Kiss & Control: A Mafia Romance Read online

  Tumbling forward, his body forms a haven. A wall of muscle, man, and raw strength. I’m wrapped in Fallon. His scent. His sweat. His sex.

  We stay together gasping, trading a peppering of kisses over one another until he rolls onto his side with a grunt. “I’m totally going to have a noise complaint in my mailbox tomorrow.”

  I smirk against the pillow. “It was worth it.”

  Am I sore? Yes.

  Incredibly? Oh, yeah.

  Semi-terrified of what’s coming? Maybe.

  But I wouldn’t change a thing. A weightlessness flows through me, relieving a hidden burden and breaking invisible chains. The doom and gloom are gone, replaced with a hum of control over myself. My body. My choices. I wanted to do this, and I did. For the first time, I’ve done something completely for me and only me, not looking at how it benefits the family or my standing with a suitor.

  Fuck, this pretty much soils me according to tradition, but I don’t feel filthy. I feel strong. Empowered. Emboldened. I want to flip a finger to the masses and run around screaming fuck the patriarchy, but that’s not exactly safe given the current situation.

  “It definitely was,” he agrees. “I think you took part of my soul.” His fingers trace zig zags over the scar on my shoulder, a thin line all that remains from the grazing shot first fired at me, a tiny thing compared to the one on his.

  “I’ll think about giving it back.”

  He laughs, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed to rest them on the floor. “On second thought, I’d have to have one in the first place for that to happen.”

  “You have a soul. Shut up.”

  I sit up, too, self conscious about laying in his bed alone. Sex sounded like it’s followed by cuddles, but maybe that’s fiction like those movie insta-orgasms in movies where women explode from just the tip entering straight away. Even with just a taste of sex, I have serious questions about that craziness. I’m relatively sure that if I hadn’t ridden on his face beforehand, I would’ve cried a hundred times over already.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  I glance over at him and find him frowning at the condom; the material streaked with red. It’s not a bloodbath by any means, but it’s definitely noticeable, and that likely means it’s on his sheets too. Shit.

  “Oh, uh,” I say, drawing an absolute blank at the worst time. “Maybe?”

  “Shit. I’m sorry. Stay there.”

  He pads out of the room stark naked, giving me an uninterrupted view of his backside, which I appreciate with its defined lines and his cute pasty white butt, but it also sends a sense of dread through me. More scars. Dozens of them. Big. Small. Round. Straight. They riddle his body.

  There’s commotion in a distant bathroom. Cabinets opening. A sink running. And then he’s back, entering the room with a washcloth and nudging my thighs apart. “Lean back.”

  I do, though it’s a little awkward when he gently wipes me with the cloth. I stare at the ceiling, counting the swirls in the white paint to fend off embarrassment.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay,” I breathe, shooting from the hip. “You can make it up to me next time.”

  He clears his throat, which isn’t the answer I expect, and pushes to stand. “Come on. We need to get you dressed and back in your cage before your father removes my balls and uses them for a hood ornament.”

  This man might be the death of me. Not physically by his own hand, but of complete and utter frustration.

  I sit up, ready to rip him a new one. “Seriously?”

  But in typical Fallon fashion, he’s already out of reach, moving toward the door. “Don’t be a brat. I’ve far exceeded my original promise of five minutes.”

  “Did you seriously just call me a brat?”

  If Papa doesn’t take his balls, I might.

  “You’re acting like one.” He tosses the reply over his shoulder like a hand grenade, and I’m left storming after him to hurl one back, though he shuts the bathroom door and locks it before I can force an apology out of him.

  I refuse to argue through a door, so I head to the living room and begin dressing, pulling on every piece of clothing more angrily than the last.

  He strolls into the room naked when I’m sliding my feet back into my slippers. His semi-hard penis bobs with every step, now clean and condom-free.

  He’s about to restart his campaign of taunts when his phone rings from its spot on the couch, pulling his attention from me to the Bad Boys ringtone. He answers, planting a hand on his bare hip, his erection still hanging in the wind. “Antonio.”

