LOU WAS a good middle man, Tom had come to find out. At least where the crew was concerned. It made things far easier on Tom to simply delegate certain tasks to his friend, as the men were more agreeable to Lou, and less difficult.
Things like collecting money for the week.
Or keeping an eye on certain schemes.
Tom wished he had thought of this trick sooner. It would have taken away a shit load of stress, and make things far easier on himself.
Lesson learned.
He got to relax behind his desk, and he barely said a word as man after man from the crew came into the office to hand over their money for the week. Lou took care of the conversation, and paying the guys their dues for whatever work they had done.
It worked for Tom.
Lou liked it.
The crew was agreeable.
He considered that a win all the way across the board.
Sometimes, he had come to learn, a Capo had to take what they could get. Simple things made the greatest difference when it came right down to it.
“Good week,” Tom said to Lou when another guy headed out of the office.
Lou nodded as he flipped through the stacks of cash. “One of the better ones over the last few months, that’s for sure.”
“As long as they’re making money, then I don’t give a damn how we do it.”
His friend laughed. “Yeah, I know.”
“You would be good at this, you know?”
Lou glanced over at Tom. “Good at what?”
Tom waved at the room. “This, Lou. Doing this.”
“Being a Capo, you mean?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
His friend scoffed. “Yeah, right. We both know I’m not going anywhere but right where I am, Tommaso.”
“That’s a shitty outlook.”
“Not really. I like where I am, so I don’t see it as a bad thing. I mean, being a made man used to be something I wanted. Then the deeper I got into this business, the more I figured out it wasn’t likely to happen.”
“You shouldn’t assume things. Everybody gets their say on nominations when the time comes. Capos get a voice on who they would like to give their in to the family, so to speak. Would you still want to be a made man, if the opportunity came up?”
Lou shrugged, and took a seat on the edge of the desk. “Back when I was a teenager, I used to glamorize the mafia in my head. All the Capos drove black cars, wore suits, and controlled the city.”
Tom chuckled. “That’s a pretty accurate description. You just didn’t think to consider the rest of the people who make up the organization, too.”
“Sure, but my idea was based on some crazy notion where I could be one of those guys, Tommaso. A wise guy, you know what I mean? I started running the streets because we were dirt fucking poor, and our water got shut off in February. A month later, they turned the power off, too. I had two little sisters, and a baby brother. My father had fucked off somewhere with his latest piece of ass, and my mother barely held shit together. So I went out, and I hustled. I did deliveries, or ran errands. I did some drug drops when I thought it was safe enough that I wouldn’t get caught.”
“You never told me about that stuff,” Tom said.
Sure, he had known that Lou’s life had been stricken with poverty and rough times, but he hadn’t quite realized just how much. He hadn’t known how much his friend had sacrificed and suffered to be where he was—still quite low on a totem pole that they called the Outfit.
So was the fucking way of this business.
Tom was lucky—privileged as fuck. He knew it; he never denied it. Sure, he’d worked hard all his life to be a made man, but he didn’t doubt for a second that Lou worked twice as hard just to survive and be sitting where he was.
Lou shrugged, and cleared his throat. “Before I went on the streets to work, I wanted to be a lawyer, or a doctor. Maybe a cop.”
“That’s a bad job to have in this city.”
His friend barked out a laugh. “Right? One of the most dangerous cities for the blue line.”
“A new cop is always coming up dirty on the news every other week, too.”
“Yeah, I know, but that was one of my dreams. I ended up here instead, and I just substituted one dream for another. One dream that I likely wouldn’t even achieve. How could I?” Lou asked, a bitterness coloring his words. “I was just some poor kid from the Heights with no dad, and a mother entertaining Johns on the weekend at the pay-by-the-hour motel down the block to make extra money that her two jobs didn’t provide.
“That’s what made me easy pickings to the guys on the crew that needed a young kid to deliver their drugs, or pick something up. Twenty bucks thrown at me went a long fucking way. It didn’t take much at all for them to convince me into this business, despite the fact I could see some of them were three times my age and still going nowhere. Maybe that’s why when I started doing this shit, I glamorized the idea of the mafia and made men in my head, and the dream changed to make it worth my while. Funny how that worked.”
