“Put him on his knees.”
Cesare folded his arms as Rocco shoved the Falzone crime family soldier down on the rocky shore of Newtown Creek. The soldier had shot up a Gamboli family restaurant, killing the don’s aunt and nephew as well as two civilians. The don had called in the De Lucchi crew, and in a matter of hours they’d found the soldier hiding out in the basement of his brother’s home.
“Are you sure you caught the right man?” Cesare demanded. “Let me see his face.”
Rocco worked loose the knot on the hood he’d placed over the soldier’s head when he dragged him out of the house. Rocco had felt nothing when he pleaded for his life, nothing when his sister had begged Rocco to spare him, nothing when his son screamed not to hurt his dad. After years of torture and beatings, he’d learned to retreat into a cold, dark place when there was work to be done, a void without emotion or feeling, where all that mattered was obeying Cesare’s commands.
“Hurry up.”
Rocco released the hood and ripped it over the soldier’s head, locking his hand on the man’s shoulder in case he tried to get away. They always tried to get away, just like he had always tried to get away when Cesare took him to the basement for training. And just like Rocco, the victims quickly learned there was nowhere to go and no one to save them.
“Yes, that’s him. Well done.”
Rocco breathed a silent sigh of relief. It had been his first solo mission, and Cesare did not take failure lightly. Had he failed to capture the solider, or worse, brought the wrong man, he would have been expected to offer himself up for a beating by the five most senior members of the De Lucchi crew. The last time he’d messed up, he thought he would die from his injuries. If Grace hadn’t gone looking for him because he didn’t show up to pick her up at school, he wouldn’t be here today. She had called an ambulance and saved his life, but as he stood on the bank of the creek knowing what Cesare expected him to do, he wished she had let him die in her arms.
“I trained you well,” Cesare said into the silence. “But not well enough. You have a weakness, Rocco. A chink in your armor. Tonight, we repair it.” He gestured behind him and Cesare’s right-hand man, Benito, the most senior member of the De Lucchi crew, stepped out of the shadows holding Grace in front of him, one hand over her mouth, the other holding a knife against her throat.
“Grace.” Her name was a strangled gasp on Rocco’s lips as adrenaline surged through his body, the cold, dark void crumbling beneath a tidal wave of rage. He had been so careful. So very, very careful. He knew the risk, but he couldn’t resist. Now he would pay for his selfishness with her life.
“You think I wouldn’t find out?” Cesare sneered. “You think there is anything I don’t know about you? I made you. I broke you. I know your most secret fears and desires. I know when you’re hiding something. And this…” He waved vaguely at Grace. “This is what is holding you back from becoming the enforcer you are meant to be. This is the price we pay to hold the power of life and death in our hands. We don’t have friends. We don’t have lovers. We don’t have relationships. Women are for fucking. They are cunts and nothing more.”
Rocco could barely hear for the rush of blood in his ears. If Cesare knew him as well as he claimed, he had to realize that if Benito killed her, Rocco wouldn’t stop until they both were dead.
He heard footsteps behind him. Turning, he saw another member of the De Lucchi crew with a weapon pointed at his back. Cesare had thought of everything, except the possibility that Rocco would welcome his death if Grace was no longer part of his world.
“You can’t kill the daughter of the underboss,” he gritted out, trying to put an emotional distance between himself and the woman with the knife against her throat. Senior members of the family, including blood relatives, could not be whacked without the permission of the don, and he knew Don Gamboli would never give his permission to whack Grace. First, women were protected by the Mafia code, and second, Grace was his goddaughter.
Cesare laughed. “I don’t plan to kill her. This is about pain. This is about revenge. And this is about you, Rocco, and helping you overcome a weakness that is holding you back. I think the best way to do that would be show her who you really are.” He gestured to the soldier kneeling at Rocco’s feet. “Finish the job.”
Bile rose in Rocco’s throat. Cesare was going to make Grace watch him take a life. He couldn’t have thought of a better way to end the relationship or a worse way to hurt him. Grace had never gotten over watching her mother die in her arms or the revelation that her father was part of the same organization responsible for taking her mother’s life. Forcing her to watch the soldier pay for his crimes tonight wouldn’t just end things between them, it would scar her forever. For sweet, gentle Grace, his actions would be unforgivable.
“Let her go. She’s not part of this.”
“You made her part of this.” Cesare gestured to Benito. “Bring her to me.”
Rocco reached for his weapon, remembering too late that Cesare had instructed him to capture the soldier unarmed. He had only his knife with him, and there was little he could do from a distance when Benito’s knife was at Grace’s throat, and Cesare’s man had a gun at his back.
Cesare changed places with Benito, replaced Benito’s knife with his own.
“Get on with it,” Cesare barked.