  I don’t know whether to laugh at his ringtone or burst into tears. I’m not ready to leave. Not yet.

  “Yes, she just got here. No, I didn’t know about it. And yes, I can bring her to you now.” He talks about me like a deliverable. A package shipped to the wrong address.

  I wring my hands, eyeing the front door and flirting with making a run for it, but Fallon catches my gaze and steps in my path. I don’t doubt for a second that he’ll tackle me, nude or not.

  He doesn’t look all that happy at whatever Papa’s rattling off, delivering rapidfire yeses before disconnecting with a quick, “Understood.”

  “Don’t even think about it. I’m bigger and faster. Not to mention I can run unlike you in those slippers.” He sets his phone on an end table, nestling it beside a picture of him and his brothers. I assume it’s them, seeing that his twin’s in the photo with his arm around him. The other man is taller, with red curls and bright blue eyes.

  “My father’s ringtone is the Cops theme song?” I ask, pushing aside the rush of sadness. I can’t imagine what he’s gone through over the last few weeks.

  He fires off a wolfish grin. “If the shoe fits…”

  I cross my arms over my chest protectively, trying to ignore the rain clouds on the horizon. “I’m assuming he wants my head on a plate?” I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t install a tracker around my neck like a dog after this latest move.

  He slides his boxers on, stuffing the monster between his legs back into its lair. “Based on that little exchange, you’re lucky you’re his daughter. Otherwise, you might not live to see the ball drop at midnight.”

  28

  Fallon

  This will go one of two ways.

  I’ll walk in the front door with Eva and walk out with my heart still beating, albeit rapidly, or I’ll walk in, Antonio will smell the sex on us, and my heart will wind up in the bottom of the Atlantic with the rest of my dead body.

  Eva’s nervous in the passenger seat. Her eyes haven’t budged from her lap the entire ride. She’s a little salty that I have the child locks on, but I can’t take any risks of her flying the coop.

  From what she’s said, Papa Bear’s had her stuffed in a hotel in Center City for the last few weeks, but he directs me to bring her to an address in Tacony instead. Apparently this vinyl-sided twin located dead center in a row of red brick is supposed to be safe. It’s her godfather’s house, and if he doesn’t look and sound like Don Corleone, I’m going to be disappointed.

  This isn’t where I’d stash my kid if I had Antonio’s kind of money, but he trusts the guy, and he can kill me and what’s left of my family if I step out of line, so I need to do what he says. Even if I did just pound out his daughter and feel like my chest’s about to explode at the prospect of leaving her again.

  The onetime fuck was a shit idea. Eva isn’t a onetime girl. She’s a lifetime girl. The woman you want to wake next up to and make crepes for if she asks, even though you’ve never made a fucking crepe in your life. You do it because she wants it, and in turn, you want to make her happy.

  I want Eva to be happy. Happy, healthy, and far as fuck from this world. She’s too good to be hidden away and held back. She’s going to do great shit someday, and even if she doesn’t know it, I’ll cheer her on from a distance. I’d do it next to her if our circumstances allowed it.

  A goodbye kiss would be amazing
right about now. I’d rather it be a see you eventually kiss, but that’s out of reach. If Antonio’s watching, it’ll definitely be a goodbye because he’ll pull a shotgun on me and end this all.

  “This is it?” I ask, pointing at the eyesore of a home. I know it is, but I just want to hear her voice again.

  She nods, still focused on her hands. “You can drive, Fallon.”

  “I can…” I trail, reaching out to squeeze her knee. “I’m terrible at parallel parking though. Crippling in the city.”

  Her eyes drift over, shining with tears. “No. Right now you can drive. We can hop on I-95, head south, and never look back. They’ll never find us.”

  I don’t want to be the asshole here. I really don’t. But she’s too goddamn naïve. “They will, Eva. Your father’s pockets are deeper and his reach is farther. Running isn’t a way to live.”

  She brushes away a tear with a shaky hand. “Neither is existing in a cage.”