Tom swallowed hard, and glanced down at his clenched hands. “Sorry, man.”
Lou waved a hand. “Nah, don’t do that. Don’t be sorry, or have pity. I fucking hate that shit, Tom.”
“Nobody’s victim, huh?”
“Nope. I made my choices.”
“And you’re still here doing this,” Tom noted.
Lou shrugged a single shoulder, and pushed off the desk. “I guess you could say the dream is still very much well and alive for me in some ways. Like maybe if I keep working at it, somebody will see me as something other than that poor kid from the Heights that needed money to have water and heat.”
Tom gave his friend a smile, but said nothing. Someone already did see Lou as more than that because Lou had seen someone else as more than a rich pretty boy.
Him, that was.
Tom was going to get his friend the button.
No matter what.
He’d do that for Lou.
Somehow.
The phone on the desk rang, interrupting their conversation from going any further. Another guy from the crew stepped into the office at the same time Tom picked up the call. He waved for Lou to handle the guy—as he was already going to do—while Tom turned his back to the two men exchanging cash in the office.
“Rossi here,” Tom said.
“Son, are you busy?”
Tom relaxed a bit at his father’s voice. “Not really. What do you need, Dad?”
“You should make your way over to the mansion as soon as you can. Someone’s waiting here to see you, Tommaso.”
He stiffened.
“Who?”
“Someone I think you want to see.”
Tom’s throat constricted, and his heart raced. He didn’t have any fucking reason to believe it was Camilla waiting for him. She still hadn’t called. It had been over a month since he last talked to her. He gave her space hoping that she would figure her shit out and contact him.
Yet, here he was.
Still very much alone.
“Who?” Tom asked again.
“You were right about her,” his father said. “What you told me about her the first time, I mean. She’s very … different. In a good way, mind you.”
Camilla.
“Don’t let that woman out of your sight.”
His father chuckled. “Right now, your mother is plying her with apple pie, and a promise to show her the library. Your sisters just got home from school, and are giving her the first degree. She’s not going anywhere.”
He heard his father’s unspoken words loud and clear.
Take your time if you need to.
Tommas had known—even though Tom refused to talk to his father about it—that something was bothering his son. That something was wrong, and had been since he got back from New York the second time. Over and over again, his father pushed to know what it was. He asked him about Camilla. He questioned why Tom threw himself into work when he had barely got through the day before without wanting to blow someone’s head off. He even suspected his father made a phone call to Calisto Donati just in case he could get information there.
Still, Tom had kept his issues private.
“I don’t need time right now,” he told his father.
He’d spent a whole month waiting.
That was enough time.
“She’s not going anywhere, son,” Tommas repeated.
Her hair was a deep shade of brown mixed with gold and red highlights. A little past her shoulders, her hair sat in beachy waves.
Longer than the last time he had seen her, but not by much. For anyone else, Tom probably wouldn’t have noticed the half an inch difference in hair length, but this was Camilla.
He’d learned with her that even the slightest change was to be expected, and he needed to look for it.
The flowy, peach-colored dress was a good choice for the month of May. It fell just above her knees, and showed off the ankle boots with a four inch heel she wore.
Tom wasn’t really sure why he thought to take in the way she looked, and the things she wore. Maybe because doing so gave him a few more seconds to simply look at her while she entertained his sisters, and not bring attention to himself just yet.
What was he supposed to say?
How did he open this up now?
Tom didn’t know.
His brain decided to misfire like a fucker, and his mouth opened before he could stop it. “Cam.”
Camilla looked up from the photo album she was flipping through, and smiled at Tom. A shy smile, he thought, and not one of her usual bright, brilliant grins he was accustomed to. No, this was hesitant, like she wasn’t sure what his reaction would be when he looked at her, or something.
It still made her brown eyes light up, though.
“Hey,” she said.
“Tommaso!” his two little sisters shouted in sync.
