I quickly discovered that I liked Veda. There was something truly special about her, and I could see why Luca was so in love with her. Of that, there was no doubt. Even in the short time I’d seen them together, I could see that she was his entire world.
It almost made me wish that I planned to stick around longer, and maybe for the first time in my life I’d know what it was like to have a real friend.
After assuring me there was nothing going on between her and Enzo, and me continuing to insist I wouldn’t care if there was, Veda changed the subject and started talking about the classes she was taking at the community college, and I was grateful so I wouldn’t have to continue to lie to someone I truly liked.
We were commiserating over professors who insisted on giving their students essay only questions on their tests when Enzo came in.
My eyes went to him immediately, drawn by something I couldn’t put a name to. But I knew something was wrong.
“Veda, would you leave us, please?”
She gave me a smile as she rose. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
“Okay. Thanks for the tour, and for keeping me company.”
Enzo glanced at her briefly and nodded with respect as she walked past, then closed the door behind her, turning the lock. The soft click was obscenely loud in the sudden silence of the room.
My heartbeat was loud in my ears as he took off his sunglasses and watch and tossed them on one of the nightstands. Then he turned and came straight at me, the question I was about to ask dying on my tongue when I met his eyes. Something was horribly, horribly wrong. “What happened?”
He gave no indication that he’d heard my question. When he reached me, he grabbed me up in his strong arms and wrapped one hand in my hair to tug my head back and bring my mouth up to his.
The kiss was nothing like any we’d shared before. I could practically taste the desperation. The sorrow. The rage and confusion. I tried to break away, to talk to him, but he tightened his grip on the back of my head, holding me prisoner as he ravaged my mouth.
I pressed my hands against his chest and tried to shove him away, but it was like trying to move a wall. He made a desperate sound low in his throat that made my heart ache, and so, finally, I gave in and wrapped my arms around his neck.
As soon as he felt my surrender, he lifted me off the ground and carried me over to the bed. Enzo broke the connection between us only long enough to undress us both, ignoring my questions when I tried again to get him to talk to me.
Once there were no more barriers between us, he laid me back, following me down as his lips once again met mine. I sucked in a breath as he entered me with one strong thrust. I expected it to hurt, but it didn’t. Not at all. I felt my body stretch to accommodate him, but there was no pain. Only a fierce stab of pleasure as my back arched and my legs opened wide to give him more room.
I felt his big body shudder on top of mine. “So wet,” he whispered against my mouth. “So sweet.”
My fingernails dug into the backs of his shoulders as, with a moan, he slowly pulled out before slamming back into me. One arm worked its way beneath my hips to pull me even closer, his weight braced on his other elbow beside my head.
Tearing his mouth from mine, he buried his face into my neck and took me hard and fast, breathing hard, his heart pounding against mine as with each strong thrust he moved us across the mattress until I hit the headboard.
I had no time to get too much into my head. To be scared. All I could do was feel the same sense of urgency as he tightened his arm around me, arching my body completely up off the mattress. Tension gathered in my lower belly with every hard thrust, his pelvis hitting my clit faster and faster, his lips whispering things too quiet for me to understand against my skin.
Just as I was hovering on the precipice, a low growl rumbled against my throat and his teeth sank into the muscle between my neck and shoulder. The pain mixed with pleasure, throwing me over the edge in a violent release just as Enzo stiffened above me, squeezing the breath from my lungs as he cried out and pushed himself impossibly deeper inside of me.
But he wasn’t done.
He was just getting started.
We stayed in bed for hours as he fucked me every which way, until my muscles felt so slack I had no idea how I was going to walk back downstairs for dinner. But it wasn’t the orgasms or the way he dominated my body that left me so exhausted, it was the emotion that poured out of him. The need he sucked out of me. Not with words, but with every touch. Every kiss. Every time I would try to talk to him, he would start kissing me. Or he’d shove my legs apart and put his mouth on me until I couldn’t form a comprehensive thought.
