“Last chance,” he said with a raised brow. “We both know you aren’t walking out of here alive. There’s no reason it can’t be a quick death if you give me what I want.” When there was still no answer, I didn’t need to look to see that Matteo had chopped straight through the bone. The man’s resounding howl nearly covered up the sound of the bone snapping in two and it nearly covered the thud of the finger falling to the warehouse floor, but it didn’t cover the wet sound his blood made as it poured out of him. “Shall we do another?” Matteo asked, and the man whimpered pathetically. “Would you like to do one, Lino?”
“Absolutely,” I smiled at him.
“You’re fucked in the head. What is fucking wrong with you?!” the man shouted as I took the knife from Matteo. I went to the thumb on his other hand, feeling less merciful than Matteo had evidently.
“What did you want with my wife?” I asked again, touching the blade to the thumb as he tried to bend it in—tried to protect it from me. “Even monkeys have opposable thumbs.”
“Her husband paid me!” he shrieked.
“Wrong. I’m her husband,” I snarled, pressing down until the bone gave way and his thumb fell to the floor. I didn’t care that it bled like a motherfucker or that my suit sleeve didn’t avoid the resulting mess. I’d gladly wear the blood of the men who tried to take my Little Dove away from me.
“A blond guy! He said he was her husband,” he sobbed. “He paid me $1000 to bring her to the old grain mill! That’s all I know. I swear.”
“Get Enzo on it.” I nodded to Emilio, and he darted out to make the call.
Matteo and I exchanged a look between us, and I knew he agreed with the assessment that the man didn’t know anything else, but that didn’t mean we could stop.
With Samara’s life at risk, we had to do everything in our power to be absolutely sure.
And we did.
Hours passed before we loaded his body into the incinerator, but we did it with the assurance that Connor was a threat to Samara.
If only he’d still been at the grain mill when Enzo got there.
Thirty
Samara
There was blood on his shirt.
So much fucking blood.
I didn’t dare ask, didn’t dare bring it up. His jacket was conspicuously missing and judging by the amount of red that stained his white shirt, I had to guess it was because it had been saturated completely. By the time he and Matteo pulled up to the Estate, I’d been a nervous wreck. Only Ivory and Scar’s reassurance that everything would be fine had even made a dent in my growing horror with every hour that passed.
He hadn’t touched me, hadn’t pulled me to him like he couldn’t be away from me even though I wanted to be held more than anything. Instead, we’d just gone to the car waiting in the driveway and gone home.
Like it was any other night where I’d just hung out with my friends in peace and not a night where he came home to me covered in blood.
He’d left me standing in the bedroom, going to shower without a word. I gave him a few minutes, staying where he’d left me and feeling stripped bare despite the clothes covering me. When I finally moved, my feet didn’t carry me to the closet like I’d intended.
I went into the bathroom, dropping my clothes on the floor quickly and stepping into the massive shower behind him.
My torso pressed to his back, wrapping my hands around him to hug him tight. I tried to ignore how cold he felt, even as the water scalded us as it beat down in a steady waterfall. “Not now, Samara,” he grunted.
“I need to know that you’re okay,” I whispered back, and he dropped his head forward. Water dripped off the side of his face, falling to the shower floor as he seemed to cave in on himself.
“I’m not. Not even remotely okay. Connor paid him to take you, and somehow we still don’t have him.”
“You’ll find him,” I said, leaning my face into his back. “Until then I have Emilio. Nothing will happen to me.”
He spun suddenly, those brown eyes staring down at me like pools of lava. “I need you to go now, Samara. I’m too on edge tonight. I don’t want to hurt you or scare you. Not after the things I did tonight. I’m too keyed up to be gentle.”
“I don’t want you to be gentle. This is part of you, Lino, and I want all of you,” I admitted, pressing my lips to his chest softly. His chest rumbled with his growl, his hand burying in my wet hair to tug my head back so sharply. Those eyes of his burned into me, studying me for a reaction he wouldn’t find. I meant it when I said that I wanted all of him to be mine, and that meant I had to be brave enough to face the side of him that intimidated me. I’d have been lying if I said that I wasn’t intrigued by him.
