A Vow So Soulless E-Book

Vero Heath

• Herausgeber: Peace Weaver Press Inc.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

He never believed in souls. But now? He wants hers.

I've taken everything from my Songbird. Her freedom. Her innocence. Even her name. She'll no longer be known as Deirdre O'Malley, but Deirdre Titone.
My wife. Whether she wants to be or not.

It's the only real way to show this city who she belongs to. The only way to tell the world that she's as protected as she is possessed. I'll keep her safe, even if there's no one left to keep her safe from me.

My Songbird made me believe in souls again. And maybe I don't have one. Maybe I never did.
But she does. And I won't stop until I've taken it along with everything else.

A Vow So Soulless is a steamy age-gap mafia romance featuring a morally grey mafia boss hero who becomes obsessed with the innocent, inexperienced heroine. Themes include captivity and forced proximity, hate to love, older hero younger heroine age gap, enemies to lovers, forced marriage, and other angsty dark romance tropes. It is part two of a complete duet and A Debt So Ruthless by Vero Heath should be read first.

Leseprobe

A Vow So Soulless

A Dark Mafia Romance

Titans and Tyrants

Book 2

Vero Heath

NOTICES

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, used, transmitted, or shared via any means without express authorization from the author, except for small passages and quotations used for review and marketing purposes.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and incidents in this novel are fictitious and not to be construed as reality or fact.

A Vow So Soulless Copyright © 2024 Peace Weaver Press Inc. President Veronica Doran

Cover design by Sylvia Frost at the Book Brander Boutique

Created with Vellum

Contents

Content Notes

1. Deirdre

2. Deirdre

3. Elio

4. Deirdre

5. Elio

6. Deirdre

7. Elio

8. Elio

9. Elio

10. Deirdre

11. Elio

12. Elio

13. Deirdre

14. Elio

15. Deirdre

16. Elio

17. Deirdre

18. Deirdre

19. Elio

20. Deirdre

21. Elio

22. Deirdre

23. Deirdre

24. Elio

25. Deirdre

26. Deirdre

27. Elio

28. Elio

29. Deirdre

30. Elio

31. Deirdre

32. Elio

33. Deirdre

34. Deirdre

35. Deirdre

36. Elio

37. Elio

38. Deirdre

39. Elio

40. Deirdre

41. Elio

42. Deirdre

43. Elio

44. Deirdre

45. Elio

46. Deirdre

Epilogue

Content Notes

This is a dark age-gap mafia romance with themes that may disturb some readers. The hero, Elio Titone, is not a good man. Nor is he a particularly reasonable man, especially when it comes to getting what he wants – namely the heroine Deirdre. If you would like content warnings, please visit my website.

Chapter1

Deirdre

“I’m not marrying you.”

I say it over and over again in the car on the way back from the cemetery. I say it so much that it becomes a sort of whispered chant, or a prayer, the words eventually rendered meaningless in their repetition.

They must be meaningless to Elio too. Because he doesn’t say a single thing in response.

Other than his earlier threat, the threat to marry him or else he’ll tell Darragh where my dad is, he hasn’t spoken again. He’s silent in his fury, his gloved hands hard on the steering wheel, his jaw set. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen his dark eyes so focused. Simultaneously trained on the road ahead and sweeping dangerously from side to side, as if expecting more men with guns to jump out of some shadowy place on the sidelines, like a fucking video game.

Only it’s not a video game. It’s my life.

Except it doesn’t feel like real life. I feel like I’m floating outside of it. Like this is all happening to someone else. I’m shaking, my teeth chattering so badly that my words become a mangled mess, but I barely feel it.

We pull into the long drive and through the gate at Elio’s mansion. More men than I’ve ever seen here before are pacing and standing guard outside, with wary eyes and weapons that I know are there even if I can’t see them yet. I look at them, all those men and their guns, and suddenly I can’t fucking take it anymore. It’s too much. Too much blood pooling at the edges of my life. Eventually, it all starts seeping inside to the centre. Staining. Ruining.

As soon as the car stops and the door is unlocked, my seatbelt is off and I’m running. Running who the hell knows where. I certainly don’t. Some part of me is blithely aware that this is a pointless exercise, that I’m a rat in a cage sprinting straight towards the outer edge of the enclosure and that I’ll never in a million years be able to scale that brutal wall.

Another part, the mindless, shaking, rat-brain part, keeps on fucking running.

My lungs burn and my hair whips out behind as I head blindly for the trees. Shouts go up around me, and a man from the house is already chasing me. He’s almost within reach. His bare, tattooed hand rises at the periphery of my vision, about to clamp down on my arm. Even though I know rationally that this man won’t hurt me, not with Elio here, I can’t truly believe it. The fear has become a frenzy and I have to get out, get away, get somewhere, anywhere. Anywhere but here.

The man slips slightly in the slush, then catches himself. His fingers stab towards me again, disembodied on the periphery, like a severed ghost hand.

But then I hear a voice, not the voice of the man right behind me but his voice. The voice that shapes so much of my life these days. A voice that has commanded and cajoled, soothed and seared. It’s the first time I’ve heard his voice since he told me I’d marry him in the car and that suddenly feels painfully long ago.