And his eyes…his eyes burned me from the inside out, delving into my soul and dragging me down into his personal hell with him. After that first time, he didn’t hide from me anymore, ordering me to open my eyes. To look at him. To watch. Until it was too much. Until I was nearly sobbing with the intensity of it. Only then did he release me, moving his gaze down my body, scorching every inch until I was surprised to see my skin was still unmarred when I looked down at myself.
And when he’d finally exhausted himself and we were lying in a tangle of sweaty limbs on top of the comforter, I tilted my face up to his. “Enzo, tell me what’s wrong.”
The crazed light in his eyes had dimmed, but at my words, it flickered back to life as they met mine, and at first, I thought he still wasn’t going to tell me. But then he brushed a strand of my hair from my forehead and said, “We only have a few days until your father will be coming to get you. If Luca can get us that much time when he talks to Luigi.” He didn’t look confident in his boss’s abilities. “He said he would think of some reason to keep you here as long as we could.”
My blood, rushing through me like lava just a few minutes before, froze in my veins. “No.”
“Sera, we have no other choice but to tell him you’re here.”
I shoved him away from me, sitting up and turning my back to the gorgeous man sprawled across the bed as I scooted my way off the opposite side. “You have no choice. But I fucking do. And I’m not sitting around here waiting for him to come get me and lock me back inside of my room.” Or worse. But I didn’t voice that fear out loud.
Enzo sat up and tried to grab my wrist, but I pulled it out of his reach and slid off the mattress. “Sera. There’s nowhere you can go.”
A thought occurred to me, and I whirled to face him with my shirt held in front of me. “Is that why you brought me here? So I couldn’t get away?”
His brows drew together. “What? No—”
“Bullshit.” Panicked now, I yanked my shirt over my head, not bothering to search for my bra, and scanned the floor for my pants. Finding them lying beneath Enzo’s suit jacket, I kicked it aside and started pulling them on.
Enzo was off the bed in a flash and came around to stand in front of me. He grabbed my arms, forcing me to give up on my pants. I left them hanging somewhere below my hips and stared around his left arm with a mutinous expression as he tried to get me to look at him.
When I refused, he finally said, “Do you really believe I would do something like that to you?”
“Yes,” I answered without even thinking about it. “Of course, you would. Your loyalty isn’t to me. It’s to Luca. To your mafia family. I understand that. And honestly, I’m not even mad about it.” That was a slight understatement, but I didn’t want this to turn into some kind of lover’s quarrel. I just wanted to leave. “Where’s my money?”
He was quiet for a minute, then he released my arms and took a step back. I kept my eyes averted from his naked form as I finished pulling on my pants. “Where is it?” I asked again.
“It’s safe.”
“I want it back. Now.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t answer me.
I started to shake. If he wouldn’t give me my money, there was no way I’d be able to survive even if he did let me go. “Goddammit, Enzo. That money is mine. I’m not asking you for anything else. I just want my clothes and my money and my car so I can get the hell out of here.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I remembered that my car was still back at his hotel. “No. Know what? I don’t even care about the car. I’ll call an Uber.”
He stood still and silent until I braced myself for his anger and looked up at him.
But it wasn’t anger I found in his expression, it was loss. Utter devastation. Just for a second before he schooled his features and shifted his gaze to the side. “You’re not going anywhere,” he told me softly. “Not yet.” Walking around me, he headed to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. A few seconds later, I heard the shower come on.
I stood there beside the bed where I’d just given this man my fucking soul, and he thought he could just make decisions about my life and then walk away?
Oh, hell no.
Flinging the door open, I marched into the walk-in closet you had to go through before you got to the bathroom and started searching for a safe or anywhere he could be hiding my money. The closet was empty except for our two suitcases, so it didn’t take me long to see there was nothing of the sort in there.
