We end up making pasta.
It’s my default, something that I learned to cook as a child, and while Roisin is tucked back in her warm clothes, watching me warily from her spot at the small dining area table, it’s good to make something easy.
Something that I can focus on instead of ripping her clothes back off and taking her like an animal on the small bed.
I want her. Again. I’m going to want her forever. Even if we never did more than this, if I just had her taste in my mouth every day, it would be enough for me.
One taste of her will never be enough.
That’s fucking clear as the ice dripping off the edges of the cabin walls right now.
I have no idea how to tell her. No clue what to do next.
Other than we have to figure out who the fuck is hunting her, and I’ll make them regret the fucking day that they were born.
Roisin is mine. I’ll move heaven and earth to protect her.
And anyone who gets in my way is going to be fucking wrecked.
“So this one’s new. Why didn’t you make this for me before?” she motions to the pasta, which is absolutely nothing special. Butter, cheese, noodles, and some lightly grilled chicken.
But it smells like heaven, I’ll admit.
“This was Caterina’s favorite,” I say, the truth flowing from me far too easily. “Whenever she had a bad day as a kid, this is what she’d ask for.”
“Did you make it?”
I shrug. “Sometimes. Sometimes it was the cook or my mom. But this one always reminds me of her.”
Roisin takes a bite, the noodles expertly twirled on her fork. She shuts her eyes, moaning in a way that makes my blood rush right to my cock again.
Focus, De Luca.
“Caterina was a cute kid. Cute baby.”
“She’s five years younger than you?” Roisin asks.
I nod.
Her nose wrinkles. “That puts you at a near decade older than me.”
“What can I say,” I wink at her. “You’re mature for your age?”
She snorts. “You can say that again, I suppose.”
“I know you had to grow up too fast, Roisin. I’d change all of that if I could,” I say. My voice has dropped an octave, fury deepening it.
She pauses, her green eyes searching my face. “You would, wouldn’t you?”
“Do you think I wouldn’t?”
Roisin shrugs. “I do think you would, Marco. That’s the interesting part. Lots of people would make empty threats—”
“Not people worth their fucking salt,” I rasp.
She huffs a laugh. “Even in the world we live in, people make empty threats.”
“I take all threats seriously, Roisin. The ones that I make, and the ones made against me and the people I care for.”
Her green eyes narrow. “And where do I stand in that?”
Something in her voice stops me from telling her exactly where she ranks.
“Eat your pasta,” I smile instead, spinning some up for myself as well.
Roisin’s eyebrows raise, but she does as I ask.
The fact that she’s always so willing to follow my commands, despite the fact it’s not in her nature to blindly follow an order, gives me a thrill.
Roisin trusts me.
I deeply want to know how much she’s willing to listen to.
If I command her to crawl across the floor to me, to suck on my…”
“You know, this place is nice,” she cuts off my train of thought.
I nod, looking around. “It’s very secluded.”
“Hence why I thought you’d try to murder me.”
I laugh. “Never, Roisin.”
I’d never do anything to hurt you.
“Almost secluded enough to forget about you know… everything,” she waves her fork.
I can practically see her deflating.
“You weren’t sold, Roisin.”
She blinks at me.
“You’ve had a shit hand of cards. You really have. But I think your mother probably thought she was doing what’s best for you.”
“It’s not the choice I would make for my child,” she mutters fiercely.
A smile tugs at the corner of my lips. “We never talked about that, before.”
“About what?” she licks the edge of her fork, and I go still at the sight of her pink tongue darting out at the edge of the metal.
“Kids,” I grunt.
Roisin leans back. “Well why would we? We were only pretending to be a couple then.”
The unspoken question, the one that asks and what are we now, lingers between us.
“Still. It might have helped with our cover. Helps with it now, actually.”
“Oh pish. We’re not still pretending we’re a couple, are we?” Roisin rolls her eyes.
I put my elbows down on the dining room table. “I’m not pretending.”
Her nose wrinkles. “Marco…”
“Kids. Tell me.”
