We started to move together, our breaths coming in pants—my lungs took in his air, and his took in mine—and I could smell bitter iron mixed in with his scent. It surrounded me, made me feel like a queen next to her king, and even though we were close, I wanted to be even closer.
“Corrado,” I whispered, my neck tilting back, my hair fanning, feeling him so deep inside of me. “Il mio amante.”
He sucked in a breath and then hissed it out. He kept me close to him as he switched our position, my back to the ground as he opened me up even further, moving over me. He hit a spot that sent shockwaves throughout my entire body. The first stroke of pain had faded, leaving a burning that only enhanced the feeling of pleasure.
“Mmmm,” I moaned out. “Never stop moving inside of me. Mai.”
He was going at a steady pace, and then he hit me hard. I screamed out, wrapping my legs around him, wanting to keep the feeling as close as possible. He urged me to open my mouth, and my tongue came out, tasting his, before I was lost, completely consumed.
Out of control.
Wild.
He had set me free but shackled me at the same time.
His eyes were cautionary tales, but I found safety behind them. At the thought, he closed his eyes, moving even faster, rougher. I whispered his name this time, having a hard time finding my breath. He spilled himself inside of me at the same time I came around him again.
His breath fanned over my skin as his head rested against mine, and I wrapped my arms around him to keep him close.
Why was enough never enough with him? Close never close enough? Why did I see him and still miss him? Why did it feel like he took the most vital part of me with him whenever he left?
I did not only want to feel him moving like madness in my blood, but rooted in the pit of my heart, the vines of his love keeping me prisoner for the rest of my life.
We were both quiet after, the night suddenly so loud in our silence.
He rested next to me, picking leaves out of my hair, and I took comfort in the fact that he didn’t push too far away from me after I’d sat up.
“You smelled like another man,” he said, his voice raspy.
It took me a minute to hear him, to understand what he had meant. Then I caught his meaning, and my cheeks flushed. “I made a candle earlier,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I wanted to capture your scent. I put a little of the oils on my skin…” Cedarwood and sandalwood and amber. I had done it before I went outside and he had found me the way he had. The scent had turned me on more than my own touch had.
We became quiet again after, and I pulled my legs up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them, staring up at the moon. I sometimes found myself sitting in front of the moon when it was like this, reliving the night that had changed my entire life: when I'd run from the bull after he'd been turned into something lesser than what he thought he was. A man.
Sometimes I relished the life it led me to. It gave me time to live it somewhat freely.
Sometimes I resented it for the life I had, even though it was not to blame.
Corrado’s fingertips touched the very end of my hair and I shivered, wanting to face him, but not. He had stormed my body, making me restless and comfortable at once. Like the storms I always enjoyed outside of my window at night.
It was hard not to look into the future and think of nights to come without him in them. Filling my heart and dreams but not my arms or my bed. That would be someone else—for the both of us.
With the man papà chose next to me, would I return to this place, this moment, and relish the memory of us, or resent it?
Would he do the same with the woman Uncle Tito chose? When he touched her when the moon was full, would he think of me, of us, in this moment?
The thought burned inside of me like a dark candle, hateful and vengeful, and I took a deep breath, sighing it out, trying to put out the flame.
“Alcina.”
He called my name, and it was instinctual. I could not ignore him, or I would be ignoring my roots, my true home.
I turned my face toward his, but not my body.
“You didn’t tell me.”
I stared at him for a minute, trying to place his words. When I did, after he touched my stained thigh, I nodded. “You are my choice. I made the decision. Who. When.” I would never regret it. It all led me to this moment. “I gave you a part of me no one else can steal now.”
His eyes narrowed, and I turned my face away from his.
“What is your favorite color?” I asked.
“Color,” he repeated.
“Sì.” It suddenly felt so important to know everything there was to know about him. He was a man who was always in control of his emotions, his steps, and I wanted more. I wanted everything. Something another woman would never get—a small taste of his intimacy.
“You,” he said.
I turned to face him for a second and then looked away. “What color am I then?”
“The color of a flame. The moon. Of all that’s bright in the world.”
Not meaning to, I smiled a little at that. Charm on him was a weapon. “Do you sing? Dance?”
“Neither.”
His body moved closer to mine and he leaned on his elbow. I could feel his eyes on me.
I asked him a few common questions (favorite food, favorite place to visit) and then a few that were not (favorite dream, favorite thing to do at night).
The last two he answered, simply, “You.”
I became quiet, thinking about the most important question before I asked it. “I am still here,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you take me back to New York? I know you could have found me sooner. You stayed in Forza d’Agrò longer than you had to.”
His eyes were still on my face. After a few minutes, he turned away from me, reaching for something, and then it touched my leg. I took it from him, holding the picture up to the light to see it better.
“That,” he said.
I was around eleven, kneeling in church, a mantello on my head, my eyes closed, my rosary pressed to my lips. Candles burned in the background of the black and white photo. My mamma kept it on a table in her casa.
“There is no color in that picture except for you,” he said. “I could see it. The life inside of you burning to be set free.”
