Chapter 54
Marco exhaled slowly.
Luca had tried. That much was true.
Now it was his turn.
And whatever choice he made next would either damn him or define him.
The girls were opposites of Luca and Marco. Where the men were forged in shadow, compromise, and bloodline loyalty, the Scalese girls were all light and stubborn goodness.
He stood alone in the corridor, staring at nothing, his mind scrambling for a solution. A way out. A way to get Valentina to safety without detonating everything around him. Every path he traced ended the same way.
There was only one answer.
Marco would have to betray the familia he owed his life to.
The realization settled into him slowly, heavily. He had been a soldier since he was barely old enough to shave. Luca’s shadow had always been there. The Genovese name had fed him, protected him, given him purpose. Going rogue was suicide.
If he had known this was how it would go, if he had known this was how it would be, he would never have suggested the vile idea in the first place. Never would have opened his mouth. Never would have turned a young girl into a bargaining chip.
Valentina’s face flashed through his mind. The way she tried to smile when she was terrified. The way she trusted him, inexplicably.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.
Somewhere along the line, he had crossed from loyal to damned.
As usual, Dante sent Luca his weekly dose of sin.
It arrived precisely at ten. Luca didn’t bother looking up when the door opened. He already knew why it was opening. This ritual had existed long before Veronica, long before everything had started to feel…off.
This one was voluptuous. That was the word that came to mind. Curves that seemed engineered to distract. Dante had an eye for packaging. Luca would have admired that once.
Usually, he didn’t fuck these drop-offs. That wasn’t their purpose. They came, they sucked his dick to take the edge off, and they left with an envelope.
But Luca was wound so tight now he felt like he might snap.
Veronica had lodged herself under his skin, burrowed into places no one had ever reached. Every thought circled back to her.
He needed distraction.
The woman stepped fully into his office, closing the door behind her. She wore a dress that could quite easily pass as a rag if one were feeling charitable. Fabric clung where it shouldn’t, dipped where it definitely shouldn’t. The only parts truly covered were her breasts and crotch, and even those looked negotiable.
When the code words dropped from her lips, to be sure she was sent by Dante, it was sultry, it was sinful. “Did someone order entertainment p>
“Yes, I definitely did,” Luca said, stretching in his seat, voice lazy, body anything but.
She walked to him, held his tie, and pulled him close as she bent over him. Her breasts brushed his chest. “Then let me blow your mind p>
“Fuck! Please he chuckled. She got to her knees, fingers patting his shaft through his trousers.
Luca surfed through his brain, a quick inventory taken on instinct, to be sure he had protection in his office as she freed his cock from its restraints.
When her mouth closed around him, Luca shut his eyes.
That was the mistake.
Because the second he stopped looking at her, the fantasy betrayed him.
In his mind, Vee was the one kneeling. She was the one touching his cock. Her lips were warm around him, sucking, licking, messy.
“Fuck he muttered again, but it wasn’t for the woman between his legs.
His fingers tangled in her hair, only it wasn’t this woman’s hair. He watched Vee’s beautiful face take all of him, eyes wide, trusting, wicked. His beautiful, pure Bambola.
Pure. Christ. There was nothing pure about wanting her. About imagining her mouth when he was supposed to be using someone else’s. About the way his body betrayed him so easily, responding to the thought of her instead of the reality kneeling obediently before him.
The woman hummed around him, proud of herself, probably thinking she was doing something exceptional. Dante’s girls were always technically flawless. That was the problem. They never surprised him. Never challenged him. Never looked at him like he was more than a man with power and a cock.
He exhaled, dragging a hand over his face, trying to banish the image of Vee kneeling on his office floor.
This was supposed to be relief.
Instead, it was punishment.
Because every pulse of pleasure came tangled with her name. Every thrust of his hips reminded him of everything he couldn’t touch, couldn’t claim, couldn’t ruin without damning himself completely.
He groaned, pushing himself further into the woman’s mouth, hips jerking. But even as his body responded, his mind was elsewhere. Vee. Would she be able to take him like this, really take him, like he imagined? If she couldn’t, he would gladly teach her. Teach her to gag on his cock, to choke and show it what he wanted, to take him with unrelenting hunger.
Her hands moved to cup his balls, fingers kneading, rolling, holding him just the right way. Oh God…Dante always sent him the best. Every curve, every whisper of skill, everything calculated to undo him in minutes.
Her tongue danced over him again, teasing, and then her lips sucked and squeezed, taking him in and out with precision that made his toes curl. Then she held him in the deep throat position, jaw stretching, muscles straining, and the curse ripped from his throat.
He could hear Vee’s moans, syncopated perfectly with what was happening now. Every gag, every squeak, every tremble of pleasure he imagined her making was tattooed into his memory, making the present feel secondary.
He imagined pushing her head further down, forcing her to take him, to understand the full weight of what she’d begged for. He called her names—sweet names, slutty names, loving names, all of them at once—switching from Italian to English. Maybe even tongues unknown to the civilized world.