  “Listen, I don’t want to be the guy that makes promises he can’t keep, but maybe when this all cools off, you can fly out of that cage, and maybe Antonio won’t care where you rest your wings.”

  Is what I’m saying a fantasy? Yeah, but it’s also hope, and hope might keep her hide intact while Lombardi runs his leads on his rat and I run mine, which are non existent at the moment. Nolan, while impulsive and sloppy with his lies, didn’t leave a paper trail to follow. Even his phone records are a dud of burner phones and phone-sex hotlines.

  “He’ll always care because he decides where they rest, ultimately.” Her voice quakes as she throws open the car door, storming out into the winter night.

  I follow, giving her space to seethe as she stomps up the sidewalk, passing fences lined in Christmas lights and another with a Happy New Year banner. She might be furious with me for shooting down her pitch for a life on the lam together, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe for her to be out here alone, even if it’s only a few hundred feet to her godfather’s door.

  “You’re cute when you’re angry,” I offer, and in true Eva style, she shoots me the bird over her shoulder, her hips swinging with extra sass. “See? Irresistible.”

  All she offers is a grunt, quickening her pace up the walkway to the home’s door like she can’t get away from me fast enough.

  Antonio’s waiting impatiently just inside the screen door, and I say a silent prayer of thanks I didn’t go for that kiss. He’s holding a tumbler of what I assume is whiskey, his suit coat open and golden tie undone. Based on the tie, I hope that Eva interrupted his New Year’s activities. We shouldn’t be the only ones suffering tonight.

  Eva stops short of the porch, rooting herself on the cracked concrete path. Antonio beckons her forward, his face pinching with irritation, but she doesn’t move.

  “What’s wrong?” I keep my voice low enough that he can’t hear when I catch up, stopping beside her.

  She hangs her head and pulls her cardigan close. “I don’t want to go back.”

  “It’s temporary.” I’ll make it that way by any means necessary. It won’t be long until Pop retires fully, and when he does, the Tully fold is mine. Money. Power. Reach. Who knows what doors it’ll open for us.

  “Now,” Antonio snaps, flushing redder by the second. “You, too, kid. I’m missing out on my own fucking New Year’s Eve party because my daughter’s an asshole.”

  “She is,” I agree, and Eva thumps me in the chest with a fist.

  Taking the lead, I cross the threshold into the tiny row home first. Cheap cigarettes hang in the air that I politely ignore, though my lungs are begging me to cough one up within two seconds of breathing it in. If he says she’s staying here, I might take her up on that offer of skipping town with her. At least she’d live longer than two weeks without croaking of secondhand smoke.

  A woman sits on a pinstripe couch just inside, her hair’s extreme yellow tint looking mildly radioactive while a lavender mumu covers her short, top-heavy frame. It takes a second to figure out she’s the source of the cigarette smell, one glowing in her right hand while an overflowing coffee can of old ones sits beside her on the couch cushion.

  “Hey, there!” she greets, oblivious to the fact that Antonio’s practically dry-heaving as the smoke drifts toward him. “Sal will be out in a minute. He’s grabbing an overnight bag since you’re all headed up to the Poconos.”

  Antonio somehow reaches an even darker shade of red. “He told you?”

  The woman rolls her eyes; the lids coated in a thick coating of golden shadow. “Obviously. I’m his wife, Tony. That’s what husbands do. Well, normal husbands that fear waking up with a steak knife through the heart for lying.”

  I have to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. I like this woman. She may smell like my worst nightmare, but she gives zero fucks, a lot like the brunette beside me, who looks like she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  She’s staring at the floor, so I nudge her when Antonio’s busy bickering with the woman about her not blabbing her big mouth. She hesitates at first, but when those dark eyes meet mine with their sweeping lashes, I’m brought back to that first time seeing her awake at the cabin. A sad, lost girl with nowhere to run.

  I’m about to barter away my life for hers when he booms, “Sal, Jesus Christ, why would you tell Barbara of all fucking people?”