“And you fell in love with me,” I teased.
He became quiet. I looked at him, meeting his eyes this time. He lifted his little finger. The round diamond and the smaller ones that created the band glinted against his skin.
I stared at the ring and then glanced at his eyes, at the ring, and then back to his eyes again. “I don’t understand,” I whispered.
He took my left hand and slipped the ring on my finger. It felt perfectly. I took it off and handed it back. I grabbed a sheet from the line, covering myself. Then I stood before he could grab me, but that did not mean he could not stop me.
“Alcina,” he said, settling comfortably, the calm in his voice unnerving now.
“We cannot!” I hissed, like someone could hear. “There are arrangements—for you and for me.”
“I knew you’d say that,” he said. “And I have an answer.”
“What is it?” I asked when he did not go on.
“Fuck the arrangements. I’m not bound, and neither are you.”
“I am!”
“You’re not. You’re bound to one man only.” He pointed at his chest. “Me.”
“They will kill you!”
“They won’t fucking touch you,” he said. “Or me.”
His arrogance suddenly made me want to strangle him.
“My choice,” I said. “And my answer is no.”
“You have no choice when it comes to us,” he said. “You know it as well as I do.”
“I will not curse my only love to death,” I said. “I will not!”
“You won’t,” he said.
“You are wrong.” I went to turn when he called my name again. I stopped, holding the sheet
tighter to myself.
“Have you ever heard of Italian Roulette?”
“The game?” I said, confused.
“In a casino, it’s a game. In life—it’s something different. It’s a game of fate. Like Russian Roulette. Except it’s a game played without protection.”
I stood there, staring at him, staring at the moon, wondering what madness he was speaking of. Then it made sense. We were not protected. He came inside of me.
He smiled, so fucking cocky. “You could be pregnant.”
I wanted to throttle him, but it was my fault as much as it was his. I did not ask him to put on protection. I did not stop what I knew could end that way.
Mamma always said it took two to tango.
“Bastardo,” I whispered, not at him, but at the bull who had put me in this mess in the first place.
Corrado cleared his throat. “You will marry me, Alcina. Not because of what we did, or what might happen, but because you love me. If you walk away from me, from what I’m holding—” he lifted the ring “—you walk away from life. Don’t say yes to me, say yes to life.”
“That is smug, scorpione. To consider yourself as powerful as life.”
He said nothing, still holding the ring up.
A tear ran down my cheek. I wanted him more than anything—more than life itself. But how could I put his life at risk for love? Love was the definition of selfless, and if I said yes, wasn’t I putting life in front of love?
“Life is just as important as love,” he said, reading my thoughts. “You can have both.”
I wiped the tear away, taking the ring from him, smiling. When I went to bend down to sit next to him, he pulled me over his chest, making me lose my balance, kissing me madly, making my laughter echo in the night.
“Alcina! Alcina!”
It took me a minute to open my eyes. Anna shook me again, my name on her lips, making me sit up too fast. We knocked heads and then both groaned as we rubbed the spots.
“Mamma mia! Anna!”
“Listen to me,” she hissed, rubbing the spot even faster. “Elmo—Eraldo is here! He came to meet you!”
“What?” I jumped out of bed, wrapping my naked body in a sheet. Corrado had slept over. He was not in the bed. Where did he go?
“Get dressed!” She waved her hands around wildly. “Put on a nice dress and fix your hair!” She narrowed her eyes at me and then plucked a leaf from the snarled strands. “You will explain later.”
I was moving too slow for her. She waved her hands at me, telling me to sbrigati. Hurry. I could not. My body ached from a long night full of hard sex.
I jumped in the shower, quickly drying my hair after, and then put on a pretty black dress. What about the ring on my finger? I took it off, feeling uncomfortable about doing so, but then thought it was best.
What were we going to do about this—situation?
I stopped in my tracks when I stepped out of the bathroom and into my room. Corrado stood with his back against the dresser, a cup of coffee in his hand, only his pants on. His black hair was slicked back. His dark amber eyes were intense on mine.
My sister sat on the bed, one eyebrow lifted at me. I did not miss the appreciative glances she kept giving his chest though. He was built.
“Alcina,” he said, his voice poised. He nodded to my hand. “Your ring.”
I nodded and went and got it. My sister looked between the two of us when she saw it.
He took a sip of his coffee. “He wants to see her,” he spoke to Anna.
“To meet her.” She nodded. “To walk with her. Maybe get to know her.”
“I should—” I turned my eyes to the door, ready to go.
“Alcina.” He took another drink. “He looks at you the wrong way, his eyes are mine. He touches you, I will separate his wrist from his hand with a rusty, dull saw. He falls in love with you, his heart is mine. He’ll be a dead man by the end of the day—one without eyes and hands before his heart stops beating.”
A quiet groan left my mouth. If I didn't meet with Eraldo, his family might use my family as leverage. If I even walked with him, I might lose Corrado after he killed him. His family would want vengeance no matter what the cost.
“What should she do?” my sister asked the question that had slipped my mind.
