“Am I hurting you?” he murmured against her thigh.
“No,” she gasped. “This is what I wanted. This is everything I wanted. More. Give me more.”
A chuckle rose in his chest and escaped. “Greedy girl,” he whispered and settled in to give her everything she wanted.
As she climbed toward ecstasy, her body rolled and writhed and heaved in his hold. When his hands stilled as his focus sharpened on what his mouth was doing, she put her hands on his and squeezed, urging him to remember. She wanted everything, every touch he could manage, all at once, and Paolo thought he’d spill on the coverlet before he brought her to her peak.
Then, suddenly she was there. Her body arched and went stiff, and he felt the spasms of her sex against his face. Never had he felt anything as perfect as that, or tasted anything as sweet as the juice that ran from her onto his tongue.
The storm passed, and her body slackened. Paolo eased his hands and mouth from her and scooted back up to the pillows.
Flushed and mussed, she looked at him from bliss-dazed eyes and gave him a dopey, but somehow still smug, smile.
“Is the debt paid?” he asked as he brushed her hair from her face.
“Not even close,” she said and snuggled close. “But that will do as a first installment.”
Paolo rolled to his back and pulled Mirabella with him. She settled her head on his chest.
He was still achingly hard, but he didn’t care. What he wanted in this moment was simply this: her body in the crook of his. Her satiation and contentment. Her forgiveness.
And something of his own he couldn’t quite identify at first. A loosening in his chest, an ease in his shoulders, a warmth in his bones.
Peace.
It was peace.
With Mirabella in his arms, he felt at peace for the first time since he was a child.
He’d nearly torn her apart, yet she’d forgiven him. She’d made him atone, made him give her what she wanted, and she had forgiven him.
No, he was never letting her go.
XV
Paolo stood at the edge of a wooden pier and studied the view before him. A small cove already taking on the features of a harbor—but not one that could accommodate the large vessels that crossed the ocean. This harbor, when it became one, would be meant for personal vessels and fishing boats.
Ahead of him, some distance across the water, several small islands stretched out like sentries between Long Island and the Atlantic.
Paolo now owned most of the property that he could see. Using Deller as an intermediary, he’d brokered deals with three Manhattan land barons, who’d procured this land by fair means or foul as soon as immigrants began heading this way.
They had meant to build more rental properties, more corrals for the foreigners, and to charge ridiculous rents to make sure they stayed where they belonged and never aspired beyond it.
Paolo had another idea entirely. He meant to shape the community already forming here into a town—businesses and neighborhoods of immigrants where they could own their stake. Bought from him, of course. He meant to make a profit, and he meant to be the primary influence here. At its heart, this was an expansion of his business, meant to increase his wealth and power.
But he also meant to offer the people to whom New York had given such a cold welcome a chance to achieve the promise of the New World. They’d all believed they were coming to a place where the streets were paved with gold, where they could make a better life for themselves and for their children.
Manhattan was not that place.
This would be.
Immigrants were already moving here, making their way, finding a better life. Paolo’s sister and her family had moved more than three years ago, to a place not terribly far from where he now stood, and improved their lot substantially. But people were building up out here without a sense of continuity or cohesion, and the surge of fortunes that had been predicted for a while hadn’t yet happened. Paolo’s plan would change that, and give this new community focus. Make it an actual destination.
Though he’d used blackmail to drive the prices into the basement, his plan was expansive and ambitious—and therefore expensive. It was going to cost him most of his cash on hand and swallow up most of his profits going forward until there were homes and businesses to be sold, and people to buy them. For the next few years, unless he figured out a way to increase the profits of his standing businesses, everything he’d struggled to achieve so far would balance on a blade.
From the moment he’d sliced open the throat of the only son of Don Enrico Cuccia, Paolo had lived every day of his life taking wild risks.
This one might have been the wildest of them all.
But it was the first that looked forward. Everything else he’d done, even as ‘Il Don Giovane,’ had been done looking backward. For revenge or retaliation, to make someone pay or cut him down to size. His success in New York had been predicated on usurping a don he’d despised and exacting vengeance for himself and his sister.
This thing he planned to do now? It was potential. Promise.
Unless he failed spectacularly and was ruined.
He heard and felt Aldo’s heavy footfalls behind him on the dock, and he stepped a bit to the side to make room for his second here at the end.
“They’re packed up. Do you need anything more from them?”
The team of architects and builders Paolo had put together for the first phase of his vision. Today, they’d walked the area Paolo envisioned for a Main Street—America loved its Main Streets—and the first development of new homes here at the harbor. A trolley line was already in discussion for this part of Long Island; the plans he’d seen today would capitalize on that access.
This cove was another important part of Paolo’s choice to buy here. It would be perfect for the kind of importing and exporting he was already doing now, at huge expense at the New York Harbor, where far too many people needed to be bribed. Here, he could offload larger ships at anchor in the ocean onto smaller vessels and bring that cargo in without notice from official eyes or the bureaucratic fuss in the city.