Rocco’s stomach twisted in a knot. This wasn’t the first execution he’d assisted with, but it was the first in which he was expected to deliver the death blow. It was his initiation into the Cosa Nostra. The night he became a made man. The thought of Grace witnessing his descent into darkness, the very moment he lost the soul she’d been trying to save, was a worse pain than any he had suffered at Cesare’s hands.
He dragged his gaze to Grace, recoiling when he saw her face wet with tears. His fault. All his fault. He should have left her alone, resisted his longing, pushed her away. He tried to tell her with his eyes what was in his heart. He would always be the same man caught in a nightmare that he could never escape.
“Please let her go.” He knew better than to beg. Weak men begged and there was nothing Cesare detested more than weakness. But it was all he had left to give her.
“Please?” Cesare sneered. “You want me to spare her? Why? So she can keep pretending you’re something you are not? So she can make you forget who you are and why I saved you?”
If he hadn’t been so distraught, he would have laughed. Until he was ten, he had believed the lie. Cesare had found him in an orphanage and saved him from a life of poverty and shame. He had given him a home, clothing, toys, food, and even a dog. He had sent him to school. He had given him female care in the form of a housekeeper who had pretended to be Cesare’s wife to ensure the adoption went through. He had given him the De Lucchi name. But when the training started, he realized he hadn’t been saved at all. He had been cast into Hell. His punishment for being a coward when he was six years old.
Over the years, Cesare had systematically destroyed every single thing he loved. Everything he owned had been given to him so it could be taken away. Enforcers didn’t have attachments. They didn’t love and were not loved. They existed solely to enforce the will of the boss to whom they were bound.
“You dishonor and disrespect me with your weakness.” Cesare grabbed Grace’s hair and yanked her head to the side. “I can’t take the temptation out of beauty, but I can take the beauty out of temptation.” Before Rocco could process what Cesare intended to do, Ceasre drew the blade down Grace’s cheek from ear to chin, slicing open her perfect, creamy skin. Grace’s scream pierced the night air, embedding itself like an arrow deep in his heart.
“No!”
Too late. Too fucking late. Blood dripped down her face, staining her white blouse and her scream went on and on, the sound reverberating in his heart.
“Do it,” Cesare shouted over her screams, spittle flying from his lips. “Or I’ll cut up her pretty face until not even her father will recognize her. She’s the one thing holding you back from becoming what you truly are. We are De Lucchis. There is no room for emotion, no room for feeling, no place for love.”
Rocco’s vision sheeted red, every cell in his body screaming in rage and agony. He grabbed the soldier’s hair and slid the knife across this throat—quick and painless, the only mercy he could give.
When the soldier dropped to the stones, he lunged forward, praying for death from the gun at his back, before Grace suffered more pain.
“Release her.”
Cesare let her go and she crumpled to the ground. It was over. Cesare had won. Rocco didn’t need to look at Grace’s face to see her horror and devastation. He was everything she despised—the worst part of the organization that had killed her mother. He would find no more sanctuary in her arms, no forgiveness in her heart or soothing beneath her fingers. He would never lie with her and hear her beautiful voice, feel the softness of her body or the sound of her laugh. She was everything that was good and pure in the world, and he was everything that was evil. In some perverse way, Cesare had done him a favor. He had saved Grace from the monster he had created—a monster who was too weak to let her go, and so had destroyed her.
“If you were my blood, I would be ashamed to call you my son,” Cesare said coldly. “Of my three adoptees, you are my biggest disappointment. You’ll resume your training. Now that you have no distraction, I expect you to excel.”
And didn’t that just drive the knife home. He had no memories of his life before Cesare. No memories of his parents or the orphanage in Vegas where Cesare had found him. Cesare was the only father he had ever known. His housekeeper, the only mother. Even when Cesare had started training him as a Mafia enforcer, he had endured the emotional and physical pain because he believed Cesare’s teachings were motivated by love.
He had been wrong. Just as he had been wrong to think that he could have a normal life with a normal girl. It was time to cut the ties. He had already done things that had put him beyond redemption, things that tormented his soul and kept him awake at night. Time to stop fighting what he really was. Time to let her go.
* * *
“Rocco.”
Rocco startled awake, instantly aware of the tremor in Grace’s voice. His hand slid under his pillow and he drew out his weapon as he jumped off the bed, ready to take down the intruder. “Where is he?”
“No.” She shrank back against the wall, her arms in front of her face, distracting him with the beauty of her naked body. “No one’s here.”
He cursed himself inwardly for letting instinct override rational thought. After years of being woken, only to be beaten, the slightest sound made his body react as if it were under threat.
“What’s wrong?” Adrenaline pounded through his body, and he made a quick visual search of the apartment, disbelieving she could be so fearful when no one was there.
“Your back.” She stared at him aghast. “What happened to you? Who did that?”
