But the dashboard clock changes and still—locked in his gaze—I say nothing, because I don’t want to end this marriage. Not now, because I need to stay close to Gia, and maybe not ever, because I want, with all my heart and not a bit of my head, to stay close to him.

  Santino’s trap isn’t the traditions or the threats anymore.

  I’m living in the prison of my own feelings.

  He isn’t offering me an annulment. He’s offering me a choice.

  He’s laying everything he has on a single bet, and he’s going to win.

  19

  VIOLETTA

  I leave the car without telling him what I want because even though I know what I want to say, I don’t want to say it. Once I do, the words can’t be unspoken and the offer won’t be made again. If I want to leave, I’ll have to run away.

  “I need to know now,” he says once we’re alone inside his house.

  “I’m not letting it go,” I reply. “If I stay, don’t expect me to let what happened to me happen to anyone else. I don’t want to make your life a living hell, but I might have to.”

  “Old sins have long shadows.” He tosses his keys on the table. I’ve never seen him miss, but this time, they slide over the surface and clap to the floor. He doesn’t pick them up. “Every day, I wish I was more for you. I forced my way in, but I can’t force you to stay.”

  “It’s not about me anymore. She’s terrified, Santi.”

  He holds out his hands, a gold ring on each fourth finger. The crown ring is modest on the back side—indistinguishable from the wedding band on the left. He’s offering me what he has. Nothing. He can’t help me because he’s helpless. He has no power to do it. Both hands are tied in gold.

  I lay my hands over his.

  “I know.” He looks down at our clasped hands. “Those first days… I couldn’t see you. I couldn’t let myself.” He won’t look at me, just at the gold bands that decorate our fingers.

  “Help me end this,” I whisper. “You’re not a bad person.”

  He waits for the qualifier—the “but” before the twist of the knife. Instead, I leave the statement unarmed.

  “You should be careful.” He cups my face, close now, his words of caution lighter than a breath. “When the devil caresses you, he wants your soul.”

  “Maybe you’re the one who should be careful.”

  His lips meet mine before my last word is finished. The soft pressure of his mouth doesn’t demand a response. It doesn’t even ask. The kiss is not taken from me, nor is it willingly given. When our mouths open together, nothing is exchanged, neither consent nor command, because what we create can never be owned or stolen by either of us. It is ours—woven from our in-between space, from the warmth of our bodies escaping through the cracks in our hearts.

  More than our wedding, this kiss is a sacrament.

  “If I release Gia,” he says, “will you forgive me for not releasing you?”

  “I do forgive you. But what if I didn’t?”

  “I’d release her anyway.” With another kiss, he presses me against the wall, the gentle vulnerability of his mouth turning hot and hungry.

  “Wait.” I push him away only far enough to let my lips make words. “You will?”

  “I will.”

  “You’ll pay Marco’s debt?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “I’ll give Damiano what he really wants.”

  “Is it—”

  He cuts me off with a kiss before answering. “It’s not Gia. Not even a wedding.”

  The aggressive shape of his hardness pushes against my thigh, and I lift my leg to his hip to move the shape to center. He takes that leg under the knee, then the other, and I lock my ankles around him, digging my fingers in his hair as he kisses me, drawing him closer. I want to eat him alive. Crawl inside him and rest inside his skin. Consume the soul he thinks he’s sold to hell, because it is desirable—a prize worthy of eternity—and mine is a devil’s caress.

  Everything has a price.

  “What about the next woman who’s sold?” I ask, pulling away only slightly. He’s trying to kiss me, but I’m not having it. “Will you bless it?”

  “Ask me later.”

  “Now,” I demand, then soften it so he doesn’t get defensive. “Please.”

  “I told you I don’t like this game.”

  “I have one last card to play.” I move his hand to my backside and give him the coy smile of an innocent. “Are you all in?”

  “I have been punto tutto from the beginning.” He grinds into my soft center. “I will end it, and I may be killed for it.”