  My eyes drift over and my nuts shrivel at the big, bald motherfucker standing in the doorway leading to the kitchen in a tight beater and camo cargo pants, his thick forearm bearing two healing wounds courtesy of my 9mm. Not only that, but his beak of a nose hooks left from the door I kicked into his face.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  He sees me as soon as I see him, and for a split second, I think he doesn’t recognize me, but then that big sourpuss of a face contorts like he wants to crack my head like an egg and eat it.

  Either he’s risen from the dead with the help of some hocus pocus, or Nolan didn’t off this motherfucker, and he has some explaining to do that my dead brother can’t. If my brother let him go and he didn’t blab to Antonio, something smells far worse than the cancer floating in the air.

  He glances between me and Antonio before shifting his focus to Eva, who I not-so-subtly step in front of. I’d prefer she not be in the room at all for this, but this is the next best thing while her father calls the shots.

  I clear my throat, ready to get this over with. “I hate to be that guy that kills the mood, but why were you trying to break into my facility the day of my brother’s funeral?”

  Antonio turns to me to deny it, thinking I’m talking to him, until he sees that Sal and I are squaring off across the room from one another.

  The bald fuck has the balls to lie with a grin, “Do I know you?”

  “I put those two holes in your arm, didn’t I?” I point at his two distinct markings, bright red and angry, much like their owner who’s reaching Antonio’s shade of crimson. “And broke that big fucking nose of yours.”

  Antonio frowns, studying his man. “I thought you said you had a nail gun accident?”

  I don’t ask how the fuck that could bust a nose, too, plowing ahead toward the important shit. “So, were you at the Tully docks for official Lombardi business, like the other guys we ran off, or were you there for something to do with my brother, and that’s why he didn’t put a slug between your eyes?”

  Antonio cuts in before Sal can, snapping his head toward me. “There’s never been Lombardi business at the docks. I don’t give a shit what you do. I told Shea that. Too many Bratva fucks crawling around.”

  “Well, why’d we catch this asshole on our property?” I nod toward Sal who seems keen on the deny, deny, deny approach.

  “Why were you there?” Antonio demands, looking like he’s a fuse short of blowing a gasket.

  The oaf shrugs. “I was looking for Evangelina.”

  “Why would Nolan tell everyone that you were dead?” My patience is razor-thin with this asshole, and if his boss wasn’t standing a foot away, I would�
��ve already nestled a bullet in his skull and called it a day. He’s the Italian connection Torin sniffed out, just like Nolan was the Irish one. No wonder it was so easy for Nole to find Chuckie and Perla. This prick led him right to them.

  I don’t care why. He planned to off my girl, and thanks to her being a hellion, she’s standing behind me, alive, kicking, and currently fuming mad at me. I have the answers I need. I don’t need excuses. I’ve heard enough for a lifetime.

  Sal’s hand falls to his pocket, and mine follows suit to my waistband. He’s slower to the draw, whipping out a rusty-tipped pistol after my 9mm is already firing, hitting him in almost the same spot as one scar from that day at the docks.

  He screams and drops his piece to the rug, his forearm badly mangled with blood pouring out worse than the last time. The impact tore through whatever repair was still healing, creating a larger, deeper hole.

  Lowering my weapon, I step forward to grab the fallen gun. It's a mistake. I’m no longer locked on him, and with his functioning hand, he extracts another pistol that’s cradled on his hip, aiming it at Eva, who screams behind me.

  Instinctively, I throw myself back to shield her.

  A loud bang fills the air, and the bullet skims past me, the shot nowhere near its mark as it hits the television.

  Another follows it, but I’m on top of Eva on the floor, unable to see who or what he hit. Waiting for the shooting to stop, I wrap around her, her body pressing into mine.

  A clearing of the throat has us separating, and I look over to see Antonio frowning. “Touch my daughter like that again, and you’ll look like him.” He nods toward the lump on the floor that was Sal, a single red hole now decorating his forehead. “Aim for the head next time, amateur.”

  “That’s cheaper than divorce,” the woman on the couch, Barbara, mutters.

  I help Eva to her feet, ignoring the black widow’s comments, but Eva doesn’t, gasping “Barb, he’s your husband!”