The Woman at the Docks: A Mafia Romance Read online

  If my brother didn't decide that along with butting his head back into family business, he also wanted to be a cock-block.

  "Everything alright down there?" he called, making both of us freeze for a second before Romy's hands moved from my shoulders, planted on my chest, and shoved me back a foot. "I heard some yelling," Matteo added.

  "Everything is fine," I growled up at him, turning away from Romy because the way she was breathing heavy, the faraway, soft look in her eyes, and the way her lips were swollen from mine made me want to tell my brother to fuck off so we could finish what we had started.

  "Think I need confirmation from Romy on that too."

  "What do you think I fucking killed her?" I snapped, walking around to the bottom of the stairs to look up at my brother.

  "Seeing as I've never seen you in this bad a mood, I gotta wonder what you're capable of right now," he told me, never one to mince words.

  "I'm fine," Romy insisted, moving up beside me, careful not to even brush my shoulder as she started up the stairs. "Your brother just got a little carried away with an asinine theory," she added, moving past Matteo.

  We both stood there in silence at the opposite ends of the stairs, listening to Romy tell Lucky she was tired, and was going to bed early, then close her bedroom door.

  Only then did I start upward, finding myself blocked by my brother.

  "You know that this is a bad idea, right?" he asked, shaking his head. "No way this ends well."

  "Are you giving me woman advice? You, of all people?"

  "Actually, I was talking about work. But you just confirmed a suspicion Lucky and I have had all day too, you dick," he added, smirking as he moved out of my way. "He can have any girl in town," Matteo declared as we moved into the kitchen where Lucky was brewing a new pot of coffee. "And he has to pick this one."

  "Maybe it's a proximity thing," Lucky suggested. "Kind of like businessmen going for their secretaries. They're there all those long nights when the mood strikes..."

  "I'm standing right fucking here," I grumbled, wondering if anyone had made a liquor run yet. If not, that was on somebody's next to-do list.

  "I don't know. I think it might be a damsel in distress kind of thing," Matteo decided.

  "Have you met Romy? She's not in distress," I objected.

  "But not a full-on damsel in distress," Lucky piped in, ignoring me completely. "Not clingy and needy and can't do shit for herself. That gets old fast. But someone who needs him in some small way. I can see that being his thing."

  "Yeah," Matteo agreed.

  "I take back everything I ever said about you needing to be a more active member of this family," I told my brother, watching as his smile spread. "Go back to whatever skirt you ducked out of. We don't need you here."

  "Struck a nerve," Lucky mumbled under his breath. "All jokes aside, Luca, what the fuck? Haven't dated a woman in months, then you get obsessed with this random woman at the docks?"

  "I'm not obsessed with anyone," I told them.

  "Maybe not fully. But I can see it brewing," Matteo said. "Remember that girl from down the street when we were kids?" he asked Lucky. "The redhead with the mean dad?"

  "Emmie," Lucky supplied.

  "Yeah, Emmie. Remember how she used to get teased mercilessly because she was always wearing hand-me-downs that never fit? Until one day Luca went all White Knight on everyone's asses, saying if they said shit to her, they answered to him? He's always liked being needed. Just a little bit. He likes solving problems."

  "Yeah, he's so Type A like that," Lucky agreed and the two of them were having a harder and harder time keeping straight faces as my agitation clearly kept growing.

  "I've had enough of this," I told them, going down to my room, throwing on a pair of basketball shorts, then coming back out. "I'm going for a run," I informed them.

  "Try not to get distracted daydreaming about your damsel and fall into a ditch," Matteo called after me before I slammed the door behind me.

  Ribbing aside, it was nice to have him back.

  Being a pain in the ass was a job requirement of younger siblings. I had gotten used to it years before.

  Besides, I realized as I ran until my legs felt shaky, my entire body drenched in sweat, they weren't exactly wrong, were they?

  I was into Romy.

  She was just a little bit in distress.

  And I did like helping to fix problems.

  And last, but certainly not least, one could absolutely make an argument that I was beginning to get just a bit obsessed with her.

  Fuck.

  That was a complication I didn't need in my life right then.

  Chapter Eight

  Romy

  That happened.

  Completely unexpected.

  And, well, completely delicious too.

  Yes, delicious.

  That was the best word I could come up with.

  I'd never been someone who was into arguing as foreplay, who liked things like make-up sex. Namely, because arguing with men brought back childhood memories of what came along with those shouts.

  Pain and blood and bruises.

  Scars of both the literal and figurative sort.

  It wasn't sexy to me to see men angry.

  That said, what was sexy was the fact that Luca seemed like he had been overcome with his desire for me, had been struggling to control it.

  Then he finally snapped.

  I'd been kissed a lot of ways in my life. Each kiss was different in its own way.

  But I wasn't sure I'd ever been kissed with such uncontrolled need before.

  If Matteo hadn't shown up, I was pretty sure Luca's hands would have been roving, roaming, grabbing, claiming, owning.

  And, what's more, I would have leaned into it, would have begged for more, for everything.

  Everything fell away in that moment. The men upstairs who would have heard if things got more heated. The strangeness of our circumstances. The fact that this man was an underboss in the mob. Even, yes, the reality of my missing sister.

