by Bethany-Kris
And she said his name.
Not loudly.
He didn’t hear it.
But he saw it.
Watched her lips move to form his name perfectly. Bene Guzzi.
What was that about?
The doors closed before he could think on it.
Soon enough, the rising elevator lurched before coming to a stop, the doors sliding open to reveal a long hallway that led to a single door on the right. He passed a plant resting on a decorative table, sitting across from a large painting of Toronto on the wall right across from it. Vanna already had her door opened wide when Bene came to stand in front of it.
“Hey,” she said.
Her grin had his own growing.
“Hey,” he murmured.
She still wore those fishnet thigh-highs. Only now, he was fully able to appreciate the rest of her outfit, including the skin-tight black dress that stopped a good six inches above her knees, and showed off all kinds of leg.
In fishnets.
The low cut of the dress gave him an ample view of her cleavage, and instead of her usually understated makeup with the dramatic wing, she’d smoked out her eyes and painted her lips a dark, stark red that had his mouth going dry.
“Going out?” he asked.
Vanna shook her head. “Nope.”
“You dress like this just because?”
“I like to look as beautiful as I feel.”
Huh.
Well, he wasn’t complaining.
“Are you coming in?” she asked.
“As soon as you invite me.”
He had a good mind to ask about the chick at the front desk downstairs, but he figured … not his business. The two of them weren’t in that kind of relationship, and it wasn’t his place to be asking things unless she offered. Simple as that.
Vanna took a step back, widening the door further while her heels clicked against the tiled floor of the entryway. “Come on in—wasn’t expecting anyone tonight, but I am cooking enough for a small army, and I’ve got my favorite show ready to binge, so …”
“Sounds like my kind of night.”
And even if it wasn’t before, it certainly was now.
With her?
Looking like she did?
As she stared at him like she was?
Fuck yeah.
Absolutely his kind of night.
Vanna winked, and Bene stepped into her place. He gave the white walls, decorated sparingly but still stylishly with black and chrome accents in the entry, a brief second of his attention. He could admire her place later. Right now, the woman living in it had way more of his focus. And wasn’t that the most important thing?
Bene figured so.
She let the door go, and he closed it behind him. Once the hallway was shut out, he closed the space between them. Vanna was already smiling a sexy sight when he tugged off his jacket at the same time he leaned in for a kiss. He didn’t give a single shit that her red lipstick was likely going to leave stains on his mouth. How could he when she kissed him as though it had been far too long, and she was finally getting a taste of what she wanted again?
Before he’d even realized it, Bene had her backed against the wall, and his hands were fisting into the tops of those fishnets around her thighs, ready to pull them from her body. She stared up at him, lipstick only slightly smudged, but looking damn good. Her heat soaked into his body, and he breathed the scent of her in.
Sugared sex.
“That was nice,” she whispered.
Bene laughed darkly. “Feed me, and put me somewhere I can get you horizontal, and we’ll see just how nice I can get later.”
“Promises, promises.”
“That I’ll absolutely keep.”
Vanna swallowed hard. “Hope so.”
“I had a reason for coming here … not just this.”
“Oh? But I was liking this.”
Yeah, him, too.
Still …
“Would you, uh, want to go to a thing with me?” he asked. “Something my mother is having at the mansion in a couple of weeks. It’s like a dinner party. Nothing big, but—”
“Are you asking me on a date? A real date?”
Was he?
“Is that what you want to call it?”
Vanna arched a brow. “Does it change anything?”
“Not if you don’t want it to.”
“Are you still going to fuck me tonight whether I say yes or no?”
Bene’s fingers tightened in her fishnets, and he heard the telltale rip of the fabric. Just a little, not too much. Her shiver said she felt it against her skin, and heard it, too. “After that picture you sent, you should have expected me to show up to see what else you had waiting for me.”
“Well, that was the point.”
“So, you answered your own question.”
Vanna smiled slyly when his fingers trailed higher on her thighs, skimming over hot, silky flesh until he was between her legs and found her bare. “I guess I did.”
“You’re not wearing anything under this dress.”
“Nope.”
And she was wet.
“Is that a yes on the date?” he asked, fingers skimming over her waxed, slick sex.
Vanna let out a shuddering breath when his fingertips found her clit as she widened her stance a bit for him. Her words came out trembling, just like those red lips of hers, and her dark eyes danced with lust while his fingers circled faster and faster. “That’s a yes on the date, Bene.”
Good to know.
A black car waiting for Vanna on a Friday when she stepped out of the college after her final classes never meant good things. She only knew the town car idling on the curb was meant for her because she recognized the muscle leaning against the passenger side door. She didn’t call him muscle for it to be derogatory but given his large size, and the job he held for the Detti Camorra as a personal guard for Senior, and occasionally Mario, when the time called for it, the title fit just fine.
