The Sweetest Oblivion by Danielle Lori

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

—Seneca

“OH, CARA MIA! È COSÍ bello ascoltare la tua voce!”

“It’s good to hear your voice too, Mamma,” I responded dryly, even though I’d only been gone for a few hours. The tiniest bit of amusement rose in me.

Before Nico took the stairs two at a time, like he hadn’t threatened to kill any man who touched me, he’d handed over his cell phone when I said I needed to call home. I didn’t want his hand grenade of a phone, but apparently it was the only one in the house.

Mamma went on a tangent of, “How could your papà agree to this?” and “All my wedding plans, ruined!” for a solid five minutes. “You’re living with him, not married! It’s osceno!”

“It wasn’t my choice,” I mumbled.

“We’re only pushing the wedding back a week. I’m not letting that Russo get the cow for free.”

I closed my eyes. “Mamma, that’s not how the saying goes.”

“Who cares how it goes! He shoots my son, decides to marry one daughter, then steals the other! Non ci posso credere. How am I going to plan another wedding in time? And this arrangement? Disonora la famiglia, lo è—”

“You don’t have to plan it. Email me the list of what needs to be done and I’ll do it.”

She was crying now, through unintelligible Italian. “Mia figlia . . . sposata.” A switch flipped. “Fine. We’ll go to the dress shop tomorrow.”

I sucked in a shallow breath. I was getting married.

It felt so strange to my ears.

We went over a few wedding details, and then I asked about a couple of easy recipes I could experiment with. I wrote down the recipes on a notepad as I stood at the island, doodling when she went off topic, which was often and mostly about her unwed and pregnant daughter. I wanted to talk to Adriana and quell her worry about Ryan, but I wouldn’t until I knew for sure that Nico wasn’t lying to me. I wouldn’t raise her hope just to crush it.

I glanced toward the back door when it opened, and hesitation ran through me as I met a cold gaze. Luca halted, one hand on the handle, and then he stared at me for what felt like a minute. He shook his head, a small smile pulling on his lips as he took his cell phone out of his pocket and began texting while walking to the couch.

I swallowed, somehow feeling like I was the subject of that text, and then responded in the negative to my mamma’s “What am I, talking to a wall?”

As Luca sat on the couch and turned the TV on to a ball game, I finished writing down the recipes.

It wasn’t until I said goodbye and hung up that I realized Mamma believed Veal Milanese was an appropriate meal for a beginner. I sighed and then thought with some kind of masochistic inclination that I could invite Jenny over to help. Ugh.

Nico came down the stairs, hair wet, in a white dress shirt, gray tie, and pants. He paused, his eyes narrowing as he saw Luca lounging on the couch with one arm resting on the back, before continuing his descent.

The timer on the stove went off, and I pulled the baked rigatoni out of the oven. My mouth watered as garlic and basil filled the kitchen. It took a lot to ruin my appetite—apparently more than marrying a murderous don.

As I filled my plate, Nico’s presence brushed my side. I glanced at him and smiled as I could only imagine women had in the fifties.

“Hungry?”

A hint of amusement pulled on his lips. “Nah, I have a lunch meeting.” His gaze fell toward his cell sitting on the island. “You don’t have a phone?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to explain that it was taken from me six months ago, but Nico must have read it on my face. Something obscure sparked in his eyes. I wondered if he would ever question me about it, about him, but he only said, “We’ll get you one tomorrow.”

Truthfully, I hadn’t missed my phone. My friends were limited to my family. Outsiders could never truly understand me. I was a mold the Cosa Nostra had created, a triangle trying to fit in the square of society.

“Help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” he said, before adding in an amused drawl, “Though, I can see you’ve already done that.”

“When does your cook come? I would like to meet her.” Maybe she would be kind enough to give me some pointers, though that might not be such a great idea, because as soon as I learned I would want to find her other employment. The idea of having my own home to run was an unexpected thrill, no matter if I had to share it with Nico.

“Isabel comes Mondays and Thursdays. She cleans too.”

She’d been here yesterday, yet his room was such a mess? Maybe he was weird about his things. I shook it off.

“Do you have a computer I can use? I need to help Mamma with some of the wedding details.”

“There’s a laptop in my office. You can use that. And”—he pulled out his wallet and tossed a black credit card on the counter—“for all that money you spend.”