They’d spent the afternoon discussing his expectations and how close to them reality could get. Having all he needed for now, Paolo shook his head, and Aldo turned and waved them off.
Paolo continued his study of the cove and the islands in the distance. He took a deep breath of salt air.
“Everything good, Paolo?” Aldo asked after a moment of quiet.
“Yes. I’m just thinking. Do you ever miss Sicily?”
Paolo sensed Aldo’s shrug at his side. “I was a little kid when we came. I barely remember Sicily at all.”
“I can hardly forget it even for a moment. As hard as I try.”
“You lived more life there than I did. When you and I went back, it was like a place I’d never been.” Aldo had gone home with him a few years earlier, when Paolo felt strong enough to face Don Cuccia and make him pay.
He had.
Paolo had wanted to charge in through the front door, guns blazing and knives flying, but Aldo had advised him otherwise. They’d spent several weeks putting a much more nefarious plan together. By the time they’d moved on Cuccia, most of his men had stood back and let them.
When they’d left Sicily, Paolo had thought he’d destroyed the Cuccia family completely. However, he’d had word in the last year that a nephew had stepped in to lead the family and now called himself Don Cuccia. No doubt the nephew would follow in his uncle’s footsteps and keep the family legacy of terror and cruelty alive.
Thus, Paolo had taken revenge for the suffering of his family, but he hadn’t effected any real kind of change.
Another thing he’d done looking backward and not forward. And the revenge he’d taken hadn’t satisfied his need for it. He’d wanted the Cuccias destroyed, but that family was as obdurate as a nest of New York cockroaches.
“Do you want this to be like Sicily?” Aldo asked. “Is that why you’re doing it?”
“No,” Paolo answered at once. “But I don’t want it to be Manhattan, either. I want it to be what they promised us America was.”
“Streets paved with gold?” There was a smile in Aldo’s voice.
“A place where people can take a full breath. Where they can see and feel the sun and it doesn’t come with the stench of rotting garbage. Where children can play. Where it’s not that filthy fucking city.”
“I like that filthy fucking city. That’s home to me.”
Paolo nodded. It wasn’t the first time he and Aldo had had this talk, or one like it. Aldo was gravely concerned about the risk, and not enthusiastic about how far this land on Long Island was from Manhattan. All the things Paolo wanted here were things Aldo didn’t want at all.
A breeze kicked up. It was November, and the wind had teeth. But Paolo lifted his face into it and felt the light dapple of sea spray. He thought he might want to live here himself. He didn’t know how he’d manage that; his businesses would always be centered on Manhattan, where the kind of work that made his profits got done. But he would like to have a house with a view of this cove, where he could open the door and feel sea spray on his face, smell salt and sand and hear the lapping of the waves.
What would Mirabella think of a house like that?
Paolo gave his head a brisk shake to knock that dangerous thought aside, but it sank its claws in and stayed. What would Mirabella think of living here on Long Island? With him?
Almost a week had passed since he’d taken her to Martin Deller’s house and then brought her home to his bed. Waking the next morning, he’d been unsettled by what had transpired between them, and he’d been aloof. It hadn’t been his intention to be cool to her, but he’d been grappling with a great deal of confusing emotion—especially confusing since he’d worked so hard for so long to control his emotions—and he hadn’t known how to behave. So he’d turned off every feeling he could.
He hadn’t been cruel, but he hadn’t been kind, either. After what they’d shared, a lack of kindness was its own cruelty. Mirabella was not one to tolerate poor treatment. She’d called him a bastard and left.
Refusing an offer of a carriage, she’d gone out wearing her evening gown and velvet wrap and walked back to her father. Paolo had gotten word from his mice that she went right back to work at the clothier’s the next day and now walked through the neighborhood with her back straight and her shoulders square, though of course the gossips’ tongues were wagging fast enough to power all the lights of the city.
When the time came for their next English lesson, she hadn’t come. And he hadn’t sent for her.
He could have; she still owed him. Their deal was still in place. But he’d let her be.
With each hour that went by without seeing her, she took up more room in his mind, and not only in his mind. His chest ached steadily through the day, more keenly when he let himself pull a thought of her to the fore and think it.
It had been a long time since Paolo had allowed himself to wrap an emotion that wasn’t rage or hate around himself and truly feel it—long enough that he wasn’t sure what other emotions were supposed to feel like.
But it hurt to think of Mirabella—a physical pain. It didn’t come from her but from the lack of her.
He thought that might mean he loved her.
For days, he’d let that thought alarm him. He wasn’t someone who should love, and he wasn’t someone who could be loved. He was too brutal, his world too dangerous, his arms too deep in blood. And he didn’t have enough in him worth loving. That point had been proved to him again and again.
So he’d thought to let her go after all—call the debt paid, leave her to her father and whatever life she could make. If it happened she was carrying his child, he’d take care of them. Otherwise, he’d stay out of her life. Either way, he’d keep a distance.
That had been his thinking, his decision, over the past few days.