It’s a voice I react to even through the adrenaline-fuelled numbness of my flight, a voice that I want to reach for and run from all at once.

“Don’t fucking touch her!” Elio snarls. “Nobody touches her but me.”

Nobody touches me but him.

Because I’m his.

His debtor. His Songbird.

His wife.

No.

That was never supposed to be the way this ended. There was always supposed to be a way out for me. Far-off, maybe, and small as a speck of dust on the horizon, but there all the same. Pay the money. Get my life back.

The running makes my blood pound hard. The place between my legs hurts. And I want to cry and laugh at the same time, because who am I to rant about escaping him when I’m the one who wanted him with me tonight? When I’m the one who let him choke me, let him fuck me?

When I’m the one who took his hand in the snow at Mom’s grave because I wasn’t sure how the hell I would stand up without him?

I can barely stand up now. My knees buckle. I don’t cry out, simply suck in a rattled gasp as I go down. But he has me, he has me, and I should have fucking known he would.

Because he would never let me fall.

And he would never let me go.

Nobody touches her but me.

The strength goes out of me all at once. I don’t scream, I don’t fight him. I don’t even go back to my muttered prayer of “I won’t marry you.” I just sag against the roiling wall of his chest, hard and hot as living stone. After my manic, half-assed escape attempt I half-expect him to toss me over his shoulder caveman-style, but he doesn’t. He lifts me against his chest, cradling me like I weigh no more than a small child, before turning and taking me back towards the house with powerful, furiously measured strides.

Elio takes me through the front door and absurdly, giddy with the jittery trauma of the night, I think, Isn’t this how a groom carries his bride across the threshold?

There are soldiers stationed in here too, but with a curt bark of “Out!” from Elio, they disperse in seconds.

And then we’re alone.

Elio carries me over to the plush sofa in the living room and sets me down so carefully it’s as if I’m made of glass. Maybe something even more delicate than glass. Because it seems like he’s worried that, even against the soft cushions, I might shatter.

Without taking his eyes from me, he gathers up a throw blanket and smooths it over my legs, tucking it around my waist so it stays in place. It had always felt so odd to me, that blanket being in this room. Like some bit of décor put out by a professional house staging company, tossed at a stylish angle, not something anybody actually used – certainly not Elio.

But it’s finally getting some use now. Warm and tight around me, locking my hands in place on my lap. I don’t even bother pulling them out of the bindings of the blanket. What would be the goddamn point?

“Oh,” I murmur softly, my gaze snagging on my feet. “My boots are still on. Elio!” My voice hardens with urgency, as if I’ve just discovered something of life-or-death importance. Something that has to get fixed, and fixed now. “My boots. The floor!”

“Fuck the floor,” Elio says, apparently not caring one bit about all the salt and slush pooling around my soaking soles. “It’ll be fine. And if it’s not, I’ll rip it all out and put in whatever you want to replace it. Hardwood or ceramic or fucking seventies shag carpet. I don’t give a shit. But Deirdre-” He grabs my chin, forcing my gaze up from my feet and into the endless abyss of his eyes. “I am not peeling one single thing off of you until you stop shaking.” He pinches my chin gently for good measure, then lets go and straightens, adding, “So just be a good little Songbird and ruin my floor already, would you?”

I hadn’t even realized I was still shaking. But now that he’s said it, I can’t think about anything else besides the stuttered locking of my muscles, the banging of my teeth against each other. I’m trembling so hard it hurts.

The cold has clawed its way in and I don’t think I can get it out now.

But Mom always said…

Always said that there was never a cold so deep nor a problem so big that tea couldn’t make it better. Or, at least, make a hell of a good start.

“Tea,” I whisper. But then I blink in confusion, because I’m saying it to no one. Elio is gone. I hear noises from behind me in the kitchen, most notably a kettle already boiling, which means he started making it before I ever even said the word. Before I even thought it.

And my whole world tilts. Forces me to once again acknowledge how my monster knows what I need even when I don’t.

But my instincts rebel against that.

He just dangled the threat of my father’s death in front of me to force me into marrying him! He doesn’t actually care about what I need.

And yet…

He’s making me tea all the same.

Elio brings me a large mug with the string of the tea bag still hanging out of it. Fine by me. If ever a night called for strong tea it’s tonight. It almost seems impossible how much has happened. The swallowing grief of the date marking my mother’s death. Visiting her grave which I haven’t done in years, only to be shot at. Having more men die right in front of me.

And losing my virginity.

The man who took it stands before me now, muscled arms crossed over his broad chest. He abandoned his jacket at some point while in the kitchen, but not his gloves of course. As I hold the blissfully hot cup in my hands, I let my gaze track up and down his tall form.

When I get to his shoulder, the place where he was shot last time, I jolt so hard I nearly spill the tea in my lap.

“Are you alright?” I ask, stunned that I never thought to ask before. He could have been bleeding out somewhere on that massive, black-clad body and I wouldn’t have known it until he keeled over from blood loss.

If keeling over was even possible for Elio. Frankly, I can’t imagine it. The man would probably still be standing on his own two feet the second he goddamn died.

