Raphael
Spring, One Year Later
* * *
She never did sign those annulment papers. My stubborn, beautiful wife.
I stood drinking coffee at the kitchen window, watching Sofia talk to one of the workers. Charlie, full grown and weighing eighty pounds, never left her side.
We’d come back to Tuscany a few days after the bank took possession of the house in Philadelphia. Lina had come with us and would be starting her final year at a school in Florence geared toward gifted musicians.
Thanks to their grandfather’s greed, Sofia and Lina had lost everything. Guardia Winery no longer existed, except as an example of corruption and destruction.
Lina never spoke about any of it. She rarely mentioned her grandfather at all. Sofia worried, but Italy was a good move for her. It got her away from everything, the past, the publicity, gave her anonymity again, and hopefully would give her a fresh start.
I finished my coffee and set the mug in the sink before walking outside. Sofia waved when she saw me approach.
We’d replanted the vineyard. The ground was rich after the fire, and although it would take a few years before the vines yielded grapes for wine, they would come. We’d reestablish the Villa Bellini Winery as it was before my mother’s time. I’d already ordered and hung the new sign over the gates, and, for the first time in a very long time, felt excited. Felt like I had something to look forward to. A future.
Sofia met me halfway, Charlie on her heels.
“You snuck out of bed early,” I said, drawing her in for a hug and kissing her. That was another thing. I could sleep again. And it felt like I was making up for lost years.
“It’s you who sleeps like the dead these days.”
“It’s Saturday. I thought we could spend the morning in bed.”
“You want to spend every morning in bed.”
“That’s your fault, sweetheart,” I said, grabbing her ass.
We walked toward the chapel, Sofia growing a little quieter.
“You okay?” I had a feeling I knew what was coming.
“Lina’s decided to go back to the States after graduation, but she wants to take a year off before continuing her education.”
“That’s fine. She’s young. And she probably needs the space, honestly.”
“She’s not even going to the audition, Raphael.”
I knew that. She’d told me before she’d told Sofia, knowing her sister would be disappointed.
“She’ll get another one.” With a recommendation from her piano teacher, she’d secured an audition at a prestigious music school.
“She’s going to miss her opportunity. This is a full scholarship.”
“Give her space. She’ll be fine.”
She stopped as we neared the chapel. “You knew, didn’t you?”
I looked at her. Truth. Always truth. I wouldn’t lie to her ever again. “Yes.”
She dropped my hand and walked away, shaking her head.
“Sofia.” I followed her inside.
“She trusts you more than me.”
I caught up with her and turned her to face me. “No. She’s just using me as a sounding board before coming to you.”
I followed her gaze around the chapel, which Damon and I had almost completely restored. Damon. That was another thing. He’d grown more distant in the last year.
“Am I that bad?” she asked, sitting down in the last pew.
“You’re that good. She loves you and doesn’t want to hurt you, but this is her life, and you need to let her go. Remember what you said to me once.”
“If you let the past go, maybe it will let you go. Will those words ever stop haunting me?”
“Maybe that’s what she needs now. Her guilt at turning over evidence—”
“She shouldn’t feel guilty. Grandfather is the only one who should have any remorse.”
“Well, life isn’t fair, is it? I thought you got that by now.”
She shrugged a shoulder.
“I have something for you.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small box.
She looked at it, then reached out to touch it tentatively. “What is it?”
Her eyes were already misty when she met mine. She knew.
“Our wedding, although beautiful, it wasn’t right.”
She blinked and lowered her lashes momentarily.
“And you’re too stubborn to sign those annulment papers.”
“I want to be married to you, stupid.”
I opened the box, glanced inside, and, smiling, turned it toward her.
She gasped, her hand moving to her mouth.
“No more ring of thorns.” Inside was a beautiful platinum band with a diamond solitaire set in the center.
She threw her arms around me, her tears wet on my face as she hugged me.
“It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful.”
“I want to do it right,” I said, holding her, drawing her back to wipe her tears away. “Here. We’ll do it here. Just family. We’ll speak our vows properly and make it right.” I took the ring out of the box and looked at her.
She extended her left hand, and I slid the original wedding band off and replaced it with the new one.
This was it. This was my blank slate, my starting over. Our starting over. The black iron ring replaced with bright, shining platinum. From dark to light. Sofia and I together had somehow moved from darkness into light.
“Will you marry me again, sweetheart?” I asked, my vision blurred when I looked up at her.
“I will. I’d marry you again a hundred times.”
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Salvatore: a Dark Mafia Romance (Excerpt)
Prologue
Salvatore
I signed the contract before me, pressing so hard that the track of my signature left a groove on the sheet of paper. I set the pen down and slid the pages across the table to her.
Lucia.
I could barely meet her gaze as she raised big, innocent, frightened eyes to mine.
