Page 4 of Mafia Queen

I nodded, my gaze never leaving the gleaming sea, and leaned back against him. “Thank you for this, Antonio.”

He tightened his hold around my waist. “I promise the day will come when I’ll be able to give you this and so much more without carrying any kind of risk. But first, I need to make what happened to you right. I need to make every bastard who touched you atone for hurting you. And I will. I swear to God, Doe, I will…even if it’s the last thing I do.”

For a brief second, I closed my eyes, knowing exactly what his words meant. Antonio was going to kill him. He was going to kill all of them, and oddly enough, the thought didn’t horrify me. The thought of Antonio killing for me didn’t scare me. In fact, I liked it. I wanted him to do it, to eliminate the threat so in the end he could give me the world.

For the first time in my life, I chose to believe, I chose to trust in the words of a man. Why? Because this man didn’t just own my body…he owned my heart as well.

Chapter 3

Antonio

I couldn’t stop looking at her, the way she walked around the garden, inspecting, touching, and smelling every flower like she had never seen one before. It seemed as if she was committing it all to memory in fear that she would never have this chance again. The amazement on her face and the wonder in her dark brown eyes spoke volumes, telling a tale of a woman who had been deprived of even the smallest beauty in such an ugly world all her life.

With bare feet and wearing a floral skater dress, Doe walked from one flower to the other, but she never wandered too far away from me. Every now and then, I would glance down at her feet and notice how her toes moved over the grass, how she pushed her heel deeper into the dirt, as if she wanted to feel everything there was to feel and use every one of her senses as much as possible, for as long as possible. After our night at the beach, she seemed different, as if she had finally realized she no longer wanted to merely exist…she wanted to live.

It was beautiful, this scene she created of innocent beauty, experiencing life for the very first time. And I loved the fact that I was the one who could give this to her, that I was the one who had thepowerto give it all to her. When it came to Doe, I was the most selfish son of bitch on the planet. I hardly ever left her side in fear that I might miss a moment, or the chance to see her grow from the scared girl we found in the container to the confident woman I knew she could be. I knew this because somehow she was strong enough to tame me. She took the darkness in me and made it her light, and now my entire life revolved around making sure she never had to suffer in the darkness again, but rather thrive in it.

That was why what I had planned for her was crucial if I wanted her to finally realize in order to get over her past, she needed to embrace it. Accept it. Conquer it. It was the only way. But it also had the potential to backfire and fuck up all the progress we’d managed to make so far. It was risky, but it had to be done if I wanted my innocent Doe to become the strong woman I knew she was meant to be—especially since I knew whose blood ran through her veins.

Finding out that Doe was Stefano Mancuso’s bastard child, and that he was the one who destroyed her life by selling her into slavery, was like a tale out of a fucking horror movie. Never in a million years did I think this shit with Mancuso had gone so deep. But the sick fuck got what he deserved…my blade in his skull. Now what was left of his corpse was swimming with the goddamn fish, and it was only Lucio and me who knew about it—about everything. The night I sent Mancuso’s soul to hell, Lucio and I swore to never talk about what happened that night ever again. Doe would never know the truth about who the angel was who saved her only to send her to a hell that, to me, was far worse than death. She would never who her father was, and the rest of my family would never know that our arch-enemy now burned alongside Lucifer himself.

A flock of birds flew over above us, and Doe stared up in wonder. I just kept my eyes on her, staring at the beauty she exuded. It had been like this ever since the dynamic between us changed. Everything changed when I finally allowed myself to feel more, to look at her and not feel guilty for wanting her, for claiming her and making her mine. Her innocence and the way it seemed as if she was experiencing the world for the first time—it mesmerized me.Shemesmerized me. I never would have thought the scared, filthy, broken girl I found at Boston Harbor would end up meaning so much to me.

She brushed her long hair over her left shoulder, covering her scarred ear. “I’m making a fool of myself, aren’t I?”

I frowned. “What? No. Why would you say that?”

“I’m acting like a little girl in a twenty-year-old’s body.” She blushed, shame turning her cheeks pink.

I stepped closer and reached out to her hair, pushing it back so I could see the scar. “Don’t be ashamed of what those sons of bitches stole from you, Doe.”

She leaned her head to the side, pulling her shoulder up as if trying to cover her marred ear. “You have so much beauty surrounding you, yet you choose to keep my ugliness so close to you as well.”

“Don’t.” My hand slipped from her hair to her chin, my fingers pressing around her jaw as I forced her to look at me. “Do not think for one second that I see anything but perfection when I look at you.”

She shook her head lightly. “I don’t understand how you—”

“You don’t have to understand.” I gripped her jaw tighter as I stepped up, towering over her. “You don’t have to understand anything when it comes to me and what you are to me. All you have to understand is that you’re mine, and to me, you are the most beautiful woman in this entire goddamn world.” My lips found hers with a desperate kiss, my grip on her jaw tightening even more. Soft, full, warm rounds of flesh pressed against mine, our tongues finding each other, demanding to taste the sweetness of such a simple, yet powerful act of passion. Every time I kissed her, I wanted it to last forever. It was my new addiction—shewas my new addiction.

“Ahem.” Someone cleared his throat behind us, and by the annoyance that suddenly tickled the back of my skull, I knew exactly who it was.

Reluctantly, I broke our kiss, pulling my lips from hers. “What is it, Lorik?”

“You two are making the hydrangeas blush.”

I rolled my eyes. “They’re already pink.”

“Exactly.”

I spun around and glared at my soon-to-be brother-in-law. “Would you like both your arms in a sling? Because I could shoot you.”

Lorik pointed toward the white fabric wrapped around his injured shoulder. “This is proof that not even a bullet can kill me. I’m unkillable.”

I frowned. “That’s not even a word.”

“It is now.”

I pulled my palm down my face. “The longer you’re out of the hospital, the more I regret praying for your ass.”

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