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 He’s been withdrawn lately, his anger palpable.My eyes fall to the clusters of round sofas, each of them a separate booth facing a glass barrier, resulting in an unparalleled view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
AlexanderWe’ve only just made it to the restaurant when Elena’s phone buzzes. She glances down at it, her eyes widening.She looks up at me, a shimmer of panic in her eyes, and then she looks back down, hiding her phone away in a rush. Unease settles in my gut when she smiles tightly without meeting my eyes.“I… I need to go. Something came up,” she says.She smiles at my mother and then turns to walk away before I can even stop her.“Elena,” I call, rushing after her. “Where are you going?”She looks into my eyes and the guilt I see in them wrecks me. She’s hiding something from me. “Oh, it’s nothing. I just need to head back to the hospital real quick,” she says.And then she blinks twice, her telltale sign. She’s lying.She grabs my hand and smiles at me. “Go ahead and have lunch with your mother. I’ll see you later.”She squeezes my hand, and then she walks away, flagging down a taxi as she goes. I stare after her, my heart uneasy.I grab my phone and call my security team the se
Alexander“Where are we going?” Elena asks as I lead them to my car. Lucian has barely even looked at me, and I don’t know what to say to him either. I’ve failed him as an older brother, and I didn’t even realize it.“What’s going to make you feel better?” I ask Lucian, at a loss myself.He looks up, his eyes red. “Honestly, Alec… I’d give anything to just egg the hell out of his house, however juvenile that might be.”I bark out a laugh and nod. Very well. I’m planning on doing much worse than that, but it’s not a bad start.“Convenience store first, then.”Elena and Lucian are both quiet as they follow along, and it isn’t until I park in front of Marcus’s house that Lucian panics.“Alec,” he says, sounding anxious as he steps out of the car. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea after all.”I smile at him, eggs in hand. “This guy is about to find out what happens when you mess with a Kennedy. Besides, you’ll feel better after this.”I hand him an egg and he stares at it. “You aren’t mad?” h
AlexanderLucian stops me as I’m about to walk to my bedroom, his hand on my sleeve. Elena glances at the two of us and slips away, a sweet smile on her face.Lucian looks nervous and stares down at his feet. “I… I just wanted to say sorry,” he says. “I caused so much trouble today, but you didn’t hesitate to help me. Not just that… I know Elena and you have been arguing. I know I came between you two, and I could’ve fixed everything if I’d just spoken up, if I told you the truth… but I didn’t.”I place my hand on his shoulder and smile. “You’re my little brother, Lucian. I will always have your back. Always. I’m sorry I wasn’t someone you could confide in.”He swallows hard and nods. “You—you’re okay with it? You’re not ashamed of me?”I frown at him. “What? No. Why would I be? Nothing has even changed. You’re still my baby brother, Luce.”He looks at me in confusion. “But, Alec… I’mgay. This isn’t a phase. I’ve tried all my life, but I’llneverbe attracted to a woman. At some point,
Elena I pick up the photo on Alexander’s nightstand, my heart twisting at the sight of it. We’ve been married for months now, and even though I’m the one he falls asleep with, it feels like Jennifer is still the one he thinks of when he closes his eyes. I think back to the way he used me to make her jealous, the way he held me in his lap on that rooftop bar. It was all a show… for her.The bedroom door opens suddenly, and I jump, startled. The photo frame slips out of my hands and falls to the floor, the glass shattering into hundreds of pieces. I gasp and bend down to pick up the frame, cutting myself with one of the shards as I do so. I hiss in pain, a drop of blood appearing at the tip of my finger.“Fuck, Elena,” Alexander says, rushing over.I look up at him, panic engulfing me. “I’m sorry,” I tell him, my voice shaky. “I shouldn’t have touched it. I’m so sorry. I’ll replace the frame, Alec. The photo… the photo can be saved.”His gaze drops to the broken frame, and his eyes wid
AlexanderI stare at the engagement ring and rotate it to see how the light catches. “Magnificent job,” I tell Francesco, the owner of the jewelry store my family has frequented for years. I can’t wait to see the look on Elena’s face.The ring in my hand is the one she couldn’t stop looking at when I brought her here to pick her ring. It’s the one she so clearly wanted, yet didn’t dare ask for. I smile to myself, imagining what it’ll look like on her hand.“Six carats, emerald cut,” Francesco tells me. “Perfect for Mrs. Kennedy.”I nod at him. “Perfect, indeed.” The carat weight is perfect for someone of Elena’s stature—for my wife. Yet the band itself is simple. It suits her.“Alec.”I freeze with the ring in hand, chills running down my spine. I’d recognize her voice anywhere, and it makes my heart ache. I don’t turn. Instead, I keep my eyes on Elena’s engagement ring.“That… what is that?” Jennifer says.Francesco nods at her, his poker face in place. I’ve brought Jennifer to this
ElenaMy hands are trembling as I hold my phone up, a photo of Alexander and Jennifer staring back at me. She’s smiling at him, and he’s looking at her; the two of them standing in the jewelry store he took me to pick our rings. Based on the suit he’s wearing in the photo, this must have been just a few days ago.Has he been seeing her all along? I can’t make sense of this. The way he reacted when I broke that photo frame made me think that maybe, just maybe, he was actually moving on from her. But the way he looks at her in this photo… it’s the same way he’s always looked at her.I don’t understand why he’s even with her at all. Why wouldn’t he have told me about it? He’s been acting so possessive lately that I was under the impression that I’m the only woman in his life. Was I wrong? Was his behavior really just him projecting his own unfaithfulness?“What’s wrong?” Lucian asks, startling me.I lock my phone and look up at him, shaking my head. He’s been so incredibly depressed afte
“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