Page 42 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

I know I wore that pussy out, but you have to get up eventually.

Where are you?

How long do you think you can hide from me?

Unlock your door and let me wake you up how you like it.

Keep ignoring me. See what I do next time I get my hands on you.

(You’ll fucking love it.)

Every day I don’t have you, it just makes me worse.

The messages go on and on. Between them, he sent pictures of himself. Videos, occasionally. My phone is littered with his suggestions, his threats, his promises, his fantasies.

One message in particular, I have played over and over, listening to his low morning voice telling me about the dream he had where he had me chained to his bed, needy for him like a cat in heat. In the dream, my only purpose was to wait around to be fucked by him. I was his good girl, at the ready and waiting for him night and day, and that I loved it when he would come and take me whenever he wanted.

Nico wouldn’t wait around, polite and patient forever. This was doomed to happen. He would storm his way back into my life, into this room where I once shared late nights with Vinny, cuddled up together, chewing through mindless reality TV andstand-up specials. The one sacred place he shouldn’t be able to reach me.

In my silence, Nico pushes forward and kisses me hard. My hair spills through his fingers as he catches my face between his hands and overwhelms me.

“I shouldn’t have played nice,” he whispers between breathy kisses. “I shouldn’t have let you anywhere out of my sight. I should have kept you beneath me in that hotel room forweeks, teaching you your place.”

My breath hitches.

There’s anositting stubborn on my tongue, but it won’t leave my lips. I can’t make a sound.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the hotel room was like a vacation from reality, where for just a few hours, the real world had no meaning. No past, no future. While we were there, being with Nico felt good in all the ways that it felt wrong. When I came back here and sat in the old, worn room I once shared with Vinny, where little reminders of him are tucked into every corner, on every wall, in every drawer—it broke me.

Istillthought about Nico.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed tokeepwanting him after that night. I wasn’t supposed to replay his messages or trace the bruises of his fingerprints in the mirror.

Two tectonic plates in my life collided: my broken love for Vinny slammed right up against this sudden hunger for Nico, and I got pinned under the rubble, unable to dig my way out. Nicowas right—I liked it when he fucked me slowly, gently. When he tortured me with lovemaking that made my heart curl up and my belly flutter.Like a wife, as he put it.

If I couldn’t feel that with Vinny, I told myself I would never feel it at all. That it simply wasn’t meant to be in my life. I wasn’t supposed to feel it, want it, lie in bed and daydream about it like a teenager all over again. I took Nico’s deal because I was so sure he couldn’t get deep enough to hurt me.

But I’m hurt.

Universe two, Ava zero.

“Nico, don’t,”I whisper as he kisses me the only way he knows how to kiss—desperate and hungry. Nothing else is natural to him.

“That’s not a no,” he says.

I can’t bring myself to utter the one syllable that will make him stop. My silence goes on too long. He kisses me again and brings me up into his arms. My legs wrap around his waist, the muscle memory of our night together coming back hot and blazing between my thighs.

The pain faded and the bruises healed, and I missed them. I missedhim.

“No,” I finally choke out when my back hits the bedsheets. “Not here,” I hear myself saying, over and over. “Not in here. Not like this. Please,” I beg him, so senseless as I sprawl under him. My pleading fills up the silence until I realize Nico really has stopped.

I sit up, taking one look at him and my broken door and my clothes all over the floor, and all at once, I do what I haven’t done in months—I start to cry. Pathetically, in front of the most attractive man I’ve ever seen, tears that have nothing to do with physical pain or pleasure come spilling down my cheeks. I bury my face in my hands, trying to hide it.

Nico freezes.

His hands come up halfway, hesitating, as if he suddenly doesn’t know what to do. I’ve never seen him look uncertain before. “Stop it,” he whispers fiercely, sitting down and pulling me into him. He buries my face in his chest where I cry against him instead. He holds me like that for what feels like an eternity. My throat hurts and my eyes feel stiff. I don’t have any more tears to give.

“I’m sorry,” I manage. “I can’t. I shared this room withhim.”

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