His severe features—he didn’t earn his nickname, The Pitbull, for nothing—held no warmth when he looked her way, and without a word, she still sensed his silent command for her to come closer. Better she went to him. It never ended well when he had to go to someone else.
“Dante,” she greeted, “something up?”
He raised one thick, black eyebrow at her question. “Why do you assume something has to be wrong because I’m here?”
She didn’t really have to think about an answer—it was already on the tip of her tongue. He often delivered bad news to people of their clan, a personal messenger from the boss. Besides that, he had been the man standing down the hallway with Senior the day she found out about her father’s murder.
Vanna said none of those things out loud. Instead, settling on, “Why are you here, then? I usually take an Uber home, and no one sends a car for me.”
He smiled thinly.
If that could be considered a smile.
“Someone sent a car today,” he replied.
“Someone as in—”
“Senior, of course. The only one who gets to throw an order at me that I will follow through on. Now, if you’re finished questioning me, because I don’t answer to you and I’m becoming bored with this conversation, then you should be asking what is expected of you, as good clan women do, Vanna.”
Right, right.
She constantly forgot her place.
That despite having a sense of freedom, her own place to live, and a life outside of the Camorra, she was still a part of their world. Still one of theirs—in the clan for life. Once in, born to it or otherwise, there was no out.
Maybe that should have been a sign.
One with a giant red flag.
She didn’t belong.
“Get in the car,” Dante said, “and I will take you to dinner at Senior’s.”
“I have to study for—”
“It’s not a request.”
That was that, she supposed.
Vanna didn’t need to be told a second time because she knew better than to argue with Dante, or any other man inside their Camorra clan. Unless she was a woman that held any sort of power over them within their confusing structure, they didn’t—and wouldn’t—listen to anything she had to say, nor did they care about what she might want.
It was always what the boss wanted.
She wasn’t the boss.
Dante said nothing long after Vanna took a seat in the back of the car. The silence echoed as they drove through the city, just skimming the late-day traffic rush, thankfully. She bet that was purposeful because Dante, like the rest of them, knew far better than to make his boss wait for anything, including an excuse like traffic.
She didn’t bother to ask more questions because she wouldn’t get the answers, that was, if even Dante knew them. The man got orders, but rarely was he given the reason for them. Plus, she just wasn’t in the mood to talk.
At least, not to the man in the front seat.
Instead, her attention dropped to the phone in her hand, and the text she had been starting to reply to when she came out of the school, and saw Dante waiting for her. A message from Bene; her fingers hovered over the send button for the reply she’d already typed out.
Busy later?
Vanna hit send on her new reply after she deleted the old one that had confirmed she wasn’t busy, and was up for anything he wanted to do. Plans changed, it seemed, even if she didn’t want them to. She didn’t even know what Bene’s plans for the night had been, but she bet it would have been a lot more fun than what she was going to do.
I’ll get back to you, she told him.
Bene’s response came a few minutes later with, Let me know.
She typed back a confirmative reply, but quickly dropped the phone into her purse when Dante glanced into the rearview mirror. Not that he would care she was on her phone, but she didn’t feel like pushing her luck today.
An hour later, and Dante opened the rear passenger door for Vanna to step out onto a familiar driveway after he parked the car. He said nothing as she glanced toward the house, noting the only vehicles parked in front of the large three-door garage of the suburban home belonged to the boss, his wife, and Mario’s sleek, black Mercedes.
That was unusual.
Entirely.
Rarely did Vanna get an invitation to dinner with the boss, his wife, and Mario unless something was going on with the rest of the clan, and they had been extended an offer to join, as well. It didn’t matter that Senior and Gemma had taken on the responsibility of giving shelter and raising Vanna for those two years after her father’s death, before she turned eighteen and was able to move out on her own … she had never really been a part of the family.
Not like that.
The lack of other vehicles—other guests—should have been her first clue that something was definitely up here. Instead of letting her thoughts linger for too long on things she couldn’t control, Vanna headed for the house without as much as a goodbye to Dante over her shoulder. No doubt, the man didn’t care, anyway.
Quiet conversation drifted down the entry hallway from the dining room as Vanna took off her coat and shoes. She tried to keep up with the conversation Senior and Mario were currently having between one another in Italian, but with how fast they spoke, it was practically impossible for her to understand more than a couple of things. She’d never picked up on the language as well as her father wanted her to, much to his displeasure.
Not that it mattered now.
Vanna came to stand in the doorway of the dining room, finding Mario’s, and his father’s, gazes already locked on her, as though they expected her to arrive at any time. Bad sign number two, she thought.
Why?
She couldn’t say, really.
Didn’t have anything to put her finger on.
It just was.
Maybe because they’d been waiting on her, and it made sense now why no one else was here for this dinner. Because hell, even the table was empty. Where was the dinner?
