“I don’t think Tino would like that,” my new husband said softly.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and stared into his face. “Are you threatening me, angel? If you think you have any power in this situation—”
“I’m yours,” he says simply. “Don’t you fucking get it, man? I’ve been yours from the second I laid eyes on you, despite your appalling choices in fashion. And speaking of fashion, we should go shopping and get you some good shit. You wanna be an underling all your life, keep wearing polyester suits that give you electric shocks every time you shake someone’s hand. You want to be the Boss? You fucking dress like it.”
He’d turned on a dime, my angel, my wing-clipped bird, from pliant to bossy, and although I saw the sense in his words, I hated that he thought he had the right to talk to me like that. But even more, I was terrified that someone would hear him saying he wanted me, would realize that this marriage was no punishment as far as Finch was concerned, and would do something about it.
“I’ve killed men for insulting me like that,” I snarled.
“Then they fucking died for nothing, baby, ’cause you dress like middle-management at a department store.”
And then I surprised myself. I laughed.
He wasn’t wrong, was he? There are things I know and things I don’t know, and one of the things I don’t know is clothes. I can see my outfits aren’t up to scratch, I just don’t know how to fix it. They’re a damn sight better than anything Fuscone’s brainless puppets wear, but they’re still holding me back.
Most of the Family still sees me as an outsider. If I want to climb the ladder I need to make myself check every box I can. I need the right watch and the right shoes and the right clothes. I need to speak Italian a damn sight better than I do, and I need to be able to pick a bottle of wine because I know it’ll fit the meal, not just because I like the name of it.
At the wedding, Finch actually sent back the bottle of table wine and asked for something different, some French name I didn’t catch, and specified the 2008—not the 2009. I had to turn my snort of laughter into a cough at the look on the sommelier’s face.
All these little things a kid like Howard Fincher Donovan the Third takes for granted, because he’s part of that world. And right now that complex, contradictory rich kid is humping away on top of me like he’s a Jersey hooker and I’m his last customer for the night.
“Fuck, Luca,” he whispers. “I want you so bad. Take me to bed.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I murmur back to him.
Finch lets out a frustrated moan and bends down to talk right in my ear. “You still worried about the power differential? That’s what makes it so hot.” He’s close to creaming in his booty shorts; I can hear his breath hitch.
“This isn’t a game,” I tell him. “This isn’t some fantasy we’re living out where we get away with any shit we like because we’re the main characters. Sam Fuscone hates my guts, and he wants me dead, and he wants you double-dead, angel, because you got away from him once already.”
“Then shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves while we can?” he says. He’s still grinding, like giving me a lap dance is his one mission in life right now.
I tighten my fingers on his hips, move him back off me so he can’t get any friction. “You think you’re free to enjoy life, baby bird? You haven’t thought about what any of this actually means. You’ve been high since the day we pulled you out of that house with a bag over your head. Someday soon you’re gonna wish I’d killed you that day, when it dawns on you what all this means.” I lift him off me and place him down on the deck so I can get up. “You’re right. The sun’s too hot for me. I’m gonna go take a cold shower. Maybe you should do the same.”
His mouth drops open and, for once, no words come out of it. He’s leaning back on his elbows, the leaking pink tip of his cock peeking out over the waistband of those ludicrous shorts, breathing hard. His dark glasses are askew under his captain’s hat, and I see those green-gold eyes are narrowing, whether against me or against the sun, I can’t tell.
“You fucking idiot,” he says then.
I figure I must have a touch of the sun, because I don’t care when people call me names, not usually, since they’ve done it all my life. But those three words hit me like you wouldn’t believe, and I see red, instantly. “What did you say to me?”
He gathers himself up off the deck and stands in front of me, shaking. Is it DTs? Is he scared? I wonder. Then he pokes me in the middle of my chest with an iron finger, his mouth trembling as much as the rest of him. It’s not the drugs and it’s not fear.
He’s furious.
“You. Fucking. Idiot.”
I can’t touch him. If I touch him, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m a man of violence, I always have been, but it’s a cold violence, calculated, not this fireball rising up in me, and I’m the only one standing between him and death as it is. But it’s a strange, conflicted feeling: do I want to kill him, or kiss him?
I just stare at him.
“Don’t you know I’ve loved you since the day we met?” he says.
The thought of anyone on this boat overhearing that is like an ice bucket. I take a step back. “I married you because I owed you a debt, and marrying you was the way to repay that
