AlexanderThe waitress leads us to a secluded spot by the window, but Elena doesn’t even notice the view. She’s absent minded. Even ring shopping didn’t seem to excite her. I offered to buy her additional jewelry, but she wasn’t interested.I move my chair closer to her, so I’m sitting next to her rather than opposite her, and she looks at me, a sad smile on her face.“My father hasn’t checked up on me since I turned eighteen, but he takes such good care of Elise,” she says, her voice breaking. “He doesn’t even seem to care whether I’m dead or alive.”I see the tears pooling in her eyes and grab her hand. Seeing tears in her eyes, fuck. I can’t stand it. “I know it isn’t the same, but you have me now, Buttercup,” I say involuntarily.She looks at me and nods. “I do. I do have you,” she says, her eyes never leaving mine. “There are a few things I want to do, Alexander… but I can’t do them by myself. Will you help me?”I raise my brows, and she tightens her grip on my hand. “I… I want t
ElenaMy phone buzzes just as I’ve made myself a cup of coffee, and I frown, surprised to find my brother calling me. I hesitate before picking up.“Elena? What the hell do you think you’re doing? Why the hell am I looking at photos of you with Alexander Kennedy?”Took him long enough. Alexander and I have been going on dates in the most public places we can think of for weeks now. It was only a matter of time before it came to Matthew’s attention.I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “Hi,” I say. “I’m good, thank you. So is Mom, by the way.”“I’m not in the mood for your bullshit,” he says. “Why were you with Alexander? You know full well the guy and I don’t get along. That he can’t stand Jen choosing me over him. You need to stop playing games.”I shake my head and take a sip of my coffee. “I love how you’re making this all about yourself, as usual.”Matthew laughs, the sound sending a chill down my spine. “You’re still as stupid as you’ve always been. Do you really think he’d eve
ElenaAll eyes are on us as we walk into the office. I’m nervous and try to pull my hand out of Alexander’s, but he holds me tighter instead. He leans into me, his lips brushing over my ear. “Back straight, chin up. You’re Mrs. Kennedy,” he whispers.I look up at him, and he grabs my chin, pinching gently as he leans in for a kiss, right in the middle of the lobby. He smirks as he pulls away, and I’m certain my cheeks are scarlet. Lately he’ll kiss me in public as often as he can, ensuring we end up in tabloids every week. He seems to revel in making me blush, seeing me flustered. I guess it’s yet another game for him.I look away and catch Luce rolling his eyes despite the smile on his face. Alexander throws his arm around me as we walk towards the elevator. “Remind me why you’re here?” he asks Lucian.I see the flash of panic in Lucian’s eyes, but he gets it under control within seconds and smiles at his brother. “I’m meeting a friend,” he says, getting off at a lower floor than us.
ElenaI’ve been restless all week. I’m used to not hearing from Alexander during the day, but I always know he comes home to me. Even when we don’t talk for days, I know it’s me he falls asleep with. Now that he’s on a business trip, there’s been no contact between us at all. I’m tempted to call or text him, but he told me not to bother him unnecessarily, and I don’t want to overstep. I didn’t think I’d miss him… but I do.“Earth to Elena,” Luce says.“Sorry, I zoned out again.”He shakes his head at me, annoyed. He’s been updating me on his love life, and all it’s done to me is make me worry about my own. I sip my tea and lean back into my regular chair at our local coffee shop.“Your mind is as absent as my brother is.”“Have you spoken to him this week?” I ask, unable to help myself.Lucian shakes his head. “Nah, but I know he speaks to Mom every day. Hasn’t he called you?”I shake my head. “Do you think he’s just ignoring me?”Lucian shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe he finally figured out
AlexanderI watch Elena interact with my brother over dinner, both of them giggling and making inside jokes. One week. I was gone for one week, and I come back to my wife and brother being two peas in a pod.I haven’t forgotten that Lucian wanted to marry her in my stead. It’s obvious he loves her. Maybe I was selfish when I told her to marry me. I rushed into it when I realized that my usual jokester of a brother wanted her. The guy who was never serious about anything was willing to spend the rest of his life with her. I took her away before he even had a chance.I watch her giggle at something he said, and my whole body just screams Mine. The need to claim her as my own is unreal, and something I’ve never experienced before, not even with my ex-girlfriends. Not even with Jennifer. I don’t understand where it comes from. Maybe it’s just because Elena is my wife, and as my wife, she’s supposed to be mine. Maybe it’s simply because I own her, and I’ve never liked sharing my things. Wh
AlexanderThere’s a gap between the two sides of her underwear, exposing the middle of her perfectly smooth pussy. The thought that my little brother picked out this sexy little thing for her sickens me, and the thought that she’s wearing this forhimsends pure uncontrollable rage through my veins. I pull her to her feet and turn her around, unzipping her dress and letting it fall to the floor.“Alexander! What are you doing?”My eyes are drawn to her perfectly full ass that’s pretty much exposed except for the tiny piece of white string that disappears between her deliciously full ass cheeks. Her hair falls almost to her ass, only just about exposing the dimples on her lower back. I turn her around and push her back onto the bed. She sits down in the same place she was before, covering her breasts with her arms and clenching her legs tightly together.I grab her thighs and part them, lowering myself so I can kneel between them, and she lets me.“I saidexplain.”I grab her wrists and p
