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“I know. I’ll explain everything.”
“Everything?”
She looks up at me, and every ounce of anger’s gone. She looks… lost.
I can’t help myself. I place a finger under her chin and hold her gaze to mine.
“Everything, Vittoria. All of it. But no more fighting me. No more hitting me.” I bend and brush my lips against hers. She gasps, but her mouth parts. I make it a gentle, chaste kiss, but it takes all my effort not to deepen it. My mouth at her ear, I whisper, “No more running away.” I take a wild leap, remembering what Tavi told me. “Where even would you go?”
She doesn’t respond at first.
“Tell me the truth, Vittoria. Where?”
She shakes her head. “Anywhere but here,” she whispers. “This place is cursed.”
“Yeah, probably. I’m pretty confident the wine cellar’s haunted, and the first floor guest room’s no walk in the park either.”
She blinks up at me. “Are you serious?”
I smile at her. Her hair’s damp with exertion and tears. I smooth it away. I’ve never had a woman inspire anything tender in me at all. I wonder what it is about her.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about those either.”
“Why not?”
I shrug. “I’m not afraid of ghosts. I’ll make sure they leave you alone, too.”
She stiffens, as if suddenly realizing she just got a spanking and she’s letting the asshole who spanked her comfort her. “May I get off your lap, please?”
“No.”
Still, she doesn’t protest. We’ll talk with her here, just like this, her bared and punished ass on my knee to remind her who she’s talking to.
“Vittoria,” I say, adjusting her so we both sit comfortably in the chair. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
Chapter Eleven
“For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.” Romeo and Juliet
Vittoria
I knew something was off.
I stayed here for days, eating their food, getting to know the sisters, living in the lap of luxury.
At first, my searches online brought up nothing, but I had my suspicions. When I went shopping with the girls, people whispered when they saw us. And I’ve noticed that all of the men have the same tattoos on their right forearms.
I asked Rosa and Marialena, who only gave me evasive answers. I decided I needed to dig more.
I opened an incognito browser on my phone, wondering if somehow my basic search functions were blocked…
And my search online terrified me.
Hit after hit after hit. I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of them. I couldn’t believe my search of information on The Castle brought up nothing before this.
Maybe that was intentional? Had someone purposefully blocked access to information about the Rossis?
Rossi Family
Head Crime Family of the North Shore
Ruthless Crime Family
The Untouchable Family
I suspected several things, but this? This goes beyond.
Why did no one have any information on this house associated with the Montavios? If I’d seen anything at all that led me to crime family I never would’ve come to this cursed house to begin with.
I read until the thought of staying here one more minute terrified me.
I didn’t think my escape would be easy, but I didn’t expect it would go as poorly as it did.
It seemed the Rossi family was the most infamous family of gangsters or organized crime or… mafia… whatever you want to call them, that the North Shore had ever seen. They behaved with near impunity, doing whatever they wanted whenever they wanted to.
Or so it seemed.
So it seemed.
I read until my stomach rolled. I remembered the blood of the night of my attack, the way he killed as if it didn’t even faze him. Just… swipe. Slump. Gush. Done.
Then I lost the contents of my lunch in the pretty white guest room toilet.
As soon as I got my act together, I gathered what little I had, and I made my escape.
Only I didn’t think of it like that. I thought I was just... leaving. I didn’t know I was under any obligation to be here. I knew that if I left, and didn’t fulfill my end of the inheritance agreement, I wouldn’t get the money.
But who cared about six million dollars? Or any of it? No amount of money was worth actually losing everything else that mattered. None.
I tried to be quiet about it, though. Thought it better than to cause an issue. I did consider the fact that crazy-ass Rossi senior wouldn’t like it if I left…
I didn’t know he was watching me.
I made it as far as putting my key in the ignition before I realized what was happening. Romeo’s father and his horde of huge, beefy men surrounded my car before I could even begin to drive.
And now… I’m still sitting on Romeo’s lap, my ass bared. My cheeks heat when I realize this.
“Can we please talk with me fully dressed?” I put as much dignity into my tone as I can, but it doesn’t seem to work.
