Page 91 of Mafia King
There’s no point in pretending I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“I saidI willstop the‘mbasciata. I can’t now. Not without the crown.” I speak calmly, but it’s not stopping the trembling that’s taken her over from her face to the two hands holding the revolver. “Do you know how to use that?”
She clicks the hammer back, proving she watches television, but not that she understands how sensitive the trigger is.
“Gia says the wedding’s still on. They’re doing it. What the fuck, Santino?” She takes a hard sniff, and her breath hiccups. “Why are you letting this happen?”
In the shake of her hands and the break of her voice, she’s losing control of herself, and that trigger’s like a virgin dick in a wet cunt. The slightest friction and it’s all over.
“I can…” I don’t finish the sentence on purpose, because I don’t want her to react.
Instead, I grab her wrist and push it away, wrestling her down. The gun fires, leaving a long path of smoking splinters in the hardwood floor.
That could have been my brain.
If she’d killed me, what would happen to her?
How many men would come for my wife? And what would they do to her?
The thought of her being torn apart because I’m not here to protect her steals every ounce of my control. I become what I am and always was—an animal.
23
VIOLETTA
The opposite of love is apathy, and there’s nothing indifferent about my feelings toward my husband. I hate him for letting me love him almost as much as I hate him for loving me.
And I don’t want to shoot him. I don’t even want to hurt him. But I don’t know how to get through to him that what he’s allowing is worse than a sin, and I don’t know how to get out of the situation in the hallway without shooting him. I’ve gone too far.
When he wrestles me to the floor, the gun goes off. The power of it against my palm is so great that it loosens my fingers, freeing itself—and I’m grateful to Santino for making sure the bullet landed anywhere but his skull.
He gets off me and picks up the gun. For a moment, I’m sure he’s going to give me a taste of my own medicine in the form of a bitter threat of death.
Instead, he points the gun anywhere except at me. I’m in a crouch when he opens the cylinder and lets the bullets clatter to the floor. He swallows fire and breathes rage.
“Do you know what you almost did?” he growls, tossing the gun onto the hall table. It makes a clattering racket that echoes off the walls. I can still get to it, but it’s empty.
I’m terrified and aroused at the same time, but I’m also angry enough to get my feet under me. “Killed a liar.”
In one step, he has me by the throat, pressing me to the wall. I’m submissive, powerless, and immediately wet. He doesn’t hold me hard enough to choke me, but he’s forceful enough to pin me still with the pulse at the base of his hand throbbing against my neck. Intoxicating danger and solid protection mingle in my brain, and the blood in my veins thrums with electricity. I let him handle me, knowing he would never, ever harm me.
“You want to know what they’d do to you?” he says through his teeth. His grip tightens on my neck, but my nipples harden and an insatiable need grows between my legs.
Maybe I don’t want to know, but I nod against his hand.
“Tell me,” I croak. “But don’tlieagain.”
Santino snarls and pushes me into my bedroom, snarling and grumbling to himself in indecipherable Italian. I land on the bed on my back with my legs akimbo, struggling to get them under me quickly. Instead of fear, the knot of desire grows bigger and tighter, pulling the threads of my humming nerves together into an ever-spinning ball of need at my core.
“You’re going to let him marry Gia. For money.”
“To stop a war!” His voice rumbles across my chest and I really think I might combust before he even touches me.
Santino grabs the neckline of my dress in both hands and pulls them apart, ripping the dress in two, leaving me exposed and backing away, yet ready to be ravaged.
“You’re an animal,” I say, flinging myself at him with no plan but to get closer without giving an inch.
He grabs me by the waist and throws me over the gold-painted dresser. The carved wood edges dig into the tender skin of my stomach. My pussy quivers at the pain and the roughness of his hands as he flings the back of my dress up and spreads my legs apart.