I didn’t like the personal nature of spending this man’s money. Especially with the idea of his bank information already in my duffel bag upstairs. “I don’t need it. I have my papà’s,” I replied, pulling my bottom lip in between my teeth.

“You’ll use mine from now on.” His tone was non-negotiable as he put his watch on.

Translation: I own you now, not your papà.

I nodded, but then stilled when the pad of his thumb pulled down on my bottom lip until it escaped my teeth. “Don’t tempt me,” he said with a harshness that touched my skin. It wasn’t lost on me that he spoke of the kissing variety of temptation.

My breath caught somewhere in my chest. How much I wanted to run my tongue across his thumb, to pull it into my mouth. It was an itch I could hardly stop, and I knew he saw the desire on my face.

His eyes burned like coal, and his thumb brushed across my lips, daring me to do it. A shiver rocked through me. I wasn’t that brave and we both knew it. He took a step back and slipped his hands into his pockets, leaving a warm imprint on my lips.

He glanced at his cousin, who sat with his elbows on his knees watching the game.

“Luca will stay here with you. In my office.”

Luca’s broad shoulders tensed under his white dress shirt. “Ace—”

“If you need to reach me, you can use his phone until we get you one tomorrow,” he told me, grabbing his keys from the counter.

Luca stood to his incredible height that had to be six and a half feet. “I’m not a babysitter, boss.”

I stared forward, saying a silent prayer that Nico wouldn’t leave this man with me.

“You are until I can find a gay cousin,” Nico returned dryly.

I closed my eyes.

It was safe to say that wouldn’t happen, considering the Cosa Nostra was a worse advocate for the LGBT community than they were for the women’s movement. It was a work in progress.

Luca’s jaw ticked.

Nico opened the back door, but then paused. “Elena?”

“Yeah?”

“Burn that shirt.” He then left without another word.

I glanced down at my pink Yankees t-shirt. I guessed Nico was a Red Sox fan.

We really wouldn’t work out now.

Luca eyed me like he wanted to wrap his big hands around my throat and squeeze.

Nerves played beneath my skin.

“There’s no TV in his office,” he said eventually.

I blinked, realizing he was asking me in the most arrogant way I’d ever encountered if he could watch TV out here, even though Nico had told him to go in his office.

I really didn’t want to spend my day around this man. He was that unnerving, but if he was going to be here for a while, I didn’t want him to have to hole up in Nico’s office. It would make me feel guilty all day.

“Well, I guess what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Instead of thanking me, he nodded toward the food on the counter. “What’s that?”

I sighed, grabbed my plate, and slid it across the island in his direction.

I sat back in my chair and cracked my knuckles. It wasn’t until then that I recognized the restlessness that ghosted under my skin.

I didn’t know how I was going to get through the work day with Elena in my home, willing to take off her clothes whenever I asked her to. The idea was a constant in the corner of my mind, and it was the exact reason I didn’t want to marry her. I sat in front of five men who would kill me if they could, in the conference room of my club, and I couldn’t think about anything but how she had looked naked in my kitchen, how smooth her skin was, how she’d tasted.

She tasted better than hustling.

I hadn’t planned to do it. I was going to get something else out of Salvatore for fucking me over, but when he’d said Oscar Perez . . . the irrational burn concerning Elena had seared through my veins. So, I found out where he resided and then I shot him in the goddamn head. I’d tried to pacify myself with that, but Salvatore would just pawn her off to someone else, and I knew for God only knows what reason I couldn’t fucking handle it.

“Here’s an idea, why don’t you—”

“Here’s an idea,” I cut Rafael off, my voice remaining impassive. “Why don’t you get the fuck out.”

A tense air crept through the room on hands and knees. I couldn’t listen to his stupid proposition for one more second.

The Mexican drug lord’s tanned complexion turned red and blotchy. “It was only business advice, from one man to another,” he seethed, standing.

“If I wanted business advice from a man poorer than me I would have asked for it.”

Rafael slammed the conference room door before the three of his men could make it out behind him.

“Are we done here?” I asked the table.

With tight countenances and some shifting gazes, the men all got to their feet and headed out of the room.

“Well,” my uncle Jimmy said from the seat beside me, “someone needs to get laid, and it ain’t me.”

An understatement if I ever heard one.

It’d been close to two weeks now and the urge was beginning to burn, to bubble over until it became an absolute necessity. Even I knew I became a jackass when I abstained from sex. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d gone this long. There was no particular reason for the lapse, except for the annoying notion that I’d acquired a sudden hard-on for long black hair and, lately, I’d only come across one who had it.