  That was how powerful desire could be.

  It could wipe your mind blank.

  It could replace everything with a clawing, aching, uncontrollable, undeniable need.

  Even an hour later, tucked away in my room while Luca went off on a run to blow off some steam, I couldn't seem to get the unyielding pressure on my lower stomach, the throbbing emptiness between my thighs to ease, to let me think rationally through it.

  Because rationality was what this situation required.

  I couldn't just go around sleeping with high-ranking members of the Cosa Nostra.

  For God's sake.

  Even thinking of it should have been absurd, impossible.

  Yet here we were.

  Here I was.

  Wondering what Luca's lips would feel like on my neck, my shoulder blade, my breast, my stomach, my inner thigh. What his weight would feel like pressing me into the mattress. If he would be as uncontrolled in bed as he was with a simple kiss.

  All those thoughts continued to assault me even as I tried to remind myself that it was a bad idea, it could screw up an already tense situation, and doing so could hinder my ability to find and save my sister

  That couldn't happen.

  Which meant Luca and I couldn't happen either.

  Now someone just needed to get that message to my poor body. Because it clearly wasn't getting the memo.

  On a sigh, I climbed back out of bed, moving through the quiet house. It was deceptively quiet, though, because I knew there were armed guards around, even if I couldn't see them.

  The remnants of our impromptu card game had been cleaned up.

  A bottle of whiskey was on the center of the table with a bow and note on it.

  Curious, I made my way over, finding quick, sloppy handwriting.

  Without knowing, I knew it was either Matteo or Lucky.

  Went and stole this from the restaurant. I think you need it. - M.

&nbs
p; I felt a smile tug at my lips.

  I was a guest here.

  And hospitality didn't mean you took as freely as you wished. Especially of things meant for someone else.

  That said, I was pretty sure the only thing that could help my current predicament was a stiff drink.

  I grabbed a plastic cup from the kitchen, pouring myself a generous cup.

  I didn't like whiskey.

  I didn't like any hard liquor.

  At least not straight.

  But desperate times...

  I threw it back, coming up spitting as it burned all the way down.

  "Gross," I declared as I poured myself another—much smaller—cup, hoping that it would help me sleep, if nothing else.

  I had thought Luca had come home already, but then the door flew open, making my stomach drop for a second until he came in.

  And then there he was.

  In nothing but low-slung basketball shorts, leaving his entire midsection on display, sweat slick over the hard lines of abdominal muscles. And, as I stared, a single bead of sweat slipped down between his pecs, down his abs, tracing the little happy trail as it disappeared under the waistband of his pants.

  God.

  God.

  A little whimper worked its way up my throat and out, barely audible to my own ears, but Luca's eyes seemed to blaze at the sound of it somehow.

  His gaze slid over my red with white polka dot pajama set, then to my hand, then the table, taking in the bottle I'd shamelessly been pilfering from.

  "Matteo?" he asked, still not advancing into the room.

  "He stole it from your restaurant," I told him.

  To that, I got a snort with a head shake. "Of course he did," he said. "Alright. I have to shower," he said, voice a little rough before rushing away.

  Did I watch his back— and ass—as he walked away? Yes, yes I did. Adding further insult to injury, my poor body cried in desperation as I poured myself a third drink, taking it to my room.

  It didn't end up doing any good for the need swirling through my system, but it did eventually knock me the hell out.

  Which was just as good.

  Except my dreams were plagued with images and sounds of hands sinking into soft flesh, of murmured Italian words in my ear, leaving me writhing in bed until I woke up in tangled sheets, my body overheated despite the air conditioning blasting from the vents.

  I lay there disoriented for a long couple of minutes, squinting at the brightness of the room before it clicked that it was later than usual for me to be rising.

  Folding up, I searched for my phone, finding it knocked on the ground under the bed.

  The time on it said ten minutes after eleven in the morning.

  Eleven.

  I wasn't sure I had slept past ten since I was a child.

  I slid my phone unlocked, squinting at my screen when a text screen popped up.

  I didn't remember texting anyone recently.

  Yet there it was.

  A chat bubble staring me right in the face.

  With words I had no memory of texting, likely doing so more than a little drunk and very, very tired, a combination that made complete delirium entirely possible.

  You can't just kiss people like that.

  "No," I hissed, scrolling the text up, praying it was just something I'd texted to an ex or something.

  But no.

  Because there was the picture of my sister that Luca had texted to himself from my phone.

  "Oh, God," I groaned, pressing my phone to my chest, eyes closing, humiliation blanketing my system. It chased away the desire, sure, but it was no more comfortable, no more tolerable.

  It took longer than I care to admit to find the strength to scroll the screen back down to see if there had been a response from Luca.

  Nothing.

  But the man checked his phone a lot.

  There was almost no chance of him not having seen it.

  Shit.

  And I was now stuck with him.

  I couldn't run away like every instinct in me told me to do.

  I had to face him.

  And deal with the consequences.