But now, after the hours he’d spent seeing his imaginings made concrete in sketches and plans, taking long strides toward reality, now, standing here at the end of a pier he owned and picturing what all this would someday be, he wondered … what would Mirabella think of living here on the water, with him? Could he ever make that happen?
He didn’t think there was another woman alive who could thrive in his life, but perhaps she could. She was strong, and fierce. Brave. Smart. Bold. She understood the seductive power of rage. She said she wanted power of her own. What a unique woman, to stand before a world of men and believe she could find power for herself there.
The mere thought of her fire made him hard, and he shifted within his heavy topcoat.
He didn’t want to keep his distance anymore. He wanted her. And he wanted her to want him.
“It’s getting late,” Aldo said. “It’ll be a cold, dark ride back to the city.”
That filthy fucking city.
But Mirabella was there.
“Let’s go,” he said, and turned to walk back to the car.
The drive back to the Five Points was more than two hours, and by the time Cosimo pulled the Mercedes up in front of the Little Italy Community Society, night had fallen heavily. The neighborhood was up to its usual shadowy dealings; night was when Paolo’s businesses made most of their earnings—gambling halls, bordellos, and all manner of vices driving people toward ruin, where Paolo stood at the door and took their entrance fees.
Aldo got out; he lived near the Society. But Paolo stayed where he was. “Drive to the Montanaris’ building,” he said to Cosimo.
Still standing with his hand on the door, Aldo smiled in a way that made Paolo wary.
“What?” he snapped.
“I like her. I think she could be good for you.”
He didn’t like other people thinking of him—or of her, for that matter—in that way. “Go home, Aldo.”
With a nod, Aldo finished closing the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, don.”
Sitting in the car in front of one of the many seedy tenement buildings that made up the architecture of this part of Manhattan, Paolo looked up at the drab façade. Most of the windows showed light; it was night, but not so late people were in bed. The hour or two between dinner and bed constituted the only leisure these people could afford—and usually they were doing some kind of small work. Mothers knitted and mended, and fathers repaired and built.
“Which one is it?”
“5B, don.”
The top floor, by the look of the building. “Stay with the car.”
“Of course.”
Paolo got out and went to the door. The people on the street recognized him, of course, and all took their turn to show him respect. These supplicating acts of common people, innocent as far as he was concerned, made him uncomfortable. He hadn’t wanted the kind of power that made the downtrodden fearful. He wanted the kind of power that made the powerful quake and the wicked tremble.
There were those who thought the payments he took from businesses throughout the neighborhood were unfair and exploitative of poor, innocent businesspeople, but to Paolo, it was simply business. Those shopkeepers made a profit from their sales; Paolo took a portion of their profits. And in return, they were protected—not only from reprisals from him and his boys, but from the cruelties of the uniformed police officers who treated all the residents of these immigrant neighborhoods, no matter where their people had come from or how, like vermin. They were protected against theft and vandalism from the many different gangs and crooks who’d made their stands and jockeyed over turf.
Paolo engaged in no turf wars. The entire area was his. Other bosses ran their crews with his approval, and they gave him a cut of their earnings. Those skirmishes over turf borders, he allowed so long as they stayed contained to the right players and didn’t hurt anyone else. He was the law and the order here, and he took care of the people who lived here.
But he didn’t want the supplication. The only people Paolo ever wanted to see on their knees before him were those whose l
egs he’d broken to put them there.
With a few nods, he moved past the people on the street and went into the building.
Sometimes these buildings stank badly, like mold and dirt and privies left too long without emptying. But it wasn’t long past the dinner hour, and the prevailing scents were of Italian food—red sauce, oregano, garlic, and meat. This part of the neighborhood was firmly Little Italy, with few other kinds of immigrants in residence.
There were no lights on in the entry or staircase; the only light came from the gaps beneath apartment doors. He climbed up the narrow, dark staircase, worrying once or twice when a step seemed to sag or shimmy under his weight. At the top, he struck a match to determine which door was 5B, and then knocked.
Mirabella answered the door. The lights in the apartment shone behind her and left her face in shadow, but he could see that her hair was loose inside a traditional kerchief, and she wore a trim, dark skirt and a white blouse with a high lace collar—New York style and Italian style blended together.
The light wasn’t such that he could make out her expression very easily, but when she saw him she shifted her weight to one leg and crossed her arms, and he knew that body language. She was angry.
It might have been perverse, but he loved her anger. His cock had begun to fill out as he’d climbed the stairs, at the mere prospect of seeing her. Now, seeing her defiance, he was hard as a beam.
“What you want?” she spoke in English.
“I’m here for you,” he said, because it was true.
Her laugh was full of stubborn contempt. “Why? You no want me, and I no want you.”
“Your English is improving. You’ve kept practicing.” He’d honestly expected her to stop when he’d backed away.
“Yes. See what more I know to say in English: Fuck you.” She flicked her chin and tried to swing the door closed, but Paolo threw his hand out to stop it.
“I’m not leaving without you, Bella.”
Her pressure on the door hadn’t abated; in fact, she’d begun to put all her strength into the effort of forcing it closed. “No call to me that.”
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 18