She looked at it, at the collected, official documents that would bind her to me. That would make her mine. I wasn’t sure if she was reading or simply staring, trying to make sense of what had just happened. What had been decided for her. For both of us.
She turned reddened eyes to her father. I didn’t miss the questions I saw inside them. The plea. The disbelief.
But DeMarco kept his eyes lowered, his head bent in defeat. He couldn’t look at his daughter, not after what he’d been made to watch.
I understood that, and I hated my own father more for making him do it.
Lucia sucked in a ragged breath. Could everyone hear it or just me? I saw the rapid pulse beating in her neck. Her hand trembled when she picked up the pen. She met my gaze once more. One final plea? I watched her struggle against the tears that threatened to spill on her already stained cheeks.
I didn’t know what I felt upon seeing them. Hell, I didn’t know what I felt about anything at all anymore.
“Sign.”
My father’s command made her turn. I watched their gazes collide.
“We don’t have all day.”
To call him domineering was an understatement. He was someone who made grown men tremble.
But she didn’t shy away.
“Sign, Lucia,” her father said quietly.
She didn’t look at anyone after that. Instead, she put pen to pap
er and signed her name—Lucia Annalisa DeMarco—on the dotted line adjacent to mine. My family’s attorney applied the seal to the sheets as soon as she finished, quickly taking them and leaving the room.
I guess it was all official, then. Decided. Done.
My father stood, gave me his signature look of displeasure, and walked out of the room. Two of his men followed.
“Do you need a minute?” I asked her. Did she want to say good-bye to her father?
“No.”
She refused to look at him or at me. Instead, she pushed her chair back and stood, the now-wrinkled white skirt falling over her thighs. She fisted her hands at her sides.
“I’m ready.”
I rose and gestured to one of the waiting men. She walked ahead of him as if he walked her to her execution. I glanced at her father, then at the cold examining table with the leather restraints now hanging open, useless, their victim released. The image of what had happened there just moments earlier shamed me.
But it could have been so much worse for her.
It could have gone the way my father wanted. His cruelty knew no bounds.
She had me to thank for saving her from that.
So why did I still feel like a monster? A beast? A pathetic, spineless puppet?
I owned Lucia DeMarco, but the thought only made me sick. She was the token, the living, breathing trophy of my family’s triumph over hers.
I walked out of the room and rode the elevator down to the lobby, emptying my eyes of emotion. That was one thing I did well.
I walked out onto the stifling, noisy Manhattan sidewalk and climbed into the backseat of my waiting car. The driver knew where to take me, and twenty minutes later, I walked into the whorehouse, to a room in the back, the image of Lucia lying on that examining table, bound, struggling, her face turned away as the doctor probed her before declaring her intact, burned into my memory forever.
I’d stood beside her. I hadn’t looked. Did that absolve me? Surely that meant something?
But why was my cock hard, then?
She’d cried quietly. I’d watched her tears slip off her face and fall to the floor and willed myself to be anywhere but there. Willed myself not to hear the sounds, my father’s degrading words, her quiet breaths as she struggled to remain silent.
All while I’d stood by.
I was a coward. A monster. Because when I did finally meet those burning amber eyes, when I dared shift my gaze to hers, our eyes had locked, and I saw the quiet plea inside them. A silent cry for help.
In desperation, she’d sought my help.
And I’d looked away.
Her father’s face had gone white when he’d realized the full cost he’d agreed to; the payment of the debt he’d set upon her shoulders.
Her life for his. For all of theirs.
Fucking selfish bastard didn’t deserve to live. He should have died to protect her. He should never—ever—have allowed this to happen.
I sucked in a breath, heavy and wet, drowning me.
I poured myself a drink, slammed it back, and repeated. Whiskey was good. Whiskey dulled the scene replaying in my head. But it did nothing to wipe out the image of her eyes on mine. Her terrified, desperate eyes.
I threw the glass, smashing it in the corner. One of the whores came to me, knelt between my spread legs, and took my cock out of my pants. Her lips moved, saying something I didn’t hear over the war raging inside my head, and fucked up as fucked up can be, she took my already hard cock into her mouth.
I gripped a handful of the bitch’s hair and closed my eyes, letting her do her work, taking me deep into her throat. But I didn’t want gentle, not now. I needed more. I stood, squeezed my eyes shut against the image of Lucia on that table, and fucked the whore’s face until she choked and tears streamed down her cheeks. Until I finally came, emptying down her throat, the sexual release, like the whiskey, gave me nothing. There wasn’t enough sex or alcohol in the world to burn that particular image of Lucia out of my mind, but maybe I deserved it. Deserved the guilt. I should man up and own it. I allowed it all to happen, after all. I stood by and did nothing.
And now, she was mine, and I was hers.
Her very own monster.
Dominic: a Dark Mafia Romance (Excerpt)
Chapter 1
Fear has a distinct smell, something that belongs only to it. Pungent. Acidic. And at the same time, sweet. Alluring, even.
