Page 6 of Dirty Mafia Torment
“Jesus Christ.”
“No, Emily Dickinson.”
She’s lost her damn mind.
Her head cocks. “You blow with the wind yet remain alive and thriving.”
“Barely alive,” I mutter, “and hardly thriving.”
She shifts on her knees and straightens, her breasts swaying and my mind playing vicious tricks on me. “Point is, Hot Pants, you do as you will without consequences.”
Until my father demands I step up.
Until my motherfucking destiny becomes inescapable.
On my eighteenth birthday, my father sat me down in his leather-clad library, the air thick with cigars and aged whiskey. His steely gaze pinned me to the chair, unwavering, as he mindfucked me. “Get it out of your system while you can.” By “it,” he meant all the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll I could handle. Understanding that numbness wasn’t truly the goal. Escape. Relief. Freedom from the crushing weight of expectations was.
Because when you’re Sebastiano Beneventi’s son, the Life is your only destiny.
It’s like my father sees straight through me, knowing my mind isn’t wired like Sandro’s. I’m not just some hormone-fueled kid with a rebellious streak a mile long. There’s something deeper, something restless, simmering beneath my skin, a hunger for the unpredictable,a thirst for the forbidden. I crave the burn, the sting, the electrifying charge buried in the raw and the real. If curiosity killed the cat, I’ve died ten times over. But what’ll truly kill me is the soul-crushing predictability of the famiglie. Because no matter Don Lucchese’s promises of change, mafiosi will always be mafiosi. And I curse the day I’m officially one of them.
“Experiment. Test your limits,” my father commanded, his voice a low growl of authority. “But don’t be a stupid little shit. Don’t get caught, don’t get hooked, and don’t fucking die. When your time’s up, you’ll step up as the Beneventi heir. Capisci?”
He meant proving myself, either as an earner, an enforcer—or both, if you’re Sebastiano Beneventi.
The clock in my mind is always ticking, even when the weight in my wicked soul wishes for time to stand still.
She licks her lips once more, capturing my complete attention.
I smirk. “You want a taste of my dick, baby? That’s why you’re tracking my bed partners?”
She rolls her fucking eyes. “Curiosity is why I’ve befriended you.”
“That’s what you call this?” I gesture between us. “Befriended?”
Her sigh fills the room. “You think I’m in love with you?”
“Well … yeah.”
She laughs, and my balls shrivel at the sound.
“Why else be up my ass for years?”
Her laughter dies, and her expression sobers. “You need to marry me.”
“What?” I’m not often shocked, but what the fuck?
“Not now. When I turn twenty-one. But you’ll need to present your father with the idea this afternoon so we can announce it today.”
Her voice is steady, yet her lower lip trembles, slight as a bird testing a wire. I spot it and the room narrows. My hand moves before my mouth does, sliding to the hollow at her throat to anchor her to the present. My thumb rests against that tiny quiver and holds it there, light enough to soothe, sharp enough to warn her away. A quieterviolence blooms in my head—how much I’d love catching Lombardi alone, forcing him up against the nearest wall and bashing his head into it until he understands what flesh and blood actually means. Fina’s a pain in the ass, but no woman deserves the fate he’s offering her. “A lot can happen in five years,” I say, the lie flat and useless.
“So, I should ask Massimo?”
“Massimo?” I stupidly exclaim. “You’re in contact with him?”
She shrugs a shoulder.
I frown. What is it about her approaching fucking Massimo Grassi for help that irritates me?