Roisin sighs. “I’ve never really thought about it. Obviously my own childhood was shite, and so I’m not exactly partial to repeating that on a child of my own.”
“I see.”
She smirks at me. “I’d imagine you’re the opposite. Big family, you want to have kids like rabbits. Your own football team, yeah?”
“No,” I say sharply.
A little too sharply.
Rosin huffs. “Okay well. I was just asking.”
“I know,” I amend. “I’m just… You know, I feel like I raised most of my siblings.”
“Even Dino?”
I nod. “Even Dino. The fact that he’s close in age didn’t mean shit. The second they were born, I was in charge of them. They were my responsibility as much as my parents’, even more so in some ways.”
“So that leaves you…” her voice trails off.
I sigh. “I guess I’ve never thought about it either, because of that. Everything I’ve ever done has been to set them up for success.”
“That sounds lonely.”
My eyes shoot to hers. “What?”
“Lonely. I mean, you didn’t even get to be a brother to them if you had to be part father, part brother, part random parent. You didn’t get to have siblings. They got to, among each other, I’d imagine. But if you were constantly policing them, then you weren’t a sibling, Marco.”
Her words shake me, but it feels like they’re shaking something loose instead of breaking me.
I think of Sal, Dino, and Caterina. I love them. No question about it. But, we’re all very different people. The more that I think about it, I wonder how close we really all are.
Or, maybe they’re close.
And I’m not.
I frown. Surely that can’t be right. I comb through my brain, trying to think about how our dynamics play out. Dino struggled to fit in with all of us. Sal and Caterina were close, of course, but the three of them have a dynamic that I’ve never really been able to engage with.
“I guess you’re right,” I say slowly. “They are siblings to each other. And I’m not.”
I’ve never said anything like it out loud before.
Somehow, the acute loneliness inside of me feels… soothed. It’s miserable, of course, to realize that I’ve always thought Dino was the one who was on the outside of our family, and to realize that it was never Dino.
It was me.
God, I’m such an asshole. I’ve been such an asshole to him.
I need to do something with the guilt that’s swamping me.
But at least realizing the fact that I’m the one who has always been apart in our sibling dynamic, feels like the emotion that’s been itching at me is no longer rattling around my chest.
Settled.
I feel settled.
Roisin leans back in her chair. She sighs, and the sight brings my blood rushing back to my cock.
Feeding her, apparently, turns me on.
Then again. There’s very little that doesn’t turn me on about Roisin.
I smirk at her. “Would you like me to give you more?”
The blush that heats her cheeks is worth it. “Food, you mean?” she says, coughing a little around the words.
“Sure.”
Roisin rolls her eyes, her cheeks a marvelous shade of red. “Well. Why don’t I help you clean up first.”
“No way. Why don’t you relax, and I’ll clean up?”
Her eyebrow arches up. “I don’t need special treatment, Marco.”
“Stop. I’ll treat you how I want to. And if that’s cleaning up after cooking, then you don’t need to do anything about it,” I growl.
Roisin studies me for a second. “I’m not sure if this is bullying, or if you’re trying to do something nice.”
“Take it however you want,” I rumble at her.
She sighs, then stretches. “Fine, I’ll be here in front of the fire.”
I watch her stand and slink to the leather couch. She lies down, and I fetch a blanket, covering her from head to toe.
Sleepy green eyes blink up at me. “Marco…”
“Relax,” I urge.
I turn, smiling lightly.
Roisin is mine. Caring for her is a kink I hadn’t known that I even had.
Until now.
By the time the dishes are done, she’s sound asleep.
I consider taking her into the bedroom, but the glow of the fire on her curly hair is so fucking pretty, I decide that it’s easier to leave her there. I drag a dining room chair over so I’m sort of next to her, looking at the fire, and I pull out my phone.
Turning it on, the first thing I do is make sure I’m connected to the secure satellite service that I pay an arm and a leg for. No need to alert anyone to our location.
Next, I check the cameras at the lake house.
The frame loads slowly, but when it finishes, my heart leaps and my blood boils.
The house is fucking trashed.