  “You won’t be.”

  With my legs wrapped around him and his hands under my bottom, he carries me up the steps to his room, where he lays me on the bed and removes my clothes piece by piece, touch by touch, kiss by kiss, until we’re a combined beast of writhing limbs and grappling hands. His lips make a line from my throat to my breasts and belly before he buries his face between my legs, licking me with the full width of his fluttering tongue and sucking gently on my nub until I’m so lit up, I could set the city on fire.

  “More,” I breathe, clutching his hair.

  He flicks and strokes my opening, then moves his mouth there, softening the edge, then moves lower and hitches my hips off the mattress to reach even lower and—

  “Oh.”

  His tongue ventures into unexpected places, startling me. I push him away, but Santino captures my hands in his own and gently runs his tongue along my asshole. It steals the air in my lungs, and two strokes of his tongue later, I’m putty in his hands. Every flick ignites something deep within me, an urge and an itch I didn’t know existed. His grunts deepen and I feel his body thrust against the bed. The act of licking my ass is turning him on, and suddenly things click together.

  “Santi,” I whisper.

  “Say yes or no now.” He gets up. “This won’t wait.” He presses his thumb against the tight wetness of my asshole.

  “No,” I say, and he removes his thumb, looking at me over the curves of my breasts. “No, I don’t want an annulment.”

  He blinks as if he needs a moment to take in the timing and substance of the answer.

  “I know your heart,” I add. “I know you want to free Gia, and you’ll do everything you can. I know how hard that is for you, but it makes me want to stay with you, whether you succeed or not.”

  He gets up on his knees and wipes his mouth with his wrist, towering between my spread legs. The heavy hardness jutting from his pelvis is both a threat and a promise. His command and dominance has muscled past whatever vulnerability he showed downstairs.

  “You ask a lot of me, Forzetta.” Lifting my legs, he takes my ass cheeks in his rough hands and spreads them. “Too much for a wife who hasn’t given me everything I want.”

  A hot chill runs down my spine and settles where his attention pierces me.

  “What do you want?” I ask. I know what he wants, but he has to say it.

  Each of his thumbs rests on my asshole, spreading it, opening me to a new type of desire.

  “I want to fuck this tight little hole.”

  “You want to hurt me,” I say.

  He smirks and lays his finger on my lips. I part them so he can rest it on my tongue.

  “I don’t need to fuck your ass to hurt you.”

  I close my lips and suck his finger.

  “I need to own you. My wife. All of you.” He leans back, removing his wet finger, then presses it against my exposed rear. “Breathe.” With my inhale, he slides in to one knuckle. The sensation is so new, I buck and groan. Lightly brushing against my clit, he goes deeper. “Does this hurt?”

  “It’s only a finger.”

  He leans over me to open a night table drawer, plucks out a tube of lotion, and cracks it open with his teeth.

  “It might hurt.” He squeezes a line of white lubricant on his hand, then between my cheeks. “For a moment.” Two fingers enter my ass with no resistance.

  “Oh, my God,” I cry, then I’m utterly open-mouth speechless as he twists those fingers, removes them, and pushes in again, while using his other hand on my clit. The threat of pain hovers on the other side of the sensation, and if he doesn’t break down the door, I’m tempted to invite it in.

  “Your ass is so fucking tight.”

  His fingertips slide along my folds where I’m so slick I can’t tell where the pleasure in my clit begins and my stretched muscles end. I’m past shame or discomfort. I’m not worried about pain anymore. I want it.

  “Take it,” I say, because I’ll say anything right now.

  “Take what?”

  “My asshole. Take my ass. Fuck it.” I’m so close to breaking, I’m near tears.

  “Your ass is going to worship my cock, but first I want to feel how it comes.”

  He flicks my clit faster. I should have come by now, but the way his fingers stretch me hold the orgasm at bay. He’s smiling. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

  “Please. Fuck my ass so hard. Please.”

