She shook her head, mumbling around my cock. More lies I didn’t want to listen to. Anger was my vice. I didn’t know how long before her lies made me snap. I couldn’t let that happen now, so I thrust my hips up and fucked her mouth deeper, silencing her. “I said I’ll do the talking. You’re only gonna lie again. You’d say you didn’t know she was a Lanza. You thought her name was Nina Safina, and you never cared to know her maiden name.”
The guilt darkening her eyes agreed with me. She worked harder with her tongue, using her hand, too, around my balls, and on the base of my shaft. My tongue licked the edges of my teeth as my head tilted back, my hips moving higher in reflex, drool dripping from her mouth on my tightening balls. “Cazzo.”
Her head bobbed up and down my cock as she made wet sounds with her sucking and licking, her gaze, deceivingly innocent—at least, in that department—full of guilt, seeking approval and forgiveness, making it impossible for me to last any longer.
“Cazzo!” I groaned as my whole body tensed and my cum shot heavy down her throat, a surge of fury burning through me. I should have never lost control with Ravenna.
Why did I do that? She is not Lina. She’ll never be Lina.
I pulled up the boxers, my cum that had filled her mouth dripping down her lower lip. Then I grabbed the jeans Nicky had brought and shoved my unshot leg in them. Ravenna hurried to help me, but I pushed her aside.
I need Lina. Lina is my wife. And he has her. And he fucks her. He had a baby with her. My own brother. Fuck. FUCK! I’m gonna burn him. I’m gonna burn them all.
“Leo, don’t do this, please. I asked for your pain, and I’m taking it, but don’t shut me out. Don’t leave me now. Give me a chance.”
A chance?Both my hands squeezed her neck until her eyes bulged. “You never asked what happened to me, how Nicky and I got here, why we took your car and couldn’t risk letting you go. You never asked anything.”
“We’ve always been taught not to ask,” she choked. “You know how it is in the families. Even at work, it’s no different. Perhaps because you’re a man and an heir things are different, but for us women in the family, we’re not given that much liberty. Our code of silence has always beenstricter. That’s why I didn’t ask about Safin’s wife, just like I didn’t ask about you.”
“Or you’ve never asked because you don’t need to. Because you already know.”
“Know what?” she rasped.
“Who took me and locked me up in a cage, torturing me for a whole year.”
“What?”
“Stop. Lying.” I dropped her again, letting go of her neck before I choked her to death.
She clutched at her chest, her cough wild. “Why do you keep saying this? Everything I told you is the truth. Nina died last year, I swear. Safin never got married after her.”
My eyes tightened as I registered that new piece of information. “How? How did she die?”
She gulped, and her shoulders slumped. “Killed. He killed her.”
Safin killed a Lanza and still lived?
Like a jigsaw puzzle, pieces moved inside my head, coming together undone, searching for the one missing piece that would make the picture complete.
Until I found it.
“Do you know who Nicky was married to?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t even know she was married.”
“Domenico Lanza.” I dragged my stare back to her lying face. “The fucker who had been torturing me.”
“I didn’t know any of that.” Tears filled her rasps. “Why are you talking about him in past tense?”
“Because he’s dead. His wife killed him when she found out he’d teamed up with my fucking father to use me, to use her.”
All the color left her face even though she was crimson from choking a few seconds ago. “She killed him?”
“NicoleLanzais as dangerous as any of us, Doc. Don’t underestimate what she can do. Especially when she discovers dirty secrets…such as a man using a prisoner like a scarecrow to make her marry him. Such as a girl whose father is drowning in gambling debts and she has to do whatever it takes to pay them. Such as a woman who crossed a certain Don by helping the killer of his cousin, and she had to settle the score to stay alive, so she made it look like she was in the wrong place at the wrong time when she was exactly where she was told to be…”
“No, Leo. There’s a huge misunderstanding here.”
“So if I checked your phones, I wouldn’t find any Lanzas’ numbers in? Better yet, won’t they be chiming in any time soon?”