Rocco let out a relieved breath and lowered the gun. Until tonight, he had been careful not to let her see his back, either by keeping his shirt on or positioning her in front of him, but last night, after he’d loved her properly—slowly and sweetly like he used to do—he’d stripped off his shirt to feel her against him and made the mistake of falling asleep with her in his arms.
“It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Rocco. That’s not nothing. And you didn’t get those marks in a fight. It’s torture. Someone tortured you. Was it Cesare?”
Words failed him. How could he explain the need to punish himself for every deed he did that tormented his soul? A lifetime of Our Fathers and Hail Marys would not be enough to atone for his sins. It was something too deeply personal to explain. Not even Clay knew why he visited the dungeon or what solace he sought under the lash of the whip.
“Come to bed.” He slid his gun under the pillow and pulled on his shirt.
“I want to know what happened.” She folded her arms over her chest, and it took him a moment to remember that this wasn’t the same girl who had scrambled up the river bank, her face wet with blood and tears, screaming at him to leave her alone, the girl who had run away, left him without saying good-bye. This Grace had fight and courage, and she wasn’t going to back down.
“I said leave it,” he snapped.
“No.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Grace.” His voice rose to a shout, and he slammed his hand down on the bed. He knew he was overreacting, but the nightmare was still with him, twisting its way through his heart. “It’s nothing to do with you. Some things you just can’t heal.”
“Your pain is everything to do with me.” She pressed her lips together and glared. “Pain and trauma are what I heal. And don’t you dare speak to me that way again, or I will walk out that door.”
His mouth opened and closed again. When he used that tone of voice with the Toscani soldiers and associates they almost pissed themselves in fear. When he scowled at the men he hunted down, they quivered in their boots. But Grace, less than half his size, one quarter of his strength, gloriously naked beside his bed, was not taking his shit, and he’d never been so turned on in his life.
“Nothing happens without my consent.” It was as much as he was going to tell her, and even that revelation came through gritted teeth.
Her expression turned thoughtful. “Kink?”
“Fuck no.”
She wanted more, and he could see her internal struggle reflected on her face, but mercifully she held back and climbed into bed beside him. “You’d better not introduce me to whoever did that to you.”
Her fierce expression and her threatening words made him laugh. “I will never believe you again when you tell me you’re anti-violence, cara mia.”
“Not when someone I care about is hurt.”
Damn. Her protectiveness made his heart squeeze in his chest. She cared about him. It was more than he had ever hoped for that night she ran away, more than he had dreamed about in the lonely years since.
“Come here, Gracie.” A smile tugged the corners of his lips. “I have something else that hurts and you can kiss the pain away.”
“Again?” She crawled across the bed and straddled his hips. “I didn’t think you’d—”
“I would what?” He covered her breasts with his palms, squeezed them firmly.
“Be able to do it again so soon.” Her legs widened and she rocked her wet pussy over his shaft, already rock hard and ready for her again.
“Why not? I have the sexiest woman in the city in my bed. And if I remember correctly, that was never an issue before. You used to beg me to take a break.” He puffed out his chest, proud of his youthful stamina, as he reached over to the nightstand for a condom.
“You’re … older now.”
“What?” He froze with the condom packet in his teeth.
Her cheeks flushed, and she looked down. “Well, you’re in your thirties now—”
“Jesus Christ.” He ripped on the packet and sheathed himself, then lifted her, angling his hips so the head of his cock just breached her entrance. “You think I can’t keep up? I am everything I was then and more. Bigger. Stronger. Faster. And I can go all fucking night long.”
Grace’s body shook, and he lifted her chin with one finger to see her laughing. “Little minx. You know just where to drive the knife.”
“I love you like this,” she said, running her hands over his shoulders. “You are beautiful to me. No matter how old—”
He cut her off with a kiss as he drove his cock into her warm, wet heat. Grace gasped into his mouth and he pushed her up. “Ride me, dolcezza. I want to hear you scream as your old man pleasures the fuck out of you.”
“So romantic.”
“Right now I am beyond romance. You are so damn hot and wet, I can’t think about anything else.” He lifted her and slid in deeper, his hips forcing her thighs apart.
“It’s your fault.” She leaned back, grinding over his cock, her hands squeezing her breasts, and fuck wasn’t that the hottest thing he’d ever seen. “The way you touch me, the way you talk to me and look at me. Everything about you makes me hot.”
And everything about her made him hard. He understood now why Cesare said women made a man weak. He would die for this—not just the act itself, but the connection with her that took the encounter from just a physical act to something that nourished his soul. Cesare was dangerous to his body, but Grace was dangerous to his heart.
He cradled her face in his hands and kissed her gently, creating a steady, slow rhythm that threatened his self-control.