“Not good business, going and pissing off our suppliers,” Jimmy said, lighting a cigar and leaning back in his chair.

“It was a stupid venture and you know it.”

“Bad deal, what you did to that Perez, Ace.” He shook his head.

So the man was a little more prominent than I’d first presumed. There would be people who’d miss him. “The only thing I regret is that I didn’t make it last longer.”

I glanced down the table to see three pairs of eyes on me. Lorenzo rocked in his chair, looking at me like I’d kicked a puppy, while Ricardo and Dino—a capo of mine—sat beside him, their keen attention on me as well.

At that moment, Gianna breezed into the conference room. My eyes narrowed, taking in her tight black dress that all club waitresses were mandated to wear, but she violated the dress code with her choker necklace and high pigtails.

She stopped by Lorenzo’s side, holding out her palm. Without looking at her, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a wad of bills, setting it in her hand. She licked her finger and then began counting it like Lorenzo would short her. He was a Russo—he would.

“And what was this bet?” A dark edge crept into my voice.

Lorenzo scratched the back of his neck. “Whether or not you’d marry Elena instead of her sister, boss.”

My jaw tightened.

Gianna pursed her lips and held out her hand again. Lorenzo sighed, reached back into his jacket and dropped the rest of the bills in her palm.

“Thanks, Lo.” She spun on her heel to leave.

“Wait a minute,” I said.

She stopped in front of the door, her shoulders tensing.

“You’re not working here.”

She turned around, glaring at me. “Why not?”

“Because you’re a train wreck, that’s why. Once you can pass a drug test, then I’ll think about it. Return your uniform before you leave.”

I should have known not to give her a choice of who to marry after my papà passed. The capo was too old for the business, let alone to control Gianna. Which was undeniably the reason she’d chosen him.

Her smoky eyes went steely around the edges. “Fine.” And then, in classic Gianna fashion, she grabbed the hem of her dress and pulled it off in one defiant swoop.

I gave my head a small shake, annoyance running through me.

Lorenzo rolled back so he could get a better look at her in only a black bra, thong, and heels. Ricardo whistled, and Jimmy chuckled before coughing on some smoke.

Gianna was hot, and she knew it. Even her tasteless style seemed to draw men in more than turn them away. But she’d been little more than a pain in my ass since my papà had died. And it looked like she was angry enough she was going to hurl her dress at my face.

“Try me,” I warned.

A frustrated noise escaped her. She chose the safest option and threw it on the floor, before turning on her heel and marching out of the room.

Lorenzo let out a low whistle at the sight as she left.

With regret, her bare ass was making me think of another bare ass, and a rush of heat ran to my groin.

“Fork it over, Ricky,” Jimmy said, puffing on his cigar.

Ricardo tossed some cash across the table, before giving me a nod and leaving the room.

“You too, huh?” I asked.

The moment with Elena on my kitchen counter was starting to replay on a loop in my mind. Her little sounds, her smell—fuck, I needed to get laid.

Jimmy collected his money. “Who do ya think made the bet? It’s been going since your engagement party.”

I wasn’t even surprised I’d been that transparent.

I was another man pining after her.

Fuck me.

But she was mine now, whether I liked it or not. And I didn’t. She was fucking distracting. She had a body I wanted to bury myself in and never leave, and it was why I was forcing myself not to go home tonight. I had to have some control where that woman was concerned. Had already told myself I wouldn’t touch her until the wedding, just to prove to myself I could. But then she was in my space . . . and fuck, I couldn’t do it.

She’d barely stepped in my door before I had her naked on the kitchen counter.

The funny part of it—though arguably not funny at all—was that she didn’t want anything to do with me. I was hung up on this girl, badly, and she was in love with some other man. Something green burned through my veins like a lit wick, and I ran my hand across my jaw.

They’d killed the man she was with when she ran away, but they weren’t found in a compromising position and neither did the apartment belong to him. It was possible they killed the wrong man and her lover was still alive. At least, that’s what I heard through the grapevine, and regardless of how much I ached to, I wasn’t digging further.

I’d always considered my morals to be slightly lower than mediocre, but it was at this moment I knew I was far, far below redemption.

Because innocent or not, if that man wasn’t dead and he crossed my path, his lifeless body would be unrecognizable.