and the moments she shared with Bene.
Other than that, her hate fueled by the past and memories of her father kept the vendetta well and alive for her. Nothing else factored into it—she never considered the fact that the family shared a whole life that they wouldn’t want destroyed by someone like her. That behind the private walls of their lavish homes, hid stories of … well, a family.
Love.
Kids.
Marriage.
More.
So yeah, she felt a little bit of guilt as she passed the library, remembering that for the last several years, she had bought a newspaper every second Sunday just to get a peek at the anonymous reviewer’s take on recent book releases. Reading, like cooking, had been a way she forgot about the loss of her father, and it helped her to get through tough times. She loved books, and the fact that she had enjoyed reading a column that Bene’s mother wrote—a fucking Guzzi—had her doing a double take.
Not to mention, the way he spoke about his mom.
And his dad.
His brothers.
All of them.
He spoke about them in a way that almost made her want to like them—as though meeting them would be easy because they seemed like likable, interesting people through his point of view. She didn’t want to give them much time in her mind for that shit because nothing good would come of it, she was certain.
After all, she was here for one reason.
She might enjoy fucking that man.
It meant nothing.
She was still here for a damned reason.
Vanna couldn’t afford to forget it. Her stupid heart couldn’t get in the way of her end game, and neither could her conscience. She wasn’t supposed to have one of those, anyway. And what really were the Guzzis or their love worth to the fact that because of them, her father died. No, they didn’t pull the trigger, but they also didn’t have to.
It only took one pebble to make a landslide.
Decades ago, Gian Guzzi was the pebble.
Vanna would be their landslide.
Palming her phone, she climbed the stairwell to the third floor of the mansion. Down the hall, and to the left, facing the entire front of the Guzzi property, rested Gian’s office.
The door had been closed.
One of those off-limits rooms.
Vanna pushed the door open, and for a moment, simply stood in the doorway. She couldn’t help but notice how there weren’t any cameras in the top floor hallway in this wing. There weren’t any cameras inside the office, either.
Not surprising.
No criminal wanted his acts on tape.
Vanna took in the richly stained wood of the oak desk that dominated the middle of the office, and the built-in shelves that matched behind it. A large, wingback office chair with studded detailing along the sides sat proudly behind the clean, yet still personal, desk. A few pictures of the family rested on the top, and a bowl with a few knickknacks, a lighter, and even a money clip with a few hundred-dollar bills sat inside.
A laptop sat on one side.
A desktop on the other.
In the middle, a pile of folders.
Windows across from the desk overlooked the entire front of the property, giving the man who sat behind the desk a good view of anyone coming near his home. She doubted that was done in error, but rather, purposefully.