Consumed by Desire: A Dark Mafia Romance, page 6
I get up and head over to him. As I approach, Fynn watches with hooded eyes and hands shoved into the pockets of his jogging pants. I realize he’s damp with sweat and must’ve been out for a run recently, before the sun made it impossibly hot. Maybe Elise was wrong about everyone sleeping late.
“Are you keeping an eye on me for your brother?” I try to ask as a joke, but it comes out accusatory.
He shrugs like he’s taking me seriously. “I don’t need to. He has the staff doing it for him.”
I shiver and glance over my shoulder. None of the staff are in sight, but it’s good to know that they’re reporting my movements back to Casso.
“What are you doing out here then?”
“It’s my house. I could ask you the same.”
“I was talking to your mother-in-law.”
He grimaces. “I hate calling her that.”
“Then what do you call her?”
“I don’t know,” he admits, looking past me. Fynn’s a handsome man, muscular where he needs to be, but he’s strange in a way that I don’t understand. “She’s full of pain, that one. Always has been. I’m not sure it’s all because of my father. The surgery, the clothes, even that bullshit attitude, I think it’s all just a defense mechanism. A way to keep the world at bay.”
I smile despite myself. “Pretty deep coming from a gangster.”
He doesn’t smile back, only shrugs again, like it’s a nervous tic. “That’s my read on her anyway. But I really came out here to talk to you.”
“Whatever Casso sent you to say, don’t bother.”
“This isn’t from Casso.” He wipes his hands on his pants and stretches his back, rolling the muscles in his shoulders. “I just thought I should say that we want you in this family. I’m sure you don’t feel the same, but you should hear it anyway. Casso’s not capable of saying it himself, so I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, but you’re right.” I turn to the house. “This isn’t my family.”
“It will be though. As hard as that might seem right now, it will be, and we take care of our own.”
“I don’t need to be taken care of, and I don’t need a family like this one.”
I leave him on that. Maybe he’s right—maybe this really is my future. But I’m not ready to resign myself to a life like Elise spends wiling away the hours by the pool, hiding behind makeup and nice clothes, covering myself in armor to keep the world at bay.
I want to do more. I want to do something.
I slip into my room and pause. Something’s off, and it takes me a second to realize there’s a card on the coffee table folded in half. I walk over and unfold it. The writing is cramped and masculine.
Present for you on the bed. Casso.
I toss the note onto the couch and walk into my bedroom.
White and silky and gossamer. Low-cut top, beautiful skirt made of layers of tulle. It’s draped across the foot of the bed, mocking me. I stare at the dress, at the wedding dress, and don’t move. It’s like I’m stuck to the floor and that thing is my executioner.
I lose it all at once. I charge the dress, rip it off the blankets, and throw it on the floor. I stomp on it, and when that doesn’t make me feel better, I start tearing off pieces. Huge chunks of white flit into the air like twisted snowflakes. I don’t care that it’s beautiful, I don’t care that it was probably obscenely expensive, I don’t care about anything. I want to destroy it the same way my life feels destroyed. I rip the dress to pieces, shredding it with my hands until my forearms are exhausted and I’m lying on the floor covered in the tattered remains, trembling and sobbing into the wreckage of the fabric.
There’s no future for me. There never was, and all this playing at being a detective won’t solve a single one of my problems. I’m Casso’s now, bought and paid for. I’m his bride, whether I like it or not.
Trapped, that’s all I am. Trapped in this room with this ruined wedding dress in my lap, drenched in my tears.
Chapter 7
Olivia
I don’t leave my room for the rest of the day. Meals show up, but I don’t remember ordering them. More traditional Mexican food, and it’s good, the sort of stuff I had back home. Someone in the kitchen’s being kind.
I barely touch it.