“Have Nicodemo tell them Alcina left for Forza d’Agrò.” He looked at me. “Finish getting ready, angel eyes, and then we're leaving.”
14
Corrado
I wore a button-down shirt and a vest to meet with her father again. It wasn’t as pretentious as a suit, but the clothes still showed respect.
I had worn the same when I first came to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage, sliding the ring I was to give her in front of him.
“No,” he had said straightaway and then stood from the same seat he had been sitting in when he had entertained the Balistreris.
“Sit,” I had told him, nodding to the chair. “Either way, your daughter will be my wife. So you have two choices. Work with me or against me. If you work against me—” I shrugged. “You will have to work with the Balistreris. Apparently they are not in agreement with one of your terms. Sit and we will discuss.”
Alcina Maria Parisi was my wife, no matter if a piece of paper confirmed it or not. Officially she would be soon. That sacred blood she'd saved for me confirmed all I needed to know. She cut off a man's balls so she could choose me. I'd cut off a man's head because I chose her. I'd earn the name Mercenary in her honor.
Angela had squeezed her husband’s shoulder, staring at me with a look on her face I couldn’t place. I knew this was difficult for him. He felt that he was trading one devil for another to marry his daughter to.
With his back to me, he had said one word, “Why?”
“I love her,” I had said in Sicilian and then nodded to the seat again.
I heard the breath leave Angela’s mouth, and then she went into the kitchen. She returned with a tray of food and drinks for us to enjoy while we hashed out the terms and worked on a plan. Adriano licked his lips and went straight for the tray. Nunzio kept his eyes on all of the doors.
“Tell me,” I had said, when I assured him I could deal with the Balistreris, “what is the last term of your deal with them—the one they refuse to agree to.”
“Will you agree to it without question?”
I had narrowed my eyes at him. “Tell me.”
“You will sing for her,” he had said.
Adriano had started to choke on cheese. Nunzio had to beat him on the back, nonplussed by what Giuseppe had just said. It was a tradition in Sicily. The groom-to-be serenades his bride-to-be from underneath her balcony the night before the wedding.
“Serenata,” Nunzio had said, nodding his head.
I had moved the vest, taking out one of my guns from the shoulder-holster hidden underneath. I placed it on the table before Giuseppe and slid it toward him, right next to the ring.
“Shoot me,” I had said in all seriousness. “I will bleed for your daughter, give my life for her. That should be enough for any man.”
The only one who had laughed was Adriano.
Giuseppe shook his head. “For men like you—” he pointed at me “—a bullet is easier than a love song.”
He was fucking right.
“If you do not agree,” he had said, “I will not give my blessing. I will not give my daughter to you without a fight. Even if that means she will go with the Balistreris. For them, this is a business deal, no claim of love. You claim you love my daughter, my bambina. Prove it.”
Angela met my eye and mouthed at me, “Can you sing?” Bringing me back to the time we’d met in front of the church, when she’d said the same thing to me.
All of these fucking tests.
I’d sighed, stood, took my ring and my gun, and left. Which brought me here. Back to the same restaurant—empty of people—sitting in the same seat, Giuseppe in his, Adriano and Nunzio where they had been, and now Nicodemo. The me
n were placed strategically around the restaurant.
I had dropped Alcina off at her parents’ casa after we arrived from Bronte. I told her to start planning the wedding—it would take place in four days. I even called my grandfather and invited him and my grandmother. He did not ask her name or where she was from, but I could tell he was pleased that I chose someone. The rest didn’t matter to him.
I instructed him not to bring Silvio, and I also told him to stop him from going after the Sicilian girl he had been after to seek revenge for any wrongdoing to his son. She did not deserve the vengeance. We’d talk more about it at the wedding.
Tito Sala and his wife stayed with the women. Fausti men were placed around their casa, since Romeo Fausti had decided to join his uncle. He had some business in the area, and that meant more protection. They were romantic motherfuckers, when they flipped the ruthless side of the coin, and after Tito had told him what was happening, Romeo had agreed to lend some extra protection until I could get back to Alcina.
Giuseppe mopped his head with a handkerchief, watching the door with anticipation. He told me that the Balistreris were getting impatient and that the old man, Eraldo’s father, had sent him to Bronte to meet Alcina. He wanted to remind Giuseppe that time ticked, and not in his favor. Giuseppe paid him to help keep the family safe, but once he agreed to go a step further, to marry Alcina to Eraldo, the old man was understanding of his term, for his son to serende, but not agreeable to it.
That was the only reason Alcina was not married to Eraldo. The old man respected Giuseppe’s traditional side, and he gave Giuseppe until October to come to terms with that not happening.
The thought of mine married to him made me set my glass down harder than intended.
We were waiting for the Balistreris now. Giuseppe had called a sitdown at my request.
I knew it was only a matter of time before Eraldo wanted to meet her. Giuseppe’s hesitation of their meeting, and the price on her head, would only make him more curious about her—was she ugly enough to hide, or more beautiful than he could ever imagine? If he saw her, this would no longer be about business, but something more personal. He would want her.
Mercenary (Gangsters of New York Book 3) Page 9