And just like that, his momentary daze was broken while his sisters leaped from the couch to get closer to him. He took a few minutes to calm Sara and Rebeka down—or the best he could—and all the while, tried not to look at Camilla for too long.
“Camilla came to visit,” Rebeka said.
“She lives in New York,” Sara said, stressing the state like it was a big deal.
Tom grinned. “I know. Hey, why don’t you two go find Ma, and let her know that we want something special for supper.”
“Ma’s having a dinner,” Sara said seriously.
“A dinner?”
Camilla spoke up, then. “She wanted to invite some people over.”
Tom cocked a brow, and then sighed. “Not surprised.”
“Do you want us to go, so you can be alone with Camilla?” Sara asked.
He looked to the oldest of his two sisters. She was a bright girl—looked like their mother, but acted like their father. Little got past Sara at the end of the day.
“A little bit, yeah,” Tom said, smiling.
Sara nodded as though she already knew his answer. “Okay, Tommaso.”
She grabbed Rebeka’s hand just as the younger of the two girls tried to dart back to the couch where Camilla was still sitting. She pulled her little sister along, and headed for the hallway.
“Come on, Rebeka,” Sara said, “let’s go get pie.”
“Yes! Pie!”
Tom waited until he could no longer hear the voices of his sisters before he turned to Camilla again. She was still sitting on the couch, but now her gaze was turned down to the photo album in her lap.
“Which album is that?” Tom asked. “My mother seems to make it her mission to document every single little thing about our lives.”
“Birthdays from last year,” Camilla said.
“Huh.”
Camilla peered up at him, and said, “I guess today’s your twenty-second birthday, Tom. May seventh, right?”
He blinked, unsure for a moment.
“Is today the seventh?”
Camilla’s smile turned sly. “You forgot your own birthday?”
“It’s just another day.”
“No, it’s your day, Tom, and I almost missed it.”
He didn’t miss the sadness in her tone, or the way her eyes dropped back down to the album.
“You have a huge family,” Camilla said after a moment.
“Yeah, it’s big.”
He didn’t know what else to say.
He didn’t know what to ask her.
Tom just … stared at her.
Finally, Camilla looked up from the album, and smiled at him. Brighter than before, and less hesitant. “Your dad is kind of imposing.”
Tom nodded. “For people who don’t know him, sure.”
“Your mom is really sweet, though.”
Tom laughed at that. “Yeah, until she’s pissed at you. I mean, then you might as well just get the hell out of the city. At least until the storm passes.”
Camilla laughed, too. “I can’t see it.”
“Well, no, you’re the woman her son loves, and this is the first time she’s ever met you. It’s not a huge surprise that she’s being especially nice to you.”
Her eyes widened.
Tom realized what he’d said instantly.
The silence stretched on between them long enough for him to clear his throat, and look away. “Love shouldn’t be a scary thing. Loving someone shouldn’t be hard to do, even if it’s hard to find. Love should be effortless.”
Easy.
Right.
“I know, Tom,” she whispered.
It was the humans who made love hard, he knew.
“It’s women like you who make the thought of being in love with you something to fear because no offense, Cam, but you’re kind of a fucking flight risk.”
Her laughter came out soft and light.
“Am I?” she asked.
“Just a little bit, babe.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“I don’t mind taking that risk, though, Cam. I want to take it, but only if you do. I don’t mind the effort actually being something needs, but it’s a give and take. I cannot be the only person giving while you just take from me.”
She let out a quiet exhale, and closed the album in her hands. Tom waited her out, and didn’t move an inch when she got up from the couch and came closer to him. He stayed still even when she was close enough to touch, and she reached up to cup his jaw with her warm palm.
“I’m here, Tom.”
He nodded. “I can see that, Cam. A call might have been nice.”
“It’s been a rough month.”
“Oh?”
“Really rough,” she admitted. “But I am here … with a little help from Cross, but don’t tell him that because then he’ll want to be thanked. I like to keep him honest.”
Tom chuckled. “So, what does being here actually mean for you?”
“I guess it means what you did for me, I’m trying to do for you. I’m here. Who are you, Tommaso Rossi? Care to show me your world?”