  Resolved to that fate, I grabbed clothes and made my way into the bathroom, taking a cold shower, going through the motions of getting ready for my day, then staring myself down in the mirror, trying to convince my reflection—and myself—that it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't like I'd told him I'd felt the tingle of that kiss down to the soles of my feet, to the edges of my hair.

  I just said he couldn't kiss people like that.

  I could possibly even swing that if I tried.

  Decision made, I took a deep breath, and made my way out of the bathroom with my chin high even though I knew it was a front, that I was rocking in anxiety inside.

  All in vain, though.

  Because as I followed the sounds of masculine voices into the kitchen, I didn't hear Luca.

  I didn't find him there, either.

  Dario and Matteo were in the kitchen, backs to me as they had some sort of discussion about business. From what I could tell, Dario was upset about some extortion scheme he came up with that Luca had told him was a bad idea.

  "I don't know what you're expecting from me here, Dar," Matteo said, head shaking. "I don't have a hell of a lot of power here."

  "You have your father's ear."

  "You want me to overstep Luca and go right to my old man? You know the kind of shit I would be in if I jumped the chain of command here? No. That's not how this works. And I don't apprec—"

  "Good morning," I called, bright, chipper, wanting to interrupt them before they realized I'd been eavesdropping. I didn't know how quickly this family was to kill when an outsider learned too much, but I also did not want to find out.

  "Romina," Dario greeted me, doing a poor job of banking down his obvious anger at Matteo's refusal to help him overstep Luca.

  "Hey there, Romy. You look like you finally got a good night of sleep. I thought you and Luca might have been up all night... fighting again," he said, and that slip wasn't lost on me.

  He knew.

  And he was letting me know he knew.

  But I couldn't tell if he approved of that situation or not.

  Not that it mattered, of course. Since it was never going to happen again.

  "Why's that?" I asked, not taking the bait. Things were bad enough. I didn't need to get into any weirdness with the younger Grassi brother.

  "Oh, because he looked like hell this morning before he headed out."

  He wasn't around.

  That was good. Right?

  But then why was there a completely irrational sinking sensation in my chest?

  God, I was falling apart.

  "Is he working in general, or is there news about my sister?" I asked, hearing a hint of desperation in my own voice.

  That made Matteo soften, head shaking. "We're working on that, hon," he assured me. "He didn't say anything about any new developments, though."

  "Would you guys tell me if you had one?" I challenged.

  "I guess that depends on what we find out," Matteo told me.

  It had been hard the night before, bantering about food combinations, comparing favorite movies and music and shows while we played cards, to see his mafia ties, to spot any of the seriousness in him that seemed necessary for such a position in life.

  Right here, though, in the bright morning light in the kitchen?

  It was suddenly very clear.

  I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen—and heard—it myself.

  But there was something vaguely threatening about the way he said it. Like he was daring me to press, to demand, so he could remind me of the power dynamic between us.

  "You know, you guys would never have known you have someone screwing you over if not for me."

  "Allegedly," Matteo filled in. "We don't have proof of anything yet. Except that you were trespassing on our property. Luca usually has his head in the game, but if he
doesn't this time," he said, and it was clear he meant because of me, "I will make sure we keep an eye on the ball."

  Standing beside him, even Dario looked a surprised at the change in attitude from someone he had likely known his entire life.

  "Did anyone happen to pick up a Snickers at the store?" I asked, looking at Dario.

  "A Snickers. No, why? You want one?" he asked, and it was clear that he was under orders to get me something if I asked. Like it or not. Inconvenient or not.

  "I was just thinking someone should try feeding one to Matteo here. See if he turns back into someone who isn't a raging asshole." I said it with a smile on my face too, getting a laugh covered in a cough from Dario, and a slow, devilish smirk from Matteo.

  "What? You seem to get along with Luca well enough. He's a dick," Matteo told me, shoulders loosening up.

  "Luca has been appropriately cautious without needing to stoop to veiled threats," I objected, chin lifting.

  "Really? There were no threats when he was yelling at you last night?" Matteo shot back, but there was no heat in his words.

  "That was a misunderstanding. And it was ironed out."

  "By what methods?" he asked, brow quirking up.

  "Romy, babe, what do you think this is a vacation?" Lucky's voice chimed in behind me, making me turn to see him walking in. "Sleeping in till almost noon on a weekday. Missing my award-winning French toast," he tsked, shaking his head at me as he dropped a brown bag on the counter, likely replenishing some of the food stores. "Don't look so crushed. I saved you some," he told me, tugging my hair.

  With that, a defeated Dario moved back outside, preferring to swelter in the heat than talk to Matteo. Lucky kept up light conversation as he reheated the French toast for me.

  "I'm heading out for a bit," Matteo said, getting no reaction from me, something that Lucky picked up on.

  As soon as Matteo was gone, he looked over at me sideways, "What'd you do to Matteo?"

  "What did I do? I woke up. And he started throwing attitude and threats at me."

  "Dick," Lucky said, handing me my plate.

  "That's what I said," I agreed.

  "Funny thing about the Grassis. Luca comes off all dark and serious, but he's got a soft heart. Matteo comes off light and fun, but is a lot darker than anyone realizes. Don't take it to heart. He's just looking out for the family."