Laying Enzo’s suitcase on the floor, I opened it and started tossing his clothes around haphazardly, looking for my tote bag. It wasn’t in there, either. Sitting back on my heels, I tried to think. Maybe he left it back at the hotel. We didn’t check out when we left, but then again, he could’ve done it online or something.
“What are you doing?”
Enzo stood in the doorway of the closet wearing nothing but a low-hanging towel and a carefully blank expression.
“I’m looking for my money, what the hell do you think I’m doing?”
“It’s not here, Sera.”
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. Slowly, I got to my feet. “Then where the hell is it?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he leveled a steady stare at me that was strangely devoid of feeling. “I told you, you’ll get it back when it’s time.”
“And when will that time be, Enzo? Huh? When you hand it over to my fucking father? It’s not his money.”
“No. I wouldn’t do that.”
As we stood there staring each other down, all of the fight suddenly drained out of me, and I crumpled to the floor as a cold numbness crept through my bones and reality slapped me in the face. There was nothing I could do. I was going back to my father. Even if I found the money, this place was so well guarded that there was no way I’d be able to sneak away without someone seeing me.
My life was over before I’d even had the chance to live.
“Why don’t you take a shower and change before dinner.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. The temperature in the room felt like it’d dropped twenty degrees. I dragged my eyes up to Enzo’s expressionless face. The man who stood before me was nothing like the man who’d just fucked me like it was the last time he was ever going to see me.
And that was when I understood. He’d acted that way because it was true. He wasn’t going to fight for me. He was letting me go. That, or he knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t be able to stop it. “So, that’s it?” I asked him.
He cocked his head slightly in question.
“You’re finished with me already?”
I searched his face for some sign of regret, anger…something. But there was nothing. And that made me angrier than anything he could’ve said.
“What about the things you promised me? The money? The ID? All the shit I’d need to start a new life. We made a deal, and I think I’ve more than lived up to it.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” he said. “I just need time to figure out—for Luca and I to figure out—a way to get you those things without starting a war between the families. A war that we can’t afford right now for numerous reasons.”
I scoffed at his excuse. Even if that were true and he meant every word, he knew damn well there was no way they’d be able to buy time for me. Not now. Not when both Luigi and my father knew that I was here.
He was saying goodbye. That’s what that sex fest had been about. He was saying goodbye.
His words meant nothing to me.
With a sigh, he squatted in front of me. Close enough to touch if I wanted him to. I didn’t. “Sera,” he said quietly. “I meant what I said when I promised to help you get away. But you have to understand, I’m stuck in a hard place right now, and all I’m asking is that you give me these few days to figure out a way to get you out of here without inciting your father. Will you do that for me?”
He was asking me to trust him with the impossible. But how did I trust a man I barely knew? A man who lied to me with his words when his eyes told me the truth?
But sitting here arguing with him was getting me nowhere, so I’d play along. For now. “Fine,” I told him.
“Thank you,” he said, and I could hear the relief in his voice. Tentatively, he brushed my hair back from my face, and I nearly burst into tears at the familiar gesture. “I promise we’ll figure this out.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Because no, we wouldn’t. I knew my father. What Enzo was asking for would be impossible. There was no way I was going to escape. I never should have let him bring me here. I don’t know what I was thinking, except that I hadn’t wanted to stay in the hotel room by myself, or ask him to pay for it so that I could. And I had nowhere else to go without putting other people in danger.
With a heavy sigh, he gathered up his clothes that he’d folded so carefully in his suitcase and began hanging them up.
While he did that, I grabbed a bra and underwear, jeans, and an old Cure T-shirt from my own suitcase and headed into the shower. I couldn’t even look at him right now. And if I wanted to have any chance of getting myself out of this situation, I needed to pull myself together and continue to act like the poor, helpless female who waited around while the men decided what they were going to do with her.
Yeah. Fuck that.
I’d get myself out of this situation.
Somehow.
Because there was no way in hell I was going back to my father without a fight.
