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"Don’t change the topic."
I step back and the breath rushes out of her, "your life, Aurora, you get a new lease of life."
"So," she furrows her forehead, "if I acted as your fake wife for sixty days, I’ll be free to leaves and live as I want."
No.
No.
I nod, slowly. "If you fulfill all the conditions and if you put up enough of a performance that my Nonna and my brothers are convinced of the veracity of our relationship."
She bites down on her lower lip and hell if my gaze isn’t drawn to her glistening flesh. Why the hell does this woman affect me so? She’s only a convenience after all? Someone to use and discard. So I can go back to the life I prefer to lead. To be surrounded by enough pussy so I can forget the I lost my twin brother. The other half of my soul. The one who’s been with me since before we were born. Xander and I were so different yet so alike. He was the artist, and I was the numbers guy. It’s why steering the finances of the Cosa Nostra fell to me.
If there’s one thing I am good at, it’s getting the numbers to speak to me. Numbers don’t lie. They can’t hide. They can’t hurt you like our father had. After our oldest brother Michael had left to study in the States, my father had turned his anger on our mother, and onto us. Luca our second oldest brother got the brunt of it. Massimo our middle brother was already getting to the big and tall enough that our father didn’t dare hurt him. But me and Xander? We were still small and young enough, that he knew he could hurt us without fear of retaliation.
I had been older had tried to protect him from being physically beaten up by our father and I had mostly succeeded. I still had the scars to show for it too… I had saved him then, but when he was targeted by the car bomb that our own father had rigged his car with… I hadn’t been able to go to his rescue then. The car bomb had been faulty but a piece of metal had embedded in his chest and killed him on the spot. Michael’s wife Karma had been in the car and she had managed to escape, but she had been pregnant and lost her child. We had all suffered… but losing Xander, it was a trauma that haunted me, that stuck to me, that accompanied me day and night like a shadow which refused to peel away from me. I’d never be the same again, never be able to see myself in the mirror without seeing my twin brother. Never be able to experience life without thinking that he’d never be able to see, smell, taste life. It should have been me who died in that incident, not him.
Me who was buried under the earth, not him.
I didn’t deserve any happiness, not when Xander wouldn’t get to experience it.
I should turn away from life itself… except that’s not Xander would have wanted. It’s for him that I will continue living… didn’t mean I had to let myself feel though. It’s for him that I would support my family, help Michael consolidate his position as the new Don of the Cosa Nostra. Michael had killed our father… too bad I hadn’t had the opportunity to do so. I should have felt some level of satisfaction considering it was our father who had been behind rigging the car, the reason that Xander had died… but all I feel is a numbness. Like I am not in my body. Like nothing else matters except, trying to get through life. Trying to swallow down the grief the threatens to overwhelm my every waking moment. And her… how dare she try to infiltrate the nothingness that I have surrounded myself in since Xander died? Why is it that thoughts of her occupy my mind when I should have only space to mourn Xander?
"And if I don’t?" She tips up her chin. "What if I disagree?"
I move so fast that she flinches. I wrap my fingers around her throat and haul her up to her toes. "I don’t recall giving you a choice, Flower."
She swallows and I feel the movement against my fingers. Such a slender throat. How would it feel to have my cock sliding down it, hmm?
I tighten my grip and the color fades from her cheeks. A soft sound emerges from her mouth. She parts her lips and I take in her flushed features, the contours of her pouty lower lip and my balls throb. Fuck this, why the hell should I deny myself when I am going to marry her anyway… only temporarily of course. Still… soon she will be my wife and I am going to take full advantage of it. I pull her even closer until her breasts are flush against my chest, then I lower my mouth to her’s.
To find out what happens next read Christian and Aurora's story in A Very Mafia Christmas HERE
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Read an excerpt from Summer & Sinclair’s story in The Billionaire’s Fake Wife
Summer
"Slap, slap, kiss, kiss."
"Huh?" I stare up at the bartender.
"Aka, there's a thin line between love and hate." He shakes out the crimson liquid into my glass.
"Nah." I snort. "Why would she allow him to control her, and after he insulted her?"
"It’s the chemistry between them." He lowers his head, "You have to admit that when the man is arrogant and the woman resists, it’s a challenge to both of them, to see who blinks first, huh?"
"Why?" I wave my hand in the air, "Because they hate each other?"
"Because," he chuckles, "the girl in school whose braids I pulled and teased mercilessly, is the one who I—"
"Proposed to?" I huff.
His face lights up. "You get it now?"
Yeah. No.A headache begins to pound at my temples. This crash course in pop psychology is not why I came to my favorite bar in Islington, to meet my best friend, who is—I glance at the face of my phone—thirty minutes late.