“Last chance,” he rumbled, and when I didn’t protest his mouth came down on mine in a harsh claim that made me moan. His kiss was all tongue and teeth, vicious and savage as he devoured me like he could draw me into his body and make me a part of him. He spun me, pressing me against the shower wall and hiking me up to wrap my legs around his waist.
He shoved inside me without warning, and I wasn’t nearly wet enough for it, but the bite of pain with the way he stretched me only added to the forbidden pleasure of it. My body clenched around him, making it impossible for him to get all the way in on the first pump, and I could feel his mounting frustration as he drew back and thrust back in. “Let me in,” he groaned as he pulled his lips away from mine and bit my collarbone. I gasped, feeling myself open to him until he slid home. He didn’t pause, only ground his hips into me briefly before he pulled away and pounded at me as hard as the position allowed.
With a groan of frustration, he dropped me to my feet, turned me, and bent me forward slightly until my hands touched the wall for support. He lifted my ass up until I went up on my toes, and the position immediately felt uncomfortable, off-balance. That feeling only worsened when he pounded inside, and my face smacked into the shower wall. “Lino!” I gasped, feeling him strike against the very end of me.
“You’re mine,” he growled.
“Yes!” I cried.
“No one will take you away from me.” Another thrust, another withdrawal. “Say it, Little Dove.”
“No one, my Stallion,” I murmured, and his hand cracked down on my ass harshly. Instead of leaving it alone, he brought his fingers down to the place where he’d never touched me despite his promises to take me there. His fingers slid around to my pussy, soaking up the wetness from my sex and dragging it back up. “Lino, I don’t think—”
“I told you to go to bed. You didn’t listen, now you’re going to take my cock in your ass, Little Dove.”
“Lino!” I shrieked when his fingers pressed against me. His cock stilled in my pussy, stuffing me full of him but not making any move to actually fuck me. I wanted to move away, wanted to get away from the foreign, dark pleasure that tormented me, but his other arm wrapped around me to tease my clit and build up the heat that he created with his light pressure.
He waited until I writhed in his arms, and then pressed forward until his finger slid inside of me slowly, filling me with a vicious burn that made it seem like taking his dick there would be impossible. But those fingers at my clit kept working me, stroking me right up to the edge of an orgasm despite, or maybe because of, the perverse pleasure he gave me. Just when the burn dissipated, he slid another finger inside me, and it started all over again. His cock twitched inside me, as if he could feel how much my body loved the torment.
“So wet for me, Little Dove,” he murmured, and his fingers drew apart inside me, stretching me open for what I knew would come next.
“Lino, please. I want to come,” I begged.
“You come when you take me in your tight little ass, vita mia,” he groaned, and his fingers pumped into me more sharply.
“Then just fucking do it already,” I complained, and his dark chuckle sounded behind me as he pulled his fingers free.
“Just remember you asked for this when I split you open. Breathe,” he
ordered as he pressed himself against me. My flesh parted around him subtly, a slow give of tissue that made me shove a hand back at his hips to stop him. But he pressed forward, pushing through my body’s resistance until he slid inside. He paused, stroking fingers at my clit until I relaxed into the discomfort and he pressed forward bit by bit. Shallow strokes that gave him just a little leeway into me with each one, I tucked my head forward and panted through it until his hips pressed against my ass and he groaned. “This ass is mine now.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I hissed. “Can I fucking come now, you Neanderthal?”
He laughed, and the sound was like music to my ears. Lino sounded just a little bit more human with each slide of him inside me, with each of his groans that sounded in my ear. “Yeah, vita mia, you can fucking come now.” His fingers pressed tighter into my clit, sending me spiraling over that edge with a scream and he followed behind me with a roar.