Grace squirmed on top of him, her hard nipples rubbing over his chest. “We did it slow last time,” she complained.
Yes, they did, but he was reluctant to let go the way he had before. He wanted to learn her body again before he took her the way he really wanted—hard and wild and with utter abandon.
Sliding his hands down, he squeezed her ass as he pumped into her pussy. His middle finger stroking closer and closer to the cleft between her cheeks. When the tip of his finger brushed her rear entrance, she froze and her pussy clenched around him. He kept up the rhythm, waiting for her muscles to relax before he did it again. On the third pass, he slicked her moisture and drew gentle circles over her puckered opening.
“Rocco?” Her voice was thin with uncertainty but heavy with desire.
“I want you here, Gracie.”
“We never did that before.”
He didn’t want to ask the next question, but he needed to know. “You ever had a man in your ass?”
Her voice was so quiet when she answered, he almost missed it. “No.”
A satisfied growl escaped his lips. He had been all her firsts, and now he would be the first man in her most intimate place. Gracie would be his. In all ways, she could belong to him.
“I’m going to make it good for you, the way I made your first time. You’re gonna love having me in your ass.”
She gave him a half smile. “I like your dirty talking.”
“I gotta whole lotta dirty waiting for my girl.”
Grace pushed herself up and canted her hips, grinding her clit against his pubic bone as she twisted her nipples between her thumb and forefinger. “Your girl likes dirty.”
His girl.
Riding his cock.
Wanting all the dirty he could give.
It was too fucking much. He grabbed her hips, bucked and grunted as they ground together. When her cheeks flushed and her pussy clenched around him, he slid his thumb over the hard knot of her clit and rubbed her hard. Her low guttural groan set him off, and they came together, her pussy rippling around his cock as he pumped his release in a rush of white-hot heat.
“Not bad for an old man,” she murmured, collapsing over top of him.
“I’m not done with you yet.” Utterly spent, he smoothed his hand up and down her back, and willed himself to revive quickly.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. Finally, he gently moved her to the side to dispose of the condom. When he returned, she had put on his T-shirt and was lying on her side. Rocco climbed into bed beside her and pulled her over his chest. He liked the weight of her, the warmth, the softness of her body against his.
“You called me your girl,” she said.
Rocco swallowed hard. “Yeah, I did.”
“We never talked about…” She twisted her lips to the side. “I mean … I don’t know.”
He felt her hesitation like a knife to his gut. “I’m not asking anything of you, Gracie.” His voice cracked, broke. “But to me … right here…” He thumped his chest. “You’ve always been my girl.”
“And you’ve always been my man.”
Rocco gave a satisfied grunt. “Your man wants you naked in bed.”
“It’s kind of cold,” she teased.
“I’ll warm you up.” He placed her hand on his cock, already semi-hard, and she laughed.
“I take back everything I said about your age. You are a machine.”
He wanted her again, but he was also content to just hold her, so he stroked his hand down her back and listened to the steady beat of her heart. “Your singing tonight was amazing,” he said. “Your voice has changed. It’s so much richer, deeper, and you’ve doubled your range.”
“I took proper voice lessons when I moved here to help me land the radio gigs. I’ve also done some behind-the-scenes recording work. It was a way to keep singing without being in front of people.”
Gently, he cupped her jaw and stroked his thumb over the scar. He remembered every brutal second of the knife slicing down her cheek, felt the searing pain as if it had been done to him. “And now, cara mia? Will you sing again?”
“I don’t know. I might do local gigs if I can wear the mask. Ethan has threatened to play a recording of himself singing twenty-four hours a day unless I agree.”
“You can perform on my stage anytime.” He brushed a kiss over her forehead. “If it helps you gain confidence, you can sing there every night. You can have your dream, Gracie. I’ll do anything to make it happen.”
“I know being an enforcer was never your dream.” She pushed herself higher, giving him a tantalizing view of her breasts. “What about owning a jazz club?”
“I’ll have to let you know. I’ve only had one day on the job.” He shifted her slightly, nudging her legs apart so his shaft was nestled at the juncture of her thighs.
“I suppose I’ve only had one day on the job too.” She wiggled against him and fuck if he wasn’t fully hard again. “I never thought I could make it big. At best, I thought I’d sing in the evenings after I finished my day job. But after I got my degree, the day job didn’t happen. So I think in my heart I was secretly dreaming the impossible dream.” She hummed a few bars of “Impossible Dream” and he felt a rush of pleasure like nothing he’d felt before.
“Sing it for me, dolcezza.” He lifted her hips and thrust up into her wetness. “Live your dream as I live mine.”
He flipped them over and licked and sucked her nipples as he withdrew and slid home again, over and over as her beautiful voice filled the room. She made it to the part about the unreachable star and then he slicked his thumb over her clit and sent her there. And they fell back to earth together.