into her mouth.
I shudder against her, burying my face in the crook of her neck.
Sandro.
It’s the name of the man I was always meant to be.
21
Bella
There are days when I think I am in heaven.
When I awaken to the touch of my husband’s luscious tongue on my flesh, or his hard cock driving me toward one orgasm after another.
Then there are days when I am reminded about who I am married to and what he does when I am not with him. Oh sure, New York knows him as the King of the Boroughs because of his business acumen and portfolio. But as much as he tries to keep the secret part of his life in the shadows, it is still there.
It’s like a ghostly finger up the spine.
It’s like an unsettling sensation in the back of your mind.
A reminder to not get too comfortable with him because his shadowy world—the same nefarious world my father moved about in—is a world I do not want to be a part of.
My husband is a criminal. And some days the reality of that is very imminent.
I look up to find Alessandro looking at me from the doorway.
His expression unnerves me.
It’s dark. Like a storm cloud passing over his face.
“You need to come with me.” His voice is hard.
“Where to?”
He comes to me, towering above my small stature. “It’s time to show the Castabellas why they shouldn’t fuck with us.”
I look at him and see the thinly veiled sense of regret on his handsome face, and I get a sick feeling in my stomach. “What are you going to do?”
He takes my hand. “You need to come with me.”
I know better than to question him. And to be honest, I don’t have the energy. The late nights of ecstasy are catching up to me.
Outside, a car is waiting for us and we drive through a warm summer evening to a warehouse just a few minutes out of the city.
Inside, a man sits tied to the chair, his brow beaded with sweat, his lips bloody, his face bruised. He’s been well worked over and is out cold.
Beneath the swelling and the spit and blood, I recognize him.
Luca Castabella.
I look at Alessandro.
“Did you do this to him?” I ask.
Alessandro’s jaw ticks. His eyes black and hard, and full of dark fury. “With pleasure.”
Fractured images of the attack come back to me and I falter, but Alessandro steadies me.
“What are you going to do to him?” I ask.
He hands me a gun. “You deserve justice.”
I look at the gun and then back to Alessandro, stunned. “You want me to… kill him?”
“He abducted you and was going to rape and murder you! When I think of the things he was going to do…” His nostrils flare and his fists clench at his side as his thoughts get the better of him.
I turn back to Luca. A thread of bloody spit drips from his broken lips to his shirt, and I can’t help but recall him abducting me off the street and knocking me out.
I think about waking up in a warehouse with a splitting headache and the odor of mildew in the air. I think about the evil in his eyes and the fear in my heart when he’d told me he was going to kill me. I think about his hands on my body, sliding up my thighs, and without hesitation I raise the gun and press it to his temple.
As he starts to come to, I dig the gun deeper into his skin, my skin crawling with the thoughts of what if. What if I hadn’t gotten those binds untied? What if I hadn’t made it out of that warehouse?
Lifting his head, his eyes find mine and recognition ripples across his face. His thin lips pull back into a smug smile to reveal blood-soaked teeth.
My fingers tighten around the grip of the gun.
I loathe people like him.
He was going to rape and murder me before dumping my body into the Hudson River.
But I am no killer.
And the fact that I am standing here with a gun pressed into a man’s temple tells me I’ve been pulled too deep into this world that I despise.
This is not me.
My hand drops to my side.
I fix my eyes to his, hating the small part of me that wishes I could pull the trigger. Because this man is a monster.
But it isn’t up to me.
I won’t play God.
But I know there are men in this room who are willing.