  “You’re the dirtiest virgin I ever met.”

  “God, yes.” I am filthy, indecent, and I’m breaking into ecstasy, asshole pulsing around his fingers to draw them deeper, blind in a pleasure more intense and a surrender more complete than I ever imagined possible.

  Twisting with his touch, I’m face down when he removes his fingers and I feel something cold and wet on my ass. More lube. He pulls my hips up.

  “Knees apart,” he says impatiently.

  I spread them.

  “Now,” he says, breathlessly rubbing the head of his cock between the cheeks. “Now you are mine.”

  “I am yours.” Sliding a hand between my legs, I feel how wet I am. My body has ceded utterly. “Take me.” My whispers are heavy with want. I am so hard in love it hurts. “Take what you want.”

  The last word ends in a squeak as he pushes against the tight opening.

  “You are mine.” He is all muttering growl, lost in a prayer of possession. “You are mine.”

  Gently, his cock breaks me open, and I feel the split like a tear in my very core.

  “Slow, my violet,” he whispers, pulling out. “If we go slow, it will only hurt for a moment.”

  “I trust you.”

  “Bene.” He shifts me to my side, puts one of my legs over his shoulder, and straddles the one on the bed. Now I can see him and the expression of care he intends to take, and that relaxes me.

  “Bene,” I say, smiling.

  He pushes into my ass again, and I’m split again. As gentle as he is, the act is not. It tears and expands, distends and breaks, marking and scarring a piece of my body forever.

  We work into a careful rhythm, thrusting and rocking. He stops every few strokes and massages my clit so my body can catch up, then, without warning, the pain is rerouted into pleasure, and the stretching turns into submission as he drives deep and stops to close his eyes as if in prayer.

  “Violetta,” he whispers.

  “Santino.” I pant. My body begs and pleads. “Don’t stop.”

  “Not yet, my blood violet.” He bends the leg over his shoulder, exposing more of me. “We come together.”

  “Tell me when, amore mio.”

  My Italian cracks him. He slides one finger over my clit and uses the other to steady us as his thrusts grow harder.

  “Now, amore mio,” Santino commands.

  We come together with broken shouts and tight grunts. My body stretches and contracts. I shake, I cry, I scream. Santino works my clit as we ride the waves together. As he marks me deep inside, I surrender to the man he is and the man he promised he could be.

  Santino pads back from the bathroom with a warm, damp towel. He cleans me up carefully, whispering in two languages. How much he loves me. How much I am his. How much he is mine. Then he lays next to me and pulls me close, kissing me hard, his breath minty and clean. “I thought I would lose you today. It made me crazy.”

  “Would you have given me the annulment if I wanted it?”

  He’s silent for a minute, looking at me with a gaze deep into himself. Then he snaps his focus back to me.

  “Yes.” He frowns, brushing the hair from my face and stroking my cheek. “But there would have been consequences.”

  He rolls onto his back, and I scoot closer to him, tucking my head on his shoulder.

  “Such as?” I figure the answer will be a few words about the consequences to me. Being chased forever. Being caught and broken over his cock like a twig. Or the consequences to him. Shattered heart? Endless sadness?

  “What I gave up, other men would try to take. I would be unable to protect you unless I locked you in my basement.”

  I get my elbow under me and put my face between his and the ceiling. As over-the-top as the declaration of love I expected might have been, it probably wouldn’t have demanded a reasonable response the way this one does.

  “I’m just a nursing student who didn’t marry well.”

  “You’re a treasure worth stealing.”

  Our sweet love talk got very serious, very quickly, and there seems to be something besides his subjective feelings about me at the core of his promise.

  Getting my knees under me, I straddle him and put my hands on his chest as if that’s the way to speak to his heart. “Like you did?”

  His manner snaps from tranquil to alert like a folding magician’s wand released from inside a sleeve. Our postcoital cocoon has been torn open.