“Anything you want.”
Anything to keep her.
At least for now …
Camilla’s hand slid from his jaw to behind his neck, and she pulled him closer. She had to stand all the way on the tips of her toes to reach up and press her lips to his. It was only once her mouth touched his that he wrapped an arm around her waist, and crushed her to him.
Her body.
Her mouth.
All of her.
Her fingers tangled into the hair at the nape of his neck, and tugged hard enough to sting. He answered that back by biting her bottom lip, and then kissing the same spot. Her breathless laugh whispered along the seam of his lips before he hushed her with another kiss—harder and deeper than hers had been. She didn’t seem to mind. Her lips parted to let his tongue snake into her mouth.
There, he found a familiar taste. A sweet heat. Their kiss was now a familiar dance that could make him ache and burn all at the same time. It was a damn shame that now his cock was hard, but he was going to have to wait to do something about it.
The whole dinner thing, and all.
Yes, Tom had most certainly missed Camilla. He wondered if that feeling was mutual. Her hands that wouldn’t let him go, and her lips still on his, said it probably was.
“So, Camilla, what brings you all the way to Chicago?”
Tom shot Adriano a look. His uncle, and his aunt Alessa sitting right beside the man at the table, only grinned right back at him.
“Thought I would like the city, actually,” Camilla said.
“Not someone, then?” Eve, Theo’s wife, asked.
“Someone, too, sure.” Camilla gave Tom a smile. “I mean, Tom’s okay.”
“Ouch,” Tom muttered.
Camilla flashed her teeth in a wicked grin, and that sent laughter echoing down the table.
So was the way of his life.
When he wasn’t getting shit from people on the streets, his family picked up the slack. Of course, Tom didn’t mind this so much. He could handle his family.
“What are you studying in school?” Damian asked. “Last I heard from your father, you had gone into nursing.”
Camilla nodded. “Still am. I have a few more years to get where I want to be, I think. Or, with all the programs I want to take, it’ll make it easier to get on a NICU ward without all the seniority that usually clogs up time.”
“NICU,” Tom’s mother said. “Why a NICU nurse?”
“I was premature, and so was my brother.”
“Oh.” Abriella frowned, and her gaze darted to Tom as though she were trying to see if she had crossed some invisible line. “I’m sorry.”
Camilla waved a hand. “It’s okay. I went back to tour the hospital where I had been born. I was about fifteen or so, and the nurses actually remembered me because a lot of them were still there working.”
“Is that common?”
“I think it depends on the nurse, and how working NICU affects him or her over time,” Camilla replied, smiling softly. “I guess a lot of preemies that were born as early as me don’t get to go back—fifty-fifty chance of survival. My dad told me once that for every baby that got to leave the NICU during my stay, another one never did. It was a big deal for the nurses to see me again, and that’s what did it for me.”
Under the table, Tom squeezed Camilla’s thigh gently. She hadn’t needed to share that kind of personal information with his family—people she barely knew—but he was grateful that she had. He’d only known some of the reason why she had chosen a nursing career, and her explanation certainly filled in any blanks he might have had left.
“You’ve still got a while to go yet with school, then,” Abriella said.
“A little while, yeah,” Camilla agreed with a laugh. “I don’t mind. I work hard because I want to. I have a goal, and I intend to reach it.”
“A good mindset to have,” Tom’s father said. “And just how long are you staying in Chicago, Camilla? Seems you have something to get back to.”
That, Tom wanted an answer to as well.
Camilla stuck her fork into the pasta dish she had half finished, and said, “We’ll see, I guess. I don’t like leaving things unfinished.”
Again, Tom squeezed Camilla’s thigh.
He appreciated her willingness to indulge his family and their questions because she didn’t have to do any of that at all. He was sure her intentions when coming to see him had very little to do with his family, and yet, here she was.
A screech from Sara took attention away from Camilla and Tom for a moment.
“Rebeka!”
“Oh, it was just a mistake,” Abriella said, pushing her chair away from the table to stand up.
“Yeah, a mistake, Sara,” Rebeka said, huffing at her sister.