His forehead pressed into my spine, relaxing there for the time being as the water poured down on us.
I didn’t dare move for fear of awakening the beast again. With the way my body ached, I knew I wouldn’t be able to take him so brutally again so soon.
But when he pulled out of me and spun me in his arms to set to cleaning me up, his eyes were warm on mine. “My stallion,” I said, reaching a hand up to cup his cheek.
“My everything,” he sighed back, pressing his forehead to mine and staring down at me.
My heart stuttered, remembering the words he’d spoken after Connor’s assault.
His everything. My fingers traced over the tattoo on his chest, wondering, but never voicing my thoughts.
I was too flayed open, too consumed and exhausted by the day, but for the first time when he tucked me into his side when we crawled into bed, I fell asleep wondering if my years of love had really been unrequited after all.
✽✽✽
Kicking. Clawing.
Fighting.
Arms wrapped around me. Restraining me.
My throat felt hoarse, my body alive and aware and pained.
Hands grabbed my wrists, gathering up my flailing limbs in a stern grip that I so desperately wanted to shake off.
“No!” I screamed. “Let go!”
“Little Dove.” The soft voice permeated the fog, making me still in the arms that held me. But there was nothing but the black, no sign of my Stallion anywhere I looked. I struggled again, catching my attacker off guard. My nails raked across skin, leaving me with the too familiar feeling of blood and skin under my nails. “Samara!” Lino barked.
My eyes flew open.
Lino hovered over me, trying to restrain me as gently as possible. His eyes were wild as he inspected me. “You’re okay, vita mia. Just a nightmare.” He pulled me into his arms, against his chest, and I let him wrap me up. Let him chase away the lingering edges of the dream.
But the sight of the raised scratches at the base of his neck stared back at me.
They only bled a little, but the knowledge that I’d done that, that I’d hurt him shook me to my core. “You’re okay,” he repeated while I cried into his chest.
“I hurt you,” I whispered, my voice catching and threatening to break.
“It’s just a scratch, Little Dove. It hurt me far more to see you so scared.” I let him tuck me onto my side, his arms wrapping around my middle. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
“I know,” I murmured back. I stayed awake long after his breath evened out in sleep.
I didn’t want to hurt him again.
Thirty-One
Samara
The last thing I wanted to do was face Lino's father, especially not given the sex-fest that our life had become over the past few days. It felt like I could always feel the throb between my legs, the distinct soreness that told me I'd been well and thoroughly fucked. Combined with the way Lino always, always, finishes inside me that sometimes I worry about wearing dresses. After my nightmare, he seemed determined to prove to me that everything was fine—that the scratches weren’t my fault. He used his body to do that, to keep me connected to him when I’d wanted to pull away physically.
"Do you want to skip it?" he asked as we sat in the car outside his father's estate.
"I think that ship sailed around the time we left the house." I laughed at him, because it seemed a little late to be asking that question. Backing out after pulling into the driveway would be viewed as nothing but a coward's move, and if there was anything his father hated, it was a coward.
And the Jews, as he'd pointed out numerous times since finding out my mother was Jewish. For a Roman Catholic who refused to even entertain the idea of his son with anyone but a good Italian girl, I knew I would have been his last choice for a wife for Lino—even if I wasn’t religious myself.
I'd have been lying if I said that didn't entertain me and appeal to me on the darkest levels.
Lino chuckled in return, but the sound was uneasy. I knew these dinners were uncomfortable, even for him. As much as he loved seeing Chiara, spending time in the same room as his father and brother was far from his idea of a good time. I waited in the car, letting him come around to my side and open my door for me like the gentleman he'd always been with me. Thinking of what those hands had done, hands that I hoped stayed clean from the dirtier aspects of the Bellandi business, it always struck me as odd that he could use them so gently and act so kindly. Lino had never, and probably would never, talk to me about the specifics of his family business, and honestly, I didn’t want to know. Some sins were forgivable and then there were some that weren’t. I just hoped his were.
