Page 6 of Gardener for the Mafia

I have to save every drop of my seed for her womb. It’s the only way this can go. I have to put my child inside of her.

I’ve found my queen and now that I’ve laid eyes on her, there’s nothing in this world that could make me let her go.

I step away from the window and leave the bathroom before I go full savage and can’t control myself any longer. The way her body responds when she leans over to weed the fountain is like something out of a fucking fever fantasy.

I’m not a drug taking man but when I look at my curvaceous queen, I feel like I’ve been injected with a goddamn stimulant.

I walk down the hallway to the rear library, a giant room with ceiling high bookshelves and an ornate gold framed globe in the corner. I sit in my usual chair, a reinforced blood red leather item shipped from an emperor’s palace in China after an auction last year.

Then I take out my cell phone and navigate to Eliza’s name. She’s the supervisor for all the garden staff, and it’s she who will be the middleman to summon Lena to me.

I can’t be content watching her from afar any longer.

I’m claiming her forever and now she has to know that, the same way a lioness has to know that her alpha has made her his after he’s returned to display his battle scars proudly, marks that show he has annihilated her other weaker suitors.

I’ve been fighting my entire life, and now I know why. It was for Lena. It was for my queen.

Send Lena to the upper rear library, I text. Immediately.

I close my eyes and will my thoughts into some sort of order. I have lived my entire life with an iron clad control over everything, puppeteering reality into the shape I need it to be. It has given me wealth and respect and fear and power.

But there’s one thing I can’t control, and that’s how my thoughts stampede again and again to Lena.

My mind leaps to a scenario in which I’ve somehow been transported to Ancient Rome. I’m standing in the gladiatorial arena with thousands and thousands of men and women screaming down at me, lifting their flagons of wine into the air so it spills as carmine as the livid blood soaking into the sand.

“Kill a thousand men,” a voice roars from the spectator’s balcony. “And only then can you claim your prize.”

In my fantasy, Lena sits on a lofty throne of pillows and furs, leaning back with a light fabric dress draping softly down her body, the sort of material that hints tantalizingly at the feast beneath.

“A thousand?” I growl. “I’d kill fifty thousand just to taste her perfect fucking pussy. I’m going to drive up inside of her soaked lips and fire myself into her womb until I’m empty and all our offspring are writhing around inside of her.”

I open my eyes, smirking and shaking my head ruefully. I never let my mind gallivant like that. I deal with solid reality, brutal facts, but with Lena, I know it’s true.

I’d walk into the heart of a volcano and let the lava wash over me for forty days and forty nights to make her mine.

It’s time she learned who she belongs to.

Yes, sir, Eliza texts back a minute later. I’ll send her up now.

Chapter Four

Lena

Butterflies swirl achingly around my belly as I walk through the house, past the intimidating walls and the looming suits of armor, toward the rear library.

Even though I took off my shoes when I entered the house, the idea that I’ll track mud everywhere grips me in fearful hands.

But then it doesn’t matter, not anymore.

Whatever I did to make Mr. DeLuca angry is about to come crashing down on my life with the force of a two ton hammer.

He summoned me specifically, and the look on Eliza’s face told me everything I needed to know. She drained of color and clamped onto her lower lip with her teeth like she was trying to chew it off.

I walk down the long corridor to the imposing oak carved door. Everything in this mansion is old and medieval and so gorgeous I swear I almost wept the first time my eyes skimmed over it. This is the first time I’ve been inside on my own, but Eliza was allowed to give me a short tour when I first started working for Mr. DeLuca, about a week ago now.

It’s only been a week, and yet I’ve already done something to trigger hate in Mr. DeLuca’s opinion of me.

And now he’s going to …

I can’t even let the thought finish.

I don’t know what he’s going to do.

The best thing I can hope for is that he fires me, which is going to be a disaster. I’ll be kicked out of my crummy apartment and forced to wander the streets like so many kids from the orphanage. I can’t go back, not now that I’m an adult. And, anyway, the idea of going back causes more razor winged nerves to flap around my belly.

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