A large red splash of sauce covered the front of Sara’s pink dress. If there was anything his sister hated, it was someone ruining her clothes.
“Go to the kitchen,” Abriella told Sara, “and I’ll be in to clean it off.”
Sara gave Rebeka her meanest glare before heading for the kitchen like she had been told to. Tommas shook his head as he too stood from the table.
“I’ll go grab something else for her to wear,” he told his wife.
“Thanks,” Abriella replied. Then, she turned to Rebeka. “You sit right there, and don’t you move.”
Rebeka was already shoving her mouth full of food again. “Okay, Ma.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Tom’s youngest sister showed off more chewed pasta when she repeated, “Okay, Ma.”
More laughter filled up the table.
Camilla laughed beside him, too. “Sometimes I wish I had younger siblings.”
“To gang up on your brother, or what?”
She winked at him, sexy in a blink. “One reason, sure.”
“Probably the only reason.”
Camilla shrugged. “Probably.”
A firm tug on Tom’s pant leg took his attention away from the conversation he was trying to have with his father, and Tommas’s men. At his side, little Rebeka looked up at him with her big blue eyes, and a worry line creasing her tiny brow.
“I think Camilla is lost, Tommaso.”
He almost laughed at how serious she sounded.
“What makes you think that?” he asked.
“We can’t find her. It’s been ten whole minutes, and Ma says after ten minutes the person hiding wins. We called to her, but she didn’t answer us.”
Oh, Christ.
He left Camilla alone with his sisters and the other women for a few minutes to chat about something important, and look what happened.
“We were playing hide and seek,” Rebeka said.
“Yeah, I figured that out. She doesn’t know how to get around the mansion. Nobody thought to say that was a bad idea, Rebeka?”
The place was a two-wing, three-level monster. He could fucking get lost in it.
Rebeka shrugged her little shoulders. “She said yes.”
Behind him, Tom’s father chuckled as he’d clearly been listening in. “Go find her, Tommaso. We can finish this conversation later.”
He turned to his dad, but shook his head. “No, just consider what I said about Lou, and the crew. It needs to be done, and it’s your best bet to make that crew successful. It’s only running smoothly right now because of him.”
“I’ll consider it, Tommaso. I’ll talk it over more with Theo and Damian, too, and see what they think of it. Maybe a seat could be made for another man seeing as how we don’t have one that needs filled at the moment.”
“All right.”
It was the best he could ask of his father. Tommas was the boss, after all, not him. Only his father could make those choices at the end of the day, as they usually ended up impacting the entire organization as a whole and not just one piece of it.
Things like that couldn’t be done lightly.
Tom understood.
“Did anybody see which direction Camilla went?” he asked.
Rebeka nodded. “The front.”
Great.
That left him with about fifteen halls to search, and at least ten rooms. Not to mention bathrooms, coat rooms, and closets.
Fuck.
“Go play with Sara, and I will find Camilla,” Tom told Rebeka.
“Okay!”
Rebeka darted off, and Tom headed for the front wing of the mansion. If he was lucky, he would find Camilla and be able to finally sneak her away for a night he had waited a whole damn month for.
If he wasn’t so lucky …
Well, he’d just have to find her.
Tom spent a good thirty minutes looking around the front wing of the mansion. It took him up to the second and third floor, but eventually he made his way back down. He called Camilla’s name out several times, but got no answer back.
He was starting to think someone was playing a trick on him. Or someone had gotten mixed up in which direction Camilla went. Either way, Tom couldn’t find her.
And now he was starting to worry …
Tom rounded the foyer stairs, and headed down a hallway that was rarely used for guests, but was a shortcut back to the middle of the mansion. It cut the time in half to get back to the dining room and kitchen.
His best plan now was just to get everybody to start looking for Camilla. What the hell else could he do?
A muffled knock stopped him.
And then another.
“Camilla?” Tom called out.
“Tom?”
Just from the direction her quiet voice came, he knew exactly where she was. Tom went back the way he came, and opened up the last door on the right. From the outside, that door could be opened easily.
But from the inside?