Or maybe only sweet and alluring to a sick fuck like me. Either way, the girl huddled in the corner had it coming off her in waves.
I pulled the skull mask down to cover my face. The room was dark, but I could tell she was awake. Even if she held her breath and didn’t move a single muscle, I’d know. It was the scent. That fear. It gave them away every single time.
And I liked it. It was like an adrenaline rush, the anticipation of what was to come.
I liked fucking with them.
I closed the door behind me, blocking off the little bit of light I’d allowed into the small, dark, and rank bedroom. She’d been brought here yesterday to this remote cabin in the woods. So fucking cliché. Cabin in the woods. But that’s what it was. That’s where I did my best work. The room contained a queen-size bed equipped with restraints, a bedside table, and a locked chest holding any equipment I needed. The attached bathroom had had its door removed before my arrival. Only the bare essentials were there: a toilet, sink, and a shower/bathtub. The bathtub was truly a luxury. Or it became one at some point during the training period.
The windows of both the bedroom and the bathroom had been boarded up long ago, and only slivers of light penetrated through the slats of wood. Both rooms were always cold. Not freezing. I wasn’t heartless. Well…I had as much heart as any monster could have. I just kept the rooms at about sixty degrees. Just cool enough that it wouldn’t do any damage but it wouldn’t be quite comfortable.
I walked over to the crouched form on the floor. She stank. I wondered how long they’d had her. If they’d washed her during that time.
I wondered what else they’d done to her, considering the rule of no fucking on this one. My various employers didn’t usually give that order. They didn’t give a crap who fucked the girls before auction. It’s what they were there for. But this time, Leo—the liaison between the buyer and me—had made certain I understood this particular restriction.
I shoved the thought of rape aside. I didn’t do that. Whatever else I did to them, I didn’t do that. Some tiny little piece of my fucked-up brain held on to that, as if I were somehow honorable for it.
Honor?
Fuck.
I had no delusions on that note. Honor was a thing that had never belonged to me. Not then, not when I was Dominic Benedetti, son of a mafia king. So close, so fucking goddamned close to having it all. And it certainly didn’t belong to me now. Not now that I knew who I was. Who I really was.
More thoughts to shove away, shove so far down they couldn’t choke me anymore. Instead they sat like cement, like fucking concrete bricks in my gut.
I stepped purposefully toward the girl, my boots heavy and loud on the old and decrepit wood.
“Wakey, wakey.”
She sat with her knees pulled up to her naked chest, her bound wrists wrapped around them, and made the smallest movement, tucking her face deeper into her knees. I noticed she still wore underwear, although it was filthy. That was new. By the time they got to me, they were so used to being buck naked they almost didn’t notice anymore.
The three night-lights plugged into outlets around the bedroom allowed me to take her in. Dark hair fell over her shoulders and down her back. So dark, I wondered if it would be black after I washed the dirt and grime from it.
I nudged the toe of my boot under her hip. “You stink.”
She made some small sound and dug her fingernails into the flesh of her legs, crouching farther into the corner, folding and withdrawing deeper into herself.
I squatted down, looking at what I could see o
f her too skinny body. I’d check her for bruises later, once I cleaned her up. Make sure there wasn’t anything that needed immediate attention. No festering wounds acquired in transit.
“Did you piss yourself?”
She exhaled an angry breath.
I grinned behind my mask. There we go. That was different.
“Lift your head, so I can see your face.”
Nothing.
I lay one of my hands on top of her head. She flinched but otherwise didn’t move. I gently stroked her head before gripping the long thick mass of hair and turning my hand around and around, wrapping the length of it tight in my fist before tugging hard, jerking her head back, forcing her to look at me.
She cried out, the sound one of pain and anger combined. They matched the features of her face: eyes narrowed, fear just behind the rebellion in her hate-filled, gleaming green eyes. Her mouth opened when I squeezed my fingers tighter, and a tear fell from the corner of one eye.
“Get your hands off me.”
Her voice sounded scratchy, low, like she hadn’t spoken in a long time. I looked at her. Heart-shaped face. Full lips. Prominent cheekbones.
Pretty.
No, more than that. Aristocratic almost. Arrogant. Beautiful. Different.
Different than the usual girls.
She scanned my face. I wondered if the skull mask scared her. Fuck, it had scared me the first time I’d put it on. Nothing like death staring you in the face.
“Stand up,” I said, dragging her by her hair as I straightened.
She stumbled, but I kept hold of her, tilting her head back, watching her process the pain of my fist in her hair. Teaching her.
Actions spoke louder than words. I always started my training from minute one. No sense in wasting time. She’d learn fast to do as she was told, or she’d pay. She’d learn fast that life as she knew it was over. She was no longer free. No longer human. She was a piece of fucking meat. Owned. Owned by me.
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