I zoom in, pivoting the functioning security cameras around. It looks like someone broke in through the front door, which is fully off its hinges. Shit is scattered everywhere; it looks like someone just overturned everything trying to search the house.
I frown.
What the hell were they even looking for?
The wreckage doesn’t look like people who were searching for a person. It looks almost like someone just looking for a document, or some kind of item.
Or money, I guess.
It could also be that there’s something I’m missing. Maybe the point of all the carnage is just to scare Roisin. It makes no sense, though… why would they bother, when they know that she’s with me?
A text comes through. Liam. I open it, frowning at the words.
Liam: Tell Roisin that she needs to publicly take a role in the family if she wants this to stop. Don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t protect her if she’s still trying to play both sides of the field.
I growl.
Me: I’ll let her do what she wants to do.
Liam: Do it, DeLuca.
Me: This is probably your fault. Look for your own enemies.
Liam: It’s not me.
That gives me pause.
What the hell would he be talking about?
At that moment, Elio calls. I stand, quickly moving to the edge of the bathroom, quietly closing the door so I don’t wake Roisin. “What?” I hiss.
“Dino saw a ghost today.”
I roll my eyes. “The fuck does that mean?”
“I mean, he saw someone who shouldn’t be alive.”
My body stiffens. “Who?”
Elio sighs. “He doesn’t know. But his cousin, Nico? Swears it was his uncle.”
“Dino’s uncle, or Nico’s?”
“Nico’s.”
The implication rings through me like a bullet.
“No,” I whisper.
Dino’s father should be dead. End of story. There’s no way that he’s alive; not after my father and all of his rivals came for him.
“He’s dead.”
“Nico’s father is dead. The man he saw looked just like him. An identical twin,” Elio mutters.
“That can’t possibly be.”
“Check your sources. If he comes for Dino…”
“He wont. The Drakos family has fully embraced Dino and Marisol,” I say quickly. It helps that Marisol brought a vast criminal empire spanning the entirety of South America to the marriage, elevating the previously defunct Drakos family name to one that’s whispered with real fear now.
“Maybe,” Elio says slowly. “But then, what else would he want?”
My mind churns.
“Revenge?”
“That’s what I thought,” Elio repeats grimly. “I’ve put everyone in Italy on high alert, and sent additional support to Greece.”
“They can look after themselves,” I mutter. The ransacked lake house, which is attached only to me, is weighing heavily on my mind.
Moretti, though, wanted to kidnap the girls.
And then the attack on Liam…
Could this be multiple different people?
“Marco,” Elio barks.
“What?”
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I hesitate.
It’s not that I don’t want to tell Elio what’s going on. I could need his help, and knowing that he’s one of the closest people I have to handle this makes me want to.
But I…
“I know, you don’t want to. I know. But what trouble are you in?”
I open the bathroom door and look at Roisin. “It’s not me,” I say, closing the door.
Elio sucks in a breath.
“I can’t tell you everything. But I think… I think that I need to protect someone. And I think that she might be in danger because of me.”
The puzzle pieces are clicking into place. When I was in witness protection, I left, several times, to confirm that Dino was a son of the Drakos family. I gave him the information, and I connected him to his cousin, Nico, in order to help him and Marisol.
And then I went home, every night, to Roisin. In our little cottage, where we played the perfect couple.
“Marco…”
“Is it still the case that wives are off limits?” I ask suddenly.
I can practically feel Elio’s frown. “I would not say always, but among those who play by the laws, yes.”
“Thanks.”
“Marco, do not do what I think you’re going to do.”
“Thank you, Elio. I’ll call if I need you.”
I hang up the phone before he can answer.
Opening the bathroom door, I creep to the couch. If Roisin has been under threat this whole time because of our association, then there’s only one solution.
I need to make sure that in the eyes of our community, she’s untouchable. Because if she’s harmed and she’s my wife, then whoever is after her will face the consequences not just from me…
But from the entire community.
Fuck.
I put a hand on Roisin’s shoulder. Gently, I shake her.
She blinks, her eyes focusing on me slowly. “Marco? Is everything okay?”
I take a deep breath.
“We need to get married.”