Long after the sun goes down, I sneak from my room. I slip into one of the many sitting areas, find a bottle of wine with a twist-top, and head out back. Nobody spots me, or if they do, nobody stops me. I head to the edge of the property, beyond the pool and the manicured lawns that probably take way too much water to maintain, and I sit down on some dark red rocks. The heat of the day is still fresh against my legs. I stretch out, open the wine, and drink.
It’s good. I drink more, staring out over the black desert, wondering if I have the confidence to start walking and never stop until I’m so lost there’s no going back. The sun would kill me tomorrow, without a doubt. Or I’d freeze overnight. The evening chill is gentle, calming, a falsehood wrapped in sorrow. It’ll get too cold to stay out here soon.
I hear footsteps behind me and don’t look back. He stands beside the rock and gazes down at me with a deep frown before reaching out for the bottle.
I pass it over. Casso takes a long pull before handing it back.
“Nice night,” he says. “Good wine.”
“I stole it from one of your many sitting rooms. How many receiving areas does a single house need?”
His lips quirk and he shakes his head. “It’s a power thing. The more redundant rooms we have, the stronger our family looks. It’s like wealth begs waste, like the more money we have, the more inclined we are toward throwing it away just to prove we can. It’s a mess.”
“It’s all games. I know. Papa plays them too. He had these little Russian nesting dolls in our receiving room back home made of solid gold and studded with diamonds. They’re silly though because Papa doesn’t know a thing about Russian culture.”
“Do you miss your father?”
“Not really. We weren’t close. He spent all his time running his cartel and pretending like I didn’t exist, which was kind of great for a while actually. Have you seen him since he trapped me here?”
He nods and gestures for the bottle. I hand it over. “So far things with your father are going well. We got a shipment this morning.” He takes a drink and hands it back.
“I hope my father’s drugs are to your liking. I’m sure the people of Arizona will be thrilled.” I tap the bottom of the bottle against the rock. It makes a soft clink in the otherwise quiet night.
He waves a hand vaguely. “Arizona, Chicago, Philadelphia. We’re working with a man named Roman to distribute all across the country.”
“Roman? Never heard of him.” Probably one of those shadowy figures Papa’s always going on about: those rich Americans that are so wealthy than can buy an entire country if they wanted to, and some of them do.
“You wouldn’t have.” Casso moves closer and sits on the rock beside me. He’s in a suit without a jacket or a tie, the top shirt button undone. Our thighs touch and I pull away, making space where there’s barely any to begin with. “Roman is a secretive man, but powerful. Stupidly rich. I’m not sure why he’s interested in working with us, but I don’t ask questions.”
“Someone stronger than you? Big shock there.”
He laughs and takes the bottle again. I watch him sip from the end, thinking about that kiss, his warm lips and his grassy, earthy taste invading my mouth, that taste I remember from so long ago. It’s been ten years and he’s not a boy anymore, but he seems so young still, like no matter how far and how hard we run from the past, we’re still those same people trapped in aging bodies. We grow, but we don’t change.
“These days I don’t feel so strong.” His voice is quiet and I take the offered wine back. Is this a moment of weakness? Or is Casso playing at some game here? Even when he seems sincere, I can’t let myself believe anything he’s saying.
“The Russians?” I sip the wine and put the bottle between my legs.
“Among others, but yes, mostly the Russians.”
“Who are they? It has to be someone impressive if they’re worrying you.”
He laughs like it’s the most absurd thing in the world. In the sky, a profusion of stars scatters. Moonlight tilts and slips through his hair and his lips seem to glow. So many rocks all over. He’s a beautiful man, which only makes me hate him more.
“We went to school with him. Isn’t that crazy? He was in your year, a guy named Danil Federov. His father was a player back in the day and now Danil runs the Federov Bratva. They moved down south again in the last couple months after working the Pacific Northwest for a while, mostly around Seattle. I guess they got tired of the rain.”
I close my eyes and can see Danil’s face vaguely. He was a quiet boy, pale skin, dark hair, very smart. Kept to himself mostly. “We had science class together. I remember him. I find it hard to believe he runs a crime family now though. He didn’t seem the type.”