  “Like I did. But I’d throw the pieces of the crown away before I hurt a hair on your head. You are the precious thing, Forzetta. You are unique, and powerful, and beautiful. That crown puts you in danger, and it keeps you safe. That’s why I want it.”

  “Too bad. Your lust for power is kind of a turn-on.”

  He laughs, cupping my jaw and stroking my cheeks with his thumbs. “What is power, my blood violet?”

  “Belief,” I whisper then kiss him. “It’s people believing you have it. No one thinks I’m powerful.”

  “I do.”

  “If that’s your final word,” I coo, dropping my cheek onto his chest, “I will accept it.”

  “Will you?”

  “Lo voglio.” I repeat the words he told God I used at our wedding, when a cry to be free was manipulated into I will, because the first way to have power of choice is to get your husband to believe you have it.

  20

  SANTINO

  Laser-Topia is more pleasant hours before it opens, when the house lights are on and the exclamation points aren’t flashing. The club is far less excruciating without darkness to cover the patches in the matte black walls and the lights distracting from the stains in the floor. It’s a real place.

  Damiano sits on a barstool, nursing an amber liquid, spotting me in the mirror behind the bar. The bartender wipes down glasses with a dingy gray towel. He’s a young, handsome guy with light brown hair and the potential for a gut in ten years.

  “Robert,” I say as I slide onto a stool.

  “Hey, man. Loretta said to pour you something.”

  “San Pellegrino.”

  “You got it.” He snaps a green bottle from the fridge and leaves to get ice.

  “The little wife not like it when you drink or something?” Damiano says.

  I just smile, flicking away a crumb from the bar’s surface.

  He knows nothing about the power of wives.

  Damiano and I were like brothers. We loved each other and hated each other. We pulled each other up and dragged each other down. We both knew I was Emilio’s favorite, but we were partners. When we thought he was going to die, we agreed it was too soon for us to try to fill any vacuum he left. When we were ready to have our own territory, we’d run it together.

  Those were the rules until the day Emilio gave Rosetta to me.

  When Damiano left the room without promising to honor our boss’s wishes, I chased him to the end of the hall. He was getting into a crowded elevator. I stuck my hand in the doors and, after they bounced open, wedged myself next to him.

  “Fuck you,” he murmured.

  A pretty nurse gave him a look. She was too young to be such a prude, but out of respect for her, I didn’t tell him to go fuck himself.

  In the lobby, we went right for a couch in the corner that was bordered by tall, brass ashtrays. I took out a smoke even though I didn’t want it.

  “He’s going to live, you know,” I said.

  “Yeah. And he’s still giving it all to you.”

  “He’s going to be buried with the crown up his ass and you know it.”

  Damiano laughed. I laughed. It seemed like it was going to be all right. Nothing had to change.

  “You know,” he said. “The last few days? When we all thought he was gonna kick? My dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t have to say another word. Cosimo had taken over as if the territory was his birthright, but he would have to relinquish control when Emilio was out of the hospital. He was loyal, but ambitious. A week with a power vacuum was a dangerous time.

  “When he hears you basically got the crown?” Damiano shakes his head and blows smoke. “Feel sorry for your ass.”

  Emilio’s preference for me wouldn’t protect me from Cosimo, who could kill me in an instant. And if I killed him, I’d have to answer to Emilio, who’d probably kill me just to prove the preference didn’t exist.

  “Don’t tell him,” I said. “Please.”

  Camilla Moretti came down the long hospital hallway in a brown, ankle-length wool coat and black boots, hair flying behind her. Her strides were long and confident, as if she was the daughter of Altieri Cavallo, not the docile wife of a capo who was almost drowned.

  “I won’t.” Damiano stamped out his cigarette. “Fuck, I’m pretty sure he’d slit my throat for being second in line.”

  We shook hands on it just as Emilio’s wife reached us.

  “Mrs. Moretti,” I said with a respectful bow. “We just got out. He looks good.”