The doorknob jammed.
Every single time.
The only way to open it from the inside was with a little knife his father kept hidden up above the doorjamb. They only used that small room as extra storage for coats or whatever else when they had parties at the mansion.
Sure enough, Tom found Camilla on the other side.
Instantly, she smiled sheepishly at him.
He barely held back his laughter.
“Got lost, did you?” he asked.
The door closed behind him, but he wasn’t worried about it. He knew how to get out.
Camilla made a face. “Nope. I did not get lost. I just knew that eventually the girls would go find someone—likely you—and you would come get me. Now, look, Tom. I’ve got us all alone. See what I did there?”
Her cheeky little response was all bravado, and he knew it.
“You got lost, and then stuck.”
“No, this was entirely intentional.”
“Mmhmm.”
He came closer to her, one small step at a time.
Camilla’s grin kept growing all the while.
“It was,” she said firmly. “That’s the story I’m going to tell.”
“Because you don’t want to admit you got lost, and then stuck.”
“Stop saying that.” She gave him a fake glare. “Let me keep my pride, Tom. It’s all I’ve got right now.”
“Oh, is that what it is?”
“Yep,” Camilla said.
They were only a foot apart, now. He could reach out, grab her, and do all the sinfully good things that had been running through his mind since he saw her.
“Maybe you need a lesson on learning how to swallow your pride, then.”
She licked her lips.
His dick hardened.
“Maybe I do.”
Her whisper coaxed him.
Encouraged him.
Challenged him.
Tom never did know how to back down from a good challenge, and he wasn’t about to start now. He jolted forward, grabbed Camilla’s face, and pulled her in for a bruising kiss. Her grin curved wickedly against his lips, and then her tongue peeked out to tease him, too.
“Probably shouldn’t be doing this here,” she said against his mouth.
“Probably shouldn’t have gotten yourself lost in one of the most private rooms in the mansion, then.”
“Asshole.”
Tom reached around and smacked her ass. “Say it again if you want another one.”
Camilla stood up on tiptoes, and her mouth grazed his ear. “Ass—”
Smack.
Her laughter pulsed against his ear. “Hole.”
He slapped her backside again.
Camilla made a sexy noise in the back of her throat a second before her hands pushed against his chest. She shoved Tom back against the door that had previously kept her locked in. The second time her lips met his, he already had his hands up her skirt, and two fingers stuffed up her wet pussy. He muffled her cries by sticking two of his fingers in her mouth. Her tongue swirled around the digits while he fucked her with his other hand.
And damn, was she wet.
Hot and silky against his palm.
The suckling noise her pussy made every time his fingers thrust in told him that her panties were probably already ruined. Camilla grinded her cunt against his hand as he added a third finger, and rubbed his palm into her clit at the same time.
She tipped her head back, and made his fingers slip from her mouth. They wet a trail of her saliva from her chin to the column of her throat where he grabbed tight. Her happy little sigh, and the way her pussy clenched around his fingers said she was damn close.
“Make me come, please make me come,” she chanted. “Make me come, Tom, and then eat my pussy until I come again.”
“Only if you lick my cock clean after you come all over it first.”
Glinting brown eyes met his. She grinned again, and came hard at the same time. “You got yourself a deal, Tommaso.”
Good God.
This woman would kill him.
He didn’t mind a bit.
Tom pulled his wet fingers out from between her thighs. Camilla took that chance to bring his hand to her mouth, and suck his fingers clean.
He loved the taste of her pussy.
But he liked the taste of it more on her lips.
“Fucking missed you like crazy, Cam.”
Through lowered lashes, and a sinful smile, Camilla said, “I bet you did.”
Then, she lifted up to her tiptoes, and kissed him again.
“And I missed you, too,” she whispered. “Now bend me over something, and fuck me before someone comes looking for us.”
Tom had her bent over an empty, small circular table before her next breath. He was balls-deep in her pussy the second she yanked her skirt up, and spanked her wet center just to tease him. Camilla knew exactly what her teasing did to him, and how insane it made him feel.
She was still perfect.
So crazy fucking perfect.