Page 30 of Cruel Tyrant

“Dolcezza,” I say as gently as I can. “Please, just this once, finish this meal I cooked for you then go put on comfortable clothes. I want you to see something, and I hope it will help explain things.”

That gets her attention. Her brows knit, but she’s still very much on guard. I like the way she looks like she’s not sure if I’m about to bite her throat off or if I’m going to shower her in presents. It’s a little of both.

“Just so you know, if this ride doesn’t make me feel better, I’m going to be even more angry with you.”

“I figured as much.” I get up and leave her to eating since I don’t think my presence is helping much. I sit in the back yard and answer emails from the patio table, but I’m distracted by my wife.

I shouldn’t care about her feelings. I’m keeping her safe, and that should be enough for her—except I don’t want to go to sleep alone anymore. I want her in the bed with me, I want to feel her warmth, I want her touch, her lips, her moans, I want her everything, and it’s very fucking inconvenient. I’ve never been responsible for someone else’s emotions before. I can barely handle my own.

The drive out to the edge of town is tense. She refuses to talk to me and I get tired of trying to draw her out. I pull down the bumpy driveway and park outside of the warehouse before killing the engine.

“You’re not about to kill me, are you?” Her eyebrows quirk. “Because my brothers would notice that.”

“Come on, baby,” I say and head toward the entrance.

She follows, looking a little reluctant, but once inside, she stares around at the mess, and I hope she understands.

The place is still a wreck. We organized what we could, but there are still shards of shattered crates and other refuse thrown in the corners waiting for some spare manpower to come haul it all away. I walk through the nightmare and gesture at a pallet of bullet boxes, thousands of them just waiting for their home.

“For years, our conflict with Uncle Luciano has been quiet,” I say, and I hope she can understand how important this is. “But he’s making moves, dolcezza. The night before last, one of my soldiers was killed outside of a bar, just gunned down in the middle of a fucking crowd. His girlfriend has just given birth to a little baby boy, and now that child will grow up without a father.”

I turn to face her. I’m not telling her this to make her feel bad, but to make her understand. If she had asked me to get a job a week ago, I would’ve said yes, without hesitation, because I want her to be happy. I want her to find a way to fit in this new life.

But now Santoro has gone from sinking boats and wrecking a warehouse to drawing blood, and that’s a line which can’t be uncrossed.

“I didn’t know,” she says, speaking very gently. Her hands stray to her face. “Oh, god. That’s why you were in a bad mood.”

“Rocco was a good man. Bruno’s pretty fucked up over the whole thing. Everyone’s on high alert waiting for Santoro’s next move, and that’s why I can’t have you out getting a new job.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” she asks and comes closer. “I feel like such an asshole right now.”

“I’m not good at this.” Which is an enormous understatement. I’m not good at anything when it comes to human interactions, much less navigating a complicated relationship like the one I’m forming with Stefania. We were thrown together, forced into a match that neither of us really wants, and that makes this immeasurably more difficult. I don’t know where I stand with her, and I don’t know where she stands with me, which leaves us tangled in a messy knot.

“Next time, communicate.” She comes closer and puts a hand on my chest. My heart’s beating hard, but steady. “If someone you care about got hurt, tell me about it. I’ll understand.”

I put my hand over hers and pull her forward until she’s pressed against me. Her mouth opens and she licks her lips, and I can’t take my eyes off her little pink tongue. I’ve been so fucking hungry for her ever since she refused to come back to my bed last night, and that’s a problem right there, but it’s a problem I can’t solve with guns and knives and blood. It’s a problem I’m not equipped to handle.

“I thought if I brought you here and showed you the mess, you’d understand better. This thing with Uncle Luciano, it’s real, and it’s getting worse. That’s why I don’t want you outside of the oasis’s protection right now. Our block is the only safe place in this whole damn city, and if you’re at home, I don’t have to worry about you. But if you’re in some office—” I leave that unspoken. I don’t want to imagine her getting killed on her fucking commute.

“I understand.” She lets out a long breath. “I hate it, but I understand. I remember what things were like when my family was at war.”

I almost forgot that her brothers spent the last few years battling for control of Philadelphia. That’d been one of the most brutal and violent mafia conflicts in the entire country in the last decade, and that’s why my father wanted to create this alliance. We’re about to enter into our own street fight, and it’s smart to have competent and experienced men in our corner.

“What can I do to make this up to you?” I ask very softly, and I find that I mean it. I don’t want her to sit around the house feeling miserable, but I also know I can’t let her out of my family’s protections for hours every day.

“You can kill your Uncle Luciano or whoever he is and let me get a job.” She smiles sweetly and I like her vicious little mouth. She’s a violent kitten with razor-sharp claws. “Short of that, I don’t know.”

“I can pay you more attention, dolcezza.” I touch her chin, finger brushing toward her mouth. “Have you been feeling neglected?”

“No, not really,” she says, cheeks turning pink. I’m willing to bet she’s thinking about all the time we’ve been spending together. Very vigorous, very intimate time. “I just want to feel useful. Back home, I was always—” She stops herself and looks away.

But I pull her face back toward mine. We’re entwined now and my body’s pulsing to grab her and bury her mouth with my lips, but there’s something she wants to say, only she hasn’t been able to find the words. I want to help.

“Tell me. You were always, what?”

“I was the baby.” She laughs lightly, but there’s a bitterness in her expression that tells me exactly how unfunny it feels to her. “My parents barely wanted me when I was born and by the time I was growing up, they were all but checked out. Renzo raised me, and my brothers helped out, but they weren’t equipped to be anything more than really bad stand-ins for actual authority figures. I was mostly forgotten and left on my own, and I always felt like I was the cast-off, the least important member of my family, and practically forgotten about half the time. I think they let me go to college mostly to keep me out from under foot.”

I try to picture how that must feel. In my family, everyone is equally important, though we’ve always been in a quiet competition for my father’s attention. But my mother’s the kind of woman who can spread herself thin and still seems so vibrant and alive. None of my siblings are forgotten, although I’d bet Laura wishes she could be, but it must’ve been agony for Stefania to go through life feeling like she wasn’t wanted by her own family.

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