Page 112 of Savage Union
Her words land with unexpected impact. I know about traps, about impossible choices. About doing what's necessary tosurvive. Something shifts inside me—anger still dominant, but tempered now with a reluctant understanding.
"And now?" I ask, voice quieter but no less intense.
She meets my gaze, offering what appears to be truth at last. "Now I don't know what I am. What we are."
For a moment, I simply look at her, seeing something new in the familiar landscape of her face. The vulnerability there matches what I keep buried within myself—the uncertainty, the fear of connection after a lifetime of betrayal. Then I lean forward, pressing my forehead against hers in a gesture strangely intimate for all the anger still crackling between us.
"You're mine," I say finally, the words both declaration and question, a need for confirmation I've never allowed myself to express before. "Whatever else happens, whatever lies between us, that much remains true."
Before she can respond, I thrust forward, filling her completely in one powerful movement. The sensation overwhelms me—tight heat enveloping me, pleasure so intense it borders on pain. I've been with other women, but none have felt like this, like coming home to a place I never knew existed.
"Mine," I repeat, beginning to move with deliberate, controlled strokes. "Say it."
She shakes her head, clinging to her last shred of defiance even as her body welcomes me, accommodates me. Her resistance stirs something in me—respect mingled with the need to conquer.
"Say it," I demand again, changing my angle slightly to hit the spot I know makes her unravel. "Say you're mine, Caterina. After everything—the lies, the Irish, the betrayal—say you belong to me now."
"Vito," she gasps instead, a different kind of surrender.
It's not the submission I demanded, but hearing my name on her lips like that—breathless, desperate—satisfies somethingdeeper than ownership. My rhythm increases, control slipping as desire overtakes anger. My hand finds hers, fingers interlacing in a gesture at odds with the forceful nature of our coupling.
"Everyone leaves," I confess against her ear, words I've never spoken aloud escaping in the heat of the moment. "Everyone betrays. My mother. My father in his way. Every woman who claimed to care."
Her eyes widen at this glimpse behind my armor, but I can't stop the words now that they've started.
"I won't be betrayed again," I tell her, punctuating each word with a thrust that makes her gasp. "Not by you. Not by anyone."
There is anger in our joining, yes—mine at her deception, hers at my presumption. But there's something else too, something neither of us acknowledges as we move together on the kitchen counter, bodies speaking a truth our words cannot yet admit.
When she comes, her body clenching around me, my name falling from her lips again, I feel a surge of possession and pride more potent than any business victory. I've made her feel this, brought her to this point of surrender despite the lies between us.
I follow moments later, my control finally shattering as I spill myself inside her, claiming her in the most primal way possible. My forehead presses against hers again, our breathing synchronized in the aftermath of shared pleasure.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks. The anger hasn't dissipated entirely, but it's been transformed into something else—a different kind of energy, less destructive but no less potent.
"We're not finished with this conversation," I say finally, my voice rough at the edges. "The Costellos. Your arrangement with them. All of it."
"I know," she acknowledges, too drained for further defiance.
I lift my head, studying her with an intensity that searches for any remaining deception. "Three days, he said. To meet him."
She nods, not bothering to deny it.
"You're not going." It's not a question but a statement, firm and unequivocal. I won't lose her—not to Costello, not to anyone.
"If I don't, he'll come after you anyway," she points out, her voice smaller than I've ever heard it. "After us."
"Let him try," I say, a quiet confidence settling over me. The Irish have been a thorn in my side for too long. "I've been waiting for an excuse to deal with the Irish permanently."
Fear flashes in her eyes—not for herself, I realize with surprise, but for what's to come. For me. "There has to be another way."
"There isn't." I withdraw from her carefully, the physical separation echoing the emotional distance that's reopened between us. "Not anymore."
As I adjust my clothing, I feel myself hardening back into the Don's mask—calculating, controlled, resolute. "This changes our timeline."
"What do you mean?" She slides off the counter on unsteady legs, pulling her nightgown back into place.
"The wedding." My gaze meets hers, unwavering. "It happens tomorrow."