“I thought we were eating,” Vanna said.
Senior smiled, but it was tight.
Not unusual for him.
Still …
Vanna just felt cold.
“Oh, we will,” Mario’s father replied, “and more will join us.”
“Ma is working in the kitchen. You can help her after,” Mario added.
Vanna’s brow lifted. “Oh?”
She was just expected to help?
Not even a question.
“Yes,” the boss said, heaving his large body from his chair. An intimidating man in size, Mario Senior Detti was not a person that one might want to meet in a dark alley, and Vanna had never been more aware of his presence then when he left the table and crossed the room to come and stand in front of her. He still wore that smile, sure, but something changed in the aura around him, electrifying the air, though it made it felt chillier than ever to Vanna all the same. “I thought you and I should have a chat before the rest get here, though, because I figure … well, I am the man heading your household in this clan, aren’t I?”
Her jaw clenched.
Vanna did her best to hide it.
“Are you?” she returned.
Senior nodded. “After you father died, I took you in, by default—”
“Your father ordered the murder of mine.”
“Vanna,” Mario warned quietly from the table.
“Your father was planning against my father’s life. This is how Camorra works, child. You know that, so do not pretend otherwise.”
Child.
Twenty-one, but against this man, she was still just a girl.
Nothing less, nothing more.
His reminder, as gentle as it was, changed nothing for her. And this was exactly why Vanna didn’t like to get into these discussions with anyone. She would always have her opinions about those things, and how this all came to be. Her father was the traitor, sure, and she was the blood straight from his veins. The more she reminded them all of that fact, it became far more likely that they wouldn’t allow her to continue walking and living among the rest of them.
“You’re at an age now,” Senior continued as though Vanna weren’t glaring daggers at him, “as my son reminded me this week, where other women of your status and position have been handed different expectations, and acted accordingly.”
Vanna straightened on the spot.
Her spine as stiff as a board.
“And what does that mean?” And then she had another thought, one that made her glance around the side of Senior’s large form to stare right at Mario still sitting at the table. “You reminded him of something about me?”
“Well,” Mario started.
Senior held up a hand, quieting them both. Anyone with an ounce of brain matter, that had seen this man get angry on at least one occasion, knew better than to test his very short patience. It took nothing at all for him to go from zero to one hundred, and he had no problem with making very violent and rash decisions when his anger took over.
Vanna wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire.
Not at all.
“Vanna,” Senior murmured, drawing her gaze back to him as he readied to put the final nail in her coffin. She just knew it. Felt it in her fucking bones for what was coming next. Those words didn’t need to leave his lips for her to already be aware, and yet … they still felt like knives slicing across her skin when he said it. “It’s time for you to serve your purpose as a woman in the clan—for the greater good, as they say.”
“The greater good.”
It wasn’t even a question.
And why was her voice so faint?
“We—this clan—have given so much to you, haven’t we?” he asked.
God.
She wanted to say no.
She knew that wasn’t what he wanted, though.
“Yes,” Vanna whispered, “it has.”
And it took, too.
A lot.
<
br /> They took so much from her.
They weren’t done taking, either.
Senior confirmed it, saying, “Mario brought it to my attention that at your age, and he’s right, you should be focusing more on the family—the clan, and your life.”
“I am focusing on my—”
“Marriage, family … business.”
She sucked in a sharp breath.
Her eyes burned.
Still, she held back those tears.
“You and Mario are to be married soon.”
Yeah.
There it was.
Vanna wanted to be surprised.
She wasn’t.
Her heart screamed to fight the news.
Her brain knew better.
This was Camorra.
The boss spoke.
The rest of them listened.
That didn’t mean she was happy because a rage like never before curled around her heart, squeezing with heat that damn near stopped the beats altogether. She didn’t know if Senior could see the hatred in her stare, but she didn’t really care, either.
“That so?” she finally asked.
Senior nodded. “It is.”
“How soon?”
“Ma thought an October wedding would be nice,” Mario said.
Vanna did her very best to stay still, and not cross the room to claw out his eyes when he finally stood from the table, and Senior turned just enough for the two of them to face each other. Her future husband. Fuck him.
He was finally getting what he wanted. That was the thing here. It’s why he never pushed before. He didn’t force Vanna. Not her feelings, or her physical choices. Mario didn’t have to. He knew what he would eventually have.
Her.
“Three months,” she said quietly.
Mario smiled. “Yes, and we’ll announce it to the rest later at dinner.”
Well, he would.
She had nothing to say now.
“Hey.”
Vanna outright ignored Mario’s call behind her as she loaded the tray with clean glasses to take upstairs to Senior, and his men. She wasn’t even asked to do it—simply told to by Gemma, because apparently that was going to be her life now.
Mario’s wife.
A woman who served.
No fucking thank you.