“He still doesn’t, but it’s true. How well would you say you know him?”
“Not well. We were lab partners for a semester, but we didn’t talk much beyond school stuff.”
He nods and keeps staring out at the sky like he can’t bring himself to focus on the here and now. “Better than I know him at least. So there’s that. Might be good to have someone who knows him.”
“What, you want me to get involved with your war?”
He shrugs slightly as if that’s not the most insane thing in the world. I laugh at him, unable to help myself, and the sound echoes back off the nearby cliff formations. The sound magnifies and shimmers away as I drown my mirth with more wine.
“Fat chance of that,” I say, shaking my head. “I think right now I’d rather see you and Danil tear each other to pieces. I wouldn’t mind being a young widow.”
He smirks as if that doesn’t bother him. “It would be good for everyone if you acted as liaison. I’m finding it difficult to get Danil to talk, but maybe he’ll be interested if you’re the one reaching out.”
“Let me understand something. You drag me into this mafia world, force me to marry you, rip me from my life, try to make me forget all the brutal and nasty shit you did to me ten years ago, and now you want a favor? Casso, please go jump off a fucking cliff.”
His smile is like a whiff of perfume in a crowded room. He keeps staring at the sky like he’s seeing something in the stars, but there’s nothing, only twinkling lights and ancient pictographs that amount to only superstition. If the sky held answers, people would’ve found them by now. It’s like he can’t bring himself to look at me, like he’s afraid of what he might see.
“We can work together, you know. There’s something you want and I am in a unique position to give it to you.”
I go very still. I’m hyperaware of my breathing and my legs and the cold wine bottle against my skin and the alcohol in my stomach building into a warm gentle haze and Casso’s bulky form, his muscles, his tattoos, his warmth. I’m aware of it all and my brain’s doing a slow-motion spin like it can’t get into gear.
“You want to make a deal?” I ask after several beats of quiet.
He nods once. “Yes, I think we can work something out.”
“I help with the Russians and you help find who killed my brother.” I lean closer. “Is that about it?” My heart’s racing and my palms are sweating and I should know better than to go down this road. “What’s the catch?”
“Don’t make this hard, Olivia. You always have to make it hard.”
“No, Casso. I want to make you honest.”
“You help me with Danil and I’ll try to find out who did your brother. I can’t make promises, and I won’t step in to hurt or punish whoever it was, but I can offer you that small measure of closure, at least knowing who pulled the trigger. That’s what I’m offering, and I have a feeling you’ll take it. Because what else do you have?”
I grind my teeth. The bastard can read my thoughts sometimes like I’m an open book. “I could turn you down. I don’t need you.”
“You could. But you won’t. We both know you’re the practical type.”
I hug my knees to my chest and don’t move, mulling over his offer. It would make my life easier if I could swallow my pride and work with him—he’s the Don of the Famiglia, meaning he can simply order his men to find out who pulled the trigger on my brother. But the idea of it makes my stomach twist with shame, and all I want to do is scream into the desert, scream until my throat’s raw at the injustice of all this.
Trusting Casso is a mistake. I should know by now that Casso rarely does as he says and says what he actually wants to do, which means there’s something more to this story that he’s not telling me.
And yet I’m tempted. God, it’s stupid, but what else do I have right now?
“Do you remember the way you used to treat me back in the day?” I stare at the rock, trying hard not to look at him, because if I meet his gaze, I might break down.
“I remember.”
“You were an asshole. You used to find me in the halls and shove me against the lockers. You planted rumors, you stole my books, you even tried to convince Mr. Lockerty to fail me. Remember that?”
“I told him you cheated on a test. He nearly believed me until he remembered that I was two grades ahead and couldn’t possibly know anything about it.” He laughs softly to himself. “And yet none of that compares to what you did.”
