Page 89 of Sinfully Savage Mafia

For Molly.

For me.

CHAPTER20

HEAVEN

“Molly!”

Someone shakes me and I’m jerked out of the nightmare I thought I’d left behind even though it always hovers before sleep. But this is the first time in a long time it’s returned to sink its sharp, cold fingers into me.

Nightmare and truth.

I fight against the man who has me, gasping for breath.

“Where—I…”

Matteo shakes me again. “Heaven. You’re okay. You’re here with me.”

I suck in a sobbing lungful of air, shivering. He folds me into his arms and I sigh against him. For all he’s a man I hate, a man I lust after, a man who can make me climb to the highest peaks of pleasure while not knowing anything about him, he’s a beacon of comfort right now, and I burrow in against him.

I’m in SoHo, in Matteo’s bed. With him. It’s been two nights since our erotic encounter at his club, and more than anything, I need to hear his soothing voice right now. I need someone to fool me into believing that I’m not to blame, that I’m not the reason why she’s gone.

But I am the reason. And it’s not okay.

I don’t think it ever will be.

“No,” I whisper against his shoulder. “It isn’t okay at all.”

“Tell me what happened,” he says, trailing his fingertips down the sides of my face.

Maybe it’s because we’ve been so intimate, more intimate than I’ve ever been with anyone in my life. He’s stripped me down to my soul, infiltrated my blood and bones, and though it’s two days, it’s been more than sex.

The shift from the morning in Conor’s office has changed things, and while Matteo’s been just as hard and unyielding in so many ways, there are moments of sweet clarity, when he looks at me with something that makes my heart tumble instead of my libido.

Maybe we can make something of this union, like my aunt said. I don’t know. All I know is I need him here, I need the strength of him, that peculiar softness I sometimes taste beneath the steel and ice. The warmth of embers beneath the searing blaze.

I need him.

I need…someone. I don’t have friends. Not really, my world isn’t a world built for friends. It’s all alliances and enemies and waiting.

But Matteo…he’s going to marry me, whether I want that or not, and in the last two days I’ve softened to that. There are worse arrangements than him. And if I must be in a loveless union, I’ll take passion and the odd glimpse of sweetness. I’ll take him.

“Amore mio?Please talk to me.”

So I do. I recount the horrifying memories that pop between my temples like bullets for Matteo. I tell him everything that happened the night she was taken.

“Molly,” he repeats once I finish. “Like your family’s pub?”

I nod, swiping at my damp eyes. “Yes, we renamed it after her, after...everything. After my failure.”

“Tesoro, it’s not your fault she was taken. It sounds like you did what you could?—”

“I watched her get raped. I watched them drug her and drag her into a car!”

“Not even you could have taken on an armed group of men,” he says. “You never should have gone after them, not knowing what they might do to you if they had the chance.”

I melt into him as he strokes my back. “Conor would have saved her.”

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