When my door opened, I pivoted and twisted out of the seat. Smoothing the olive-green sweater dress down my thighs, I let Lino take my hand and guide me up to the doors to get out of the cold. Gabriele Bellandi's wife opened the door for us, smiling a thin grin. "Lino," she cooed far too familiarly. Honestly, sometimes I wondered if she hoped to upgrade to the son when Gabriele left her. Where she had once been beautiful, the stress of living a life without love could be seen on her face. It didn't make her look old, just tired. Tired and indifferent.
Unfeeling.
I pitied her some days, but most days I just wanted her to keep her hands off Lino.
It was nice that I would finally have a leg to stand on in that regard. It had never been my place to voice my opinion before, but now as his wife? Absolutely.
She took our coats, passing them off to the butler who glared at her for doing his job. "Samara, lovely to see you, my dear."
"You too, Trista," I echoed. I'd always referred to her as Mrs. Bellandi in the past, but somehow it seemed horribly awkward to call her that name when it was also my name.
Weird.
She didn't seem to notice the difference, too wrapped up in trying to get Lino's attention to pay me any mind even as she spoke. "Everyone else has already arrived. They're in the sitting room. Why don't you go on and join them? I'd just like a word with Lino."
"That's alright. I'll stay. We don't have any secrets," I returned, snuggling into his side.
Her eyes widened, narrowing in on the movement. "Samara is my wife now, Trista," he explained.
"Well," she laughed. "I had thought to warn you that your father is in a worse mood than normal, but I suspect this is probably the cause then?" Lino shrugged, as if to say that his father's mood could be attributed to anything. The sad reality was that it could, but it was unlikely anything else.
Not with the way the man hated me.
"I was under the impression your father took care of your interest in Samara many years ago," Trista said, crossing her arms over her chest. She acted like Lino owed her an explanation, but the woman had never been a mother to him. They'd married when he was already in high school, and poor Lino had been an adult when I met him because of the way his father treated him.
"He could never take away my interest. He merely made it so that it wasn't safe for her to be with me, but now I'd like to see him try and touch her. Matteo wi
ll strip him of everything and banish him from the city he loves so much. That's one thing my father never seemed to understand. Power always shifts, and he no longer controls me with empty threats," Lino said, giving my arm a tug and guiding me away to leave Trista floundering in the entryway.
"I—what was that?" I stuttered, shocked as he led me to the sitting room.
"Not here," he whispered. "I'll explain later."
"Okay," I mumbled quickly, and then we stepped into the room.
"Samara!" Chiara said instantly, jumping up to wrap me in a hug. "It's been so long!"
"Husbands," I said with a roll of my eyes. "You know how demanding they can be, I'm sure." I brushed off the absence, as if it hadn't hurt on some level to be cut out of the dinners. As much as I'd hated being near Gabriele and Tomasso, I truly had enjoyed Chiara's company.
"Ugh, say no more," she returned, casting a glance to her husband Antonio who stood behind her and leaned in to kiss my cheek. Lino shook his hand, before doing the same to his sister's cheek and giving her a brief hug.
"You look good," he said to her, touching her belly affectionately. I'd missed the baby bump there, having been so focused on the faces I hadn't seen in so long.
"Oh God! Congratulations!" I said, holding out a hand and letting it hover over her belly. I didn't want to presume to touch her without her permission, but something about the sight of her pregnant bump drew me in like it never had before. I'd never been that woman who gushed over pregnancies or babies. I'd mostly convinced myself that I didn't want children, but I also knew the reality was I hadn't wanted children with Connor.
I had a feeling Lino would be a different story when the time came. Grabbing my hands, Chiara pressed them into the little bulge and the firmness of it surprised me.
Even so small, it felt so full.
"I can't believe I missed this," I teased, rubbing a hand over it briefly before pulling back. Lino's hand came down, resting around my waist in silent support. Nobody seemed to notice the touch or the possession it communicated.
Forgivable Sins: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 2) Page 21