I close my eyes and see the smirking young Casso with his perfect hair and his straight white teeth. He was a shark roaming the halls of Miller Academy taking what he wanted and doing as he wished, and nobody was brave or stupid enough to say a damn thing except for me. I called him on his bullshit over and over again, told him to his face what I thought of him and worse, and he didn’t let me forget it for one minute. He’d pull my hair and steal my money and he cut the straps of my backpack so many times I had to bring a needle and thread with me to school just to sew it back together. He was a hurricane threatening to upend my life at any moment, and I lived in constant, total fear.
“It wasn’t right.” I’m whispering now. I’m shaking with anger and something else. I remember the way he’d look at me back then, like I was a slug beneath his boot, especially when his pack of crony friends were around. All of those guys are long gone—they were rich boys having fun with a real wolf, and now they’re all probably working for their mommies and daddies doing taxes for the truly rich, if I had to guess—but Casso was their king. He was their emperor, their leader. They worshiped the ground he walked on because he wasn’t afraid to take what he wanted like they were.
When they weren’t around, Casso was even worse.
It wasn’t the disdain that killed me. I could understand that—our families were at war. We hated each other because we had to hate each other. Too much blood was spilling, too much was at stake not to.
No, when Casso and I were alone back then, he looked at me like he wanted to devour me. Like all that teasing, that fighting, that bullying, all that was an excuse to get closer and closer to me. I remember his hands on my body, his teeth near my throat, his sneering smirks, his muscular arms pinning me up against a bathroom stall, his breathing fast and frenzied. I was terrified, but I was also pulsing with want every time he came near, like my body anticipated his touch and craved it.
A sick, sick addiction. Like the pain was somehow worth it.
“We were at war,” he says. “I was powerless back then, just a kid trying to understand the world. The war seemed so big, and I had no sway in my family, not yet at least. I ran my little crew with Nico, but we were still coming up. You seemed like the only way I could help my family.”
“By making my life miserable? It didn’t do a thing for the war.”
“No, you’re right, it didn’t. But back then I wanted it to.”
I lean my chin on my knees. “Is that why you wouldn’t leave me alone? Why you kept at it?”
“That’s a big part of it,” he says and shifts closer. “But you know why else.”
I shake my head, trembling. Maybe from the cold, maybe from the memory of him hurting me, again and again. “Don’t start talking about that night. We promised.”
But he keeps going. “That’s the other piece to all this. For all the hours I spent wanting to break your neck, I spent just as much time thinking about stripping you down in the locker room and fucking you senseless. Can you imagine what it was like? I despised you and wanted to see your family burn, and yet I wanted to fuck you so badly it hurt my skin to be anywhere near you. I took my anger out on you, Olivia, but I don’t think I was angry with you. I think I was angry with myself. I only wanted to destroy you.”
I blink back tears. Cool wind blows across my cheeks, along my lips. “That night was a mistake.” I’m whispering again. I can’t look up. I can’t move an inch or I might crack and shatter, and that would be even worse than admitting to him that I wanted all that just as badly as he did.
“It was a mistake,” he says and his hand grazes across my neck, fingertips brushing my hair aside and moving down my back. “But it was a good mistake. Tell me you don’t think about it still. Because, princess, I think about it all the time, I’ve thought about you for years.”
“Casso.”
“You do, I know you do. I tasted it when I kissed you. I can see it all over you now. You’re trembling and it isn’t that cold. You’re thinking about what it was like to finally give in and it’s terrifying because it’s so good. Submission, quiet, gentle submission can be its own form of ecstasy. Its own form of power. You give yourself to me, and in doing so you allow me to make you feel things you never once in your life dreamed you could feel. Otherwise, what’s the point? You can keep on breathing your drab little breaths and living your sad little life, but deep down you know you’d rather let me own you.”
I bite back tears. His words are hot irons shoved down my throat because of their truth and because of what they’re hiding. What he doesn’t mention is behind all that pleasure is even more pain waiting to scar me, break me, ruin me.
