Page 14 of Maddest Temptation

Soft patters of rain landed on my coat. It was an ugly, depressing day. The bouquet of flowers I had left for her would soon become drenched with rain. What had caught my eye when I arrived this morning, was that a fresh bouquet of white tulips had been placed at my sister’s tombstone.

Tulips.

I knew only one person with an obsession with tulips, one person who would go to the greatest lengths to find them even though they were not in season. I tried to push thoughts of her out of my head but waging war with myself was futile. So, I had been torturing myself with visions of Francesca Manci for the past week—no reprieve.

Night after night I placed my head on my pillow only to be invaded with golden blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and the sweet scent of cherries. It left my mouth watering and my dick hard as a fucking stone. Not even Claire, my usual booty call was able to soothe my needs.

Once.

All it took was seeing her once again and my body was already acting like a teenager after discovering his dick served for other purposes other than pissing. It was pathetic and not to mention unnecessary. Francesca had no place in my head, not even to annoy the fuck out of me with that tight mini dress.

Fuck. Me.

It had left nothing to the imagination, it had hugged her body in all the right places. She was nineteen the last time I saw her, and you could already see traces of the woman she was becoming, but holy devil.

The woman was a temptation.

She was the most delicious of sins, and I wanted to commit it over and over again. Soft curves, which demanded to be grabbed by my hands. Wide hips that would look incredible straddling mine. Round breasts that would taste exquisite and mile-long legs that have no trouble wrapping around my waist as I pounded?—

“Fuck.” I pinched my nose and looked at my shoes, anywhere but the tombstone before me, feeling a bout of shame.

Bella and Francesca had been close friends and that’s actually how I met Francesca, through my little sister. When Francesca and I started dating in secret, she had wanted to tell Bella. I was the idiot who told her not to. I was scared, terrified even. Back then, Francesca was already promised to Paolo. Their engagement was set, she even had his ring on her delicate finger.

Francesca didn’t want him. She had only met Paolo twice before being offered to him like cattle in a market. We were supposed to have been friends and nothing more, not even that…acquaintances at best. But then, how could I stay away from her?

Meeting Francesca was like meeting an angel after living in the darkness of Hell for centuries. She was the light at the end of a long endless tunnel. The bright light in my cold, dark world.

“What am I going to do, Bellissima?” I tapped my shoe on the floor.

The silence that followed was like a knife to the gut. I didn’t know why I insisted on coming here every week. My father used to say it was a form of obsession. My brother Vitelli said it was a form of grief. I disagreed. It was guilt, plain and simple.

Still is.

I sighed as my phone chimed, the incoming messages a sign it was going to be a busy day. There were no off days in the Mafia, especially not for a young Capo who was being watched by vultures ready to pick off my carcass the moment I fell. That was not going to happen—unfortunately for them.

The drive to one of my newest clubs took me slightly more than the usual twenty minutes. Pearl Jam blasted on the radio, and while alone, I allowed myself to fully enjoy the music, singing along to vent some of the upcoming stress.

The club, Posh, was empty save for the cleaners and the staff who were getting it ready for the night. I made my way up to my office on the second floor, shut the door with my foot, and then headed toward my desk, which sat before a massive floor-to-ceiling window that offered me a view of the club downstairs.

I took my seat and opened my drawer, picking up one of my favorite knives. I wasn’t a knife kind of man, but this one in particular was special because of the person it was going to kill. Grigori Petrovich, Pakhan of the Russian Bratva and my sister’s murderer.

I had been saving this blade for this job for four years now, waiting and planning how I was going to savor every moment of stabbing it into his heart. Offering no mercy. Only pain. Like he’d done with my sister. Stabbing her in the gut and leaving her there in the living room to bleed out. So, we could find her later on.

I could still remember the sight, the blood seeping onto the marble floor, painting it red. Her cries, the unrelenting fear in her eyes, the tremor in her hands, and finally, the empty gaze in her eyes, which were once filled with so much warmth.

I swallowed hard while gripping the knife, and closed my eyes, imagining Grigori’s face and his own dead eyes when I killed him.

How sweet it would be.

It was a ritual of sorts. Every day, like a prayer I would stare at that knife and imagine the man I’d kill with it. A promise. A vow. Something to keep me going when the days grew long and cold. Even I, used to living in the dark, had days I felt lost. So, my promise to Bella was all I had left. My need for vengeance was stronger than the need for my next breath. Killing Grigori and his ilk was the reason God had put me on this earth.

The war with the Bratva might have started before I was even born, but my father was never ruthless, or cruel. He hadn’t been strong enough to end them. My father didn’t have the right motivation, as I had now. His untimely death due to a speeding accident made an impact on the Outfit, especially me. Now I was left to clean up his mess and deal with this shit.

I unlocked my phone again and ended up on the same gossip site from yesterday, only to be bombarded with a picture of Francesca and her late husband at a charity gala. I had done a thorough search of her this past week, mostly to scratch an itch. I had no idea why since I had no intentions of seeing her again.

After learning what I did, that Paolo Biancini mistreated Francesca, and allowed her to use drugs, all I wanted to do was kill him all over again. Torture Francesca’s late husband for days, making sure he paid for what he did to her.

Paolo had been known to have a foot on the wild side. He ran my drug empire in Indianapolis, overseeing it for me. No wonder she had easy access to it. That didn’t mean she should have. Francesca, as his wife and the wife of a Mafiosi, should have been protected from the darker aspects of our life.

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