ElenaI’m nervous as I walk into the rooftop bar Alexander asked me to meet him at. I’m so tense that I can’t even enjoy the stunning view from here—or the beautiful, luxurious interior. He’s been withdrawn lately, his anger palpable.My eyes fall to the clusters of round sofas, each of them a separate booth facing a glass barrier, resulting in an unparalleled view of both the skyline and the bar. I spot Aiden in the corner and he nods at me, stepping aside as I walk up to him. Alexander is leaning back on the sofa, his eyes on the skyline in front of us.He looks up when I sit down next to him, his gaze sending a thrill down my spine. He hasn’t been himself lately. Ever since he got back from his business trip, he’s been cold and distant.I’ve tried over and over again to explain to him that nothing is going on between Lucian and me, but he won’t listen to reason. I can’t even blame him. I messed up. I never should have entertained Lucian’s ideas. I should’ve known how Alexander would
Elena“Don’t worry. She’ll wake up. Your mother and I have been friends since we were kids. She’s one of the strongest women I know. Don’t give up hope, sweetie.”Sofia holds my hand tightly as we sit next to my mom’s hospital bed. She’s been accompanying me to see my mother once a week for a while now. She’ll sit here for hours and just talk to my mother about their childhood memories, about Lucian, Alexander and me. I like to think that my mother can hear her, and that the happy memories will help her want to wake up.Today Sofia has been far more quiet than usual, and I know she’s worried about Alexander and me. He and I have barely spoken recently, and I can tell that it’s affecting her. Usually, we’d have dinner with her every other night or so, and the way Alexander would joke with her, the affection he’d display toward me, it’s always made her happy. Now he doesn’t even bother putting on an act for his mother anymore. He mostly ignores me, and it’s worrying Sofia.My mother’s n
“Keep. Going.”All over this city, I inspire fear in men. People talk about me in low whispers of pure dread, but I have no power here. It’s all Elena.“I’ll show you how bad you really want it,” I growl, pulling down her shorts and her underwear.Falling to my knees beside the bed, I stare in awe at her feminine core. She’s glistening with her wetness. Her lips are swollen with pure need. I reach under the bed and grab her ass, caressing her supple mounds as I bring my mouth to her slit.“Do you think this is a game?” I snarl.“I’m not playing any game.”“Sure you’re not. Beg me to lick your pussy. Beg me to make you come.”I stare up at her. Genuine desire dances in her eyes. She bites her lip. I can see how tortured she is. I can see how confusing this situation is—for both of us.“Do it,” she says after a pause. “Lick my virgin pussy, Dario. You own my clit.”“I don’townyou.”“Yes, you do.” She reaches down, dragging her fingernails through my hair. “You own me—all of me. Lick me.
I don’t know what this is. Is she trying to make some twisted point?She slides her hand higher up my leg. “You fought for me. Go on. I’m your trophy, your property.”“You don’t want this,” I groan.“Says who?”“You’re not thinking straight.”“I know you want it …”Fuck. She slides her hand even higher, finding my hot, pulsing steel and stroking me up and down through my pants. The mania in her eyes gets even more intense. I should stop her, but dammit. Her hand feels like it belongs on my precome-slick heat.“See,” she moans, moving even closer. “I know this is what you want. A woman who can see something like that and then give her wet pussy to you.”“Elena,” I groan. “This isn’t how you want to do this.”“Maybe I just want to forget.”She kisses me passionately, almost desperately. It’s like she wants to immerse herself in our pleasure so she doesn’t have to think about everything. Maybe this is her way of proving I only want to use her, not be with her, but it’s not true.Her body
DARIO“She doesn’t want to speak to me,” I tell Mother, a strange numb feeling cloaking me.“She’s never seen anything like this before,” my mother replies, her hand on my shoulder. “I’ve lived in this world for most of my life, andI’venever seenthataspect. You can’t blame her for being in shock.”“She looked like she hated me,” I say, looking up at the night sky as I sit on the back porch. “Do you know what she said when we got into the helicopter?Don’t look at me. Don’t touch me.She doesn’t even want me to bring her aunt and her friend here. She said she feels dirty, different.”“Dario,she’s in shock.”I grit my teeth, but I can’t stop reliving the beating I gave that lowlife who was going to hurt Elena. When I stormed the farmhouse after the successful shootout, and I saw him standing there with her, the monster in me came out—the part of me I never wanted her to see.“I’m going to see how she’s doing.”My mother sighs. “Is that a good idea?”“She’s my fiancée,” I snap.My mother t
