The Guzzi Legacy: Vol 2

by Bethany-Kris

  He intended for them to meet her.

  Some day.

  “Her name?”

  Bene dragged in a quick breath. “Vanna.”

  He didn’t bother to give her last name because he didn’t think it was that important for the time being. None of those details mattered more than the fact that his father simply wanted to know who the woman was that Bene dared to break their very clear rules for.

  Funny how that worked.

  “Lovely,” Gian murmured. “I will give you a chance to correct what happened last weekend. Your mother is having her thing for the shelter in a couple of weeks, which means there’ll be lots of people here to act as a buffer ... no awkward conversation.”

  Cara frequently threw dinner parties for the many organizations she either had a direct hand in, like the women’s shelters around Toronto, or the ones she had interest in when it came to donating money. Bene didn’t usually attend them, but it didn’t sound like his father was giving him a choice this time around.

  “What do you think?”

  Bene hummed under his breath. “And what if she says no?”

  “Yet another one of those things that I can’t help you with, son. Bring her to your mother’s party, if she agrees to come, and we can properly greet her. Then, if you want to bring her back around when the rest of us aren’t here, I don’t see the problem.”

  “No promises.”

  Gian shrugged. “Then, she isn’t welcomed back here when we’re not home.”

  Seemed simple enough.

  Bene wondered if it would be.

  “Oh, and call your twin,” his father added when Bene stood up from the chair, “he’s worried that we’re lying about whether or not you’ve gone on another one of your spells.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Tell him that.”

  Jesus.

  “Fine.”

  “And say hello to your mother before you leave.”

  Bene waved a hand over his shoulder as he headed for the door, but Gian didn’t seem to mind his lack of a verbal response. At the end of the hallway outside of the office, he already had his phone in his hand, bringing up the contact list.

  At first, he planned to call his brother.

  Like his father said.

  Thing was, Bene knew Beni was good, and had his own shit to focus on with work in Chicago, not to mention his new wife—he didn’t need to be worrying about his twin. No doubt, a phone call from Bene would only get his brother worked up again because he wasn’t here to confirm everything that they told him.

  Bene was doing fine.

  Beni had to trust that.

  Instead of calling his brother, he finally replied to that very sexy picture from Vanna that still had him sporting a semi-erection, even if he had been doing his best for the last hour to ignore it. That was a pointless effort, considering nothing about that woman could be ignored.

  You home?

  Vanna’s reply to Bene’s text came almost instantly with, Yeah.

  His fingers flew over the screen of his phone, replying, Mind if I stop by?

  Up until that point, he’d not been to her place other than to drop her off at the front entrance. He never asked to go further, and she didn’t invite him. And yet, it was seconds before her reply came across his screen. As though she hadn’t hesitated at all in her answer.

  Sure. The penthouse has its own elevator in my building. The girl at the front desk will let you in to come up once she calls through to the penthouse.

  That was that.

  • • •

  Bene surveyed the clean, modernly decorated lobby of Vanna’s building while the girl behind the front desk finished her phone call. A resident upstairs wanted someone to deal with his noisy neighbor, by the sounds of things. The man at the front door had let him in with a kind greeting, and a nod.

  “Sorry about that,” the girl said, smiling widely as she hung the phone up, “what can I do for you today?”

  “The penthouse—Vanna Falco.”

  “What about her?”

  “She said you would call up, and then let me into the private elevator.”

  “Sure, I can do that. Your name?”

  Her words said one thing, but her tone said another. Bene tried not to get too strange about it, if only because the girl looked no more than nineteen years old—how had she gotten this job, anyway?—and it was her job, after all.

  “Bene Guzzi.”

  “Just give me a sec.”

  “Sure.”

  In no time at all, the chick had called through to Vanna’s penthouse, and with the confirmation that he was a welcomed guest, she handed over the key to the private elevator. “Drop it off when you come back down, please.”

  “No problem.”

  With the key in hand, Bene headed for the elevator with the plaque labeled Penthouse right above the closed doors. Shoving the key into the pad beside the doors, he waited for the beep that signaled the elevator had been unlocked for him to use. He hit the button and waited for the doors to open which only took a couple of seconds before he stepped inside.

  Hitting the button for the penthouse—the only button on the wall, other than the emergency stop or the call buttons—he couldn’t help but notice how the girl across the lobby was talking on the phone again behind the front desk. Which wouldn’t be something that concerned him, except she was clearly looking right at him while she spoke.

  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 late
r. 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.

  10.

  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 respon
sibility 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?”