Vengeance: DARK MAFIA ROMANCE

Seventeen

Natalia

I can't tell if he hates me or if he's just totally hung up on this Italy trip. There's always been a playful disdain in his eyes when he looks at me, but when we gave each other oral on the couch it fell away, and I looked straight into a raw, open soul. And I could feel him looking into mine, his eyes scraping away layers like a scalpel. We were dangerously close to each other's secrets and lies.

The minute we finished, his mask snapped back into place and he's back to treating me like a weird combination of sex worker that's overstayed her welcome and child he has to babysit. As I pack my bag, I'm excited about the idea of seeing Italy, but I don't really want to get dragged around on one of those leashes for toddlers, ignored when he's busy and toyed with when he has spare time. I once hoped he really did have business in Italy, that the mob connection was my own imagination. But his face when I took out that gun blew away that fragile theory.

Now I feel nauseous and jittery. I'll be trapped in a strange country with a man I have barely begun to understand and all of the type of men I fear most, the world that chewed me up and spit me out used and broken, only to suck me back in again. I fight to keep the tears in my eyes from falling as I sit next to my suitcase, knees tucked around my chest. Everything about Savio is big: his house, his bed, his body, and I make myself as tiny as I can, in the hope that I might slip through a crack.

His voice when he answers his phone catches my attention. No matter how casually he speaks, there's something rough and electric between his words. My hands start to shake. He's very careful to speak only in generalities, so that I have no idea what's going on. When he hangs up, he turns and shoots me a dull, smoldering glance. His face is heavy. His packing gets more careless and erratic

"Savio," I venture, hating the desperation that makes me sound like a pathetic child. "Are you sure I can't stay here and watch Dom? I promise I won't set foot outside, even in the yard, if you don't want me to. There's no reason to waste time and money on me by taking me along. Please."

He stills for a minute, listening. Is that pity in his eyes? Walking up to me, he puts one hand on the back of my head and the other over my mouth, trapping me. My heart rate spikes. Keeping his grip firm, he touches his forehead to mine. "Shhhh, Natalia. You don't yet understand duty, so you need to obey everything I tell you. Do you understand?"

I struggle to nod in his grip. The hand over my mouth drops away, but before I can breathe, he seals my mouth with his. The kiss feels angry and confused, but I can't stop myself from drinking it in. His lips are surprisingly full; the only part of him that hasn't been hardened and turned into a weapon. His tongue strays in search of mine, but the second I meet it he pulls away, letting go of my head.

"I'm going to start cooking."

As he disappears down the hall, feelings I never imagined possible tug at me. He represents everything Vincente was not: safety, control, a personal code. I haven't had feelings for anyone in so long I can barely recognize the impulses stirring in my stomach. When he leaves the room, the void hurts. I want to seek him out, to return to his orbit. If we weren't both tangled up in this fucking mafia web, this never-ending nightmare, what kind of life could we explore together?

Savio has granted me the password to his personal laptop, which is rarely used—no files, no applications, not even a non-default wallpaper. He put child filters on the internet to block me from sending emails or using messaging services before giving it to me. I grab the laptop from where I left it on the bedside table and curl up on my side of the bed, a huge expanse of expensive sheets that still doesn't feel like home. I had a quilt and a stuffed bear at my apartment, but I was forced to leave them behind along with everything else.