I shudder, still not looking at him, but I’m forced to when he violently stabs the knife into the wood of the table. “I asked you a question.”“No. I don’t know.”He grins a thin, ugly smile. “The other fellas don’t much like the things Vesper does to ladies. Some of them got their morals, or that’s what they call them, anyway. Me? I take a more flexible view. Get what I mean? They don’t want to be here in case I’ve got to make you see sense. Please, make me have to make you see sense. Get it?”Part of acting is using my imagination to immerse my mind fully in a character’s experience, but this doesn’t require much effort. I don’t have totryto imagine what hemightmean. This man, the psycho who refers to himself in the third person, is willing to go to lengths even regular Mafia soldiers won’t. That means serious, life-ending abuse.“That wasn’t rhetorical,” he says.“I understand.”He taps the knife against the table. “Why don’t you try to give me some fight, hmm? Why don’t you try to
ELENAI’m pretty sure I’m in the back of a car. My hands are bound in front of me with zip ties. I think it’s a car, not a truck, because I can see light shining through the bag they’ve put over my head. I have no idea how long we’ve been driving. Time has distorted, losing all meaning. I’ve been trying to focus on slowing my breathing down.They haven’t hurt me yet, apart from the ambush itself, my head still splitting down the middle from what I assume was some sort of grenade. It all feels surreal—an acid reminder of how unsuited I am to this world.I’ve stopped crying, at least. When I think back to the attack, I feel like an idiot. I shouldn’t have assumed that the men were on my side. Nobody in the mob, not even Dario, is on my side. I’m not just from a different world but from a different universe.I think about all my aspirations and dreams of acting as Aunt Rosa sits lovingly and supportively in the crowd and all the good times Giulia and I would share. Now they’re all gone t
“I didn’t tell them anything,” my father says. “I only learned about this after the fact. Please, son, sit. Try to slow down. Try to think. You can’t approach this how you need to if you’re in this state.”I lay my fists on his desk, glaring at him. He flinches away. Now, it’s the second time he looks spooked by me. “I’m in the exact state I need to be. The right mood to tear this city to pieces to find Elena. The right state to destroy the Romanos.”“We have to be intelli?—”“Are you telling me tolet them get away with this?”“No, of course not,” he says quickly. “When they find her, I know you’ll do what you must.”“So, what are you saying?”“I don’t want you to domorethan is necessary,” he says slowly. “Find her. Rescue her. Hurt anybody who gets in your way, but as it stands, there have been no deaths.”“That we know of,” I say, then regret saying it. Putting it into words is like giving it a chance to be real. I slam my fists on his desk. “I don’t want to think about that. Elena
DARIO“Don’t start a war?”I roar down the phone at my father on speaker as I speed through the city, my hands tight on the steering wheel, blood boiling through my body like a call to violence. “Are you fucking joking? The Romanos attacked Mother and my fiancée. Theytook her, and you want me to be calm?”“Your mother is safe. The men got her out.”“And they left Elena!”“They didn’t leave her,” my father says as I speed around the corner to the theater. The police are already here, a cordon out front, which means I’m too damn late to get any information. I’m unsure what I will find, but not Elena, the one thing Ineed. This can’t be happening. “They tried to rescue her, too, but the Romanos had already taken her by the time they arrived. They didn’t abandon her, son.”“Do you think that makes any of this better?” I bellow, then hang up and call Allessio. “What’ve you got?”“No activity at their safe house on the docks, Dario,” he says. “I’m going to check their warehouse in the industr
I almost laugh, breaking character. Instead, I take the cell and pretend to type. “What’s your passcode?”She grins. “I shouldn’t tell you that, should I? I’ll type it for you.”“Here you go. Oh!” I pretend to drop the phone, then lean down and pick it up. “It’s busted. I’m so sorry; I’ll pay for a new one. In the meantime, do you have a landline?”Her eyes gleam. “I’ve been waiting for one of your kind to come.”I’m surprised for a moment, but the exhilaration of acting keeps me going in the scenario. I broaden my stance. I put a grim note to my voice. “So you know what I am, then, day dweller?”“I know, and I’m ready.” She pretends to take something out of her pocket. “This is a clove of garlic.”I smirk. “Those old myths, day dweller? I’ll take your garlic and use it in my pasta sauce. It doesn’t do a thing to us.”“What aboutthis?!” She leaps to her feet, looking so different from her usualpersonathat I wonder if she’s been putting on an act all this time, too. Or maybe it’s natur
ELENA“Iwould just like you to give me a concrete reason I can’t visit the theater,” I tell Rocco, my driver and mafiosi bodyguard.The lean man frowns at me from across the roof of his car. We’re in the front courtyard of the townhouse, the vehicle gleaming after a recent wash. “There are several issues, ma’am,” he says, clearly uncomfortable with challenging the soon-to-be Mafia princess.Since Dario left around two hours ago, I’ve felt more restless than I have since I agreed to this deal. I let myself fall into a false sense of intimacy, let the sass hint at something real. However, earlier, and let’s be honest, I played my part, too. He made it clear that was a mistake.“Are you seriously telling me?—”“Is something wrong?”We both turn at the sound of Maria Moretti’s voice. She walks toward us in a long, flowing dress that makes her appear to floatelegantly. Rocco stands a little straighter, his hands behind his back.“I was telling Miss Esposito that we can’t, at this time, tak