I just…

Don’t want that to be tonight.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” he replies, his tone giving nothing away.

“I mean, it’s pretty obvious that I’m not,” I say shakily. “But I’m not bleeding anywhere at least.”

But then he cocks his head, and I cringe, because that isn’t even true, is it? This night has made me bleed after all. I’ve got the pad stuck to my panties to prove it.

“I didn’t get shot,” I clarify flatly. I stare at him as steadily as I can. “Did you?”

“Tonight?”

“Of course, tonight! I know you’ve been shot other times!”

He pauses, then his gaze grows slightly distant, like he’s doing some kind of mental tally. Until this point, he hasn’t even paused once to make sure he’s alright in the rush to get me back here. God, he was making me fucking tea without even stopping to let the adrenaline wear off enough to see if he was injured!

But then his gaze sharpens with clarity once more, homing in on me like I’m giving off some kind of Elio-attracting beacon.

“I’m good,” he says simply. “Or, I will be once you drink your fucking tea.”

Relief pours through me, makes my muscles sag. The violent shivering is finally subsiding a bit. I lift the cup and take a sip.

The heat of it is nice, but the taste is not what I’m expecting. I swallow, then cough slightly.

“What is this?” I rasp against the little bit of the tea that went down the wrong tube.

“Some herbal shit.”

“Herbal?!”

“The amount of stress hormones that just dumped through your system do not need additional caffeine.” He looks thoughtful in a pissed-off sort of way. “If you want something else, I’ll get you wine. Or whisky.”

“No, no. This is fine. What is it?” I ask, taking another sip. I don’t normally drink herbal tea. So often it just feels like a flavourless, watery version of what tea is supposed to be.

Maybe this is how Elio feels about my Irish breakfast compared to his espresso…

He doesn’t answer me or move until I take another sip. As if satisfied that I’m actually drinking some of it, he goes back to the kitchen and returns with the box of tea bags and holds it up between us so I can see the name.

“Snoozy Time Tea?” I say, squinting at the curly, cursive font. “What am I, eighty years old?”

“Like I said, no caffeine. It’s supposed to be soothing.” Elio looks at the box then back at me. “Plus, I like the cat on the front. Reminds me of you.”

There actually is a cat on the front. A cartoon one, with ginger fur and giant blue eyes.

“It’s wearing pyjamas…”

Elio just shrugs his good shoulder.

“So? You wear pyjamas.”

Apparently a snoozy, tea-guzzling cat has got my tongue because I can’t come up with a retort to that. I have to hand it to him – he kind of has me there. The blue pyjama set the cat is wearing actually looks a lot like some of the ones I’ve worn in this very house.

I take another sip of the tea to avoid continuing this absurd conversation. Maybe we’ve both fucking lost it, talking about a cartoon cat when men have died tonight.

When one of us could have died tonight.

I keep on drinking the tea and Elio keeps on watching me, arms stubbornly crossed like some kind of supervisor, the cardboard box of tea bending under the force of his curled fist. There’s a tension in his frame. A bristling energy that makes me thing he wants to be doing something else right now – maybe killing somebody, maybe touching me – but he’s holding himself back so that he can stand there and watch me drink the tea he made. Like his good little Songbird.

But I don’t have the energy to be anything else right now. So I drink my tea, and by the time I’m nearly done the large mug, I actually do think it’s helping. I’ve stopped shaking entirely now, and I feel warm, though very, very tired.

I look around weakly for somewhere to put the empty cup, but Elio is already reaching for it, his huge black hand passing in front of my line of vision and taking the dish from me. He brings it back into the kitchen, and I twist where I’m sitting to follow him with my eyes, staring at him over the back of the couch as he puts the used tea bag in a bin and the cup in the sink.

It’s a jarring image, shocking in how unnatural it looks. Elio, moving through the kitchen and doing such mundane tasks like that, throwing away a tea bag and putting a dirty dish in the sink. I remember what Valentina told me once about the Titone men never stepping foot in a kitchen, and here Elio is not only making me tea but also cleaning up after me too.

Even in the massive space, he still looks huge. And honestly, completely out of place. Like some stalking predator has stumbled into a forest cottage and is suddenly doing its best at pretending to be a human who lives there.

Have I domesticated him?

I’m an idiot for even asking myself such a question. If I had any real sort of control over him, he wouldn’t be using the threat of exposing my father to get me to marry him.

Marry him…

Where the hell did that even come from, anyway?

I mean, maybe he’s right. Maybe it really will get Darragh to back off. But marriage? The first time I met Elio, he told me he didn’t even fuck redheads, and now he wants to make me his bride?

It doesn’t make sense. And surely someone in his position would have a political match lined up, not unlike Valentina with her picked-out fiancé. There has to be some mafia princess promised to him, someone from his world who would be an asset to the Titone empire.

I think of the blonde woman from the gala, think of her possessive hand on Elio’s chest, and my stomach lurches in a way I don’t want to acknowledge.

Elio hasn’t said anything else about marrying him since the car, so maybe he just threw it out there in the heat of the moment. Something he didn’t really mean.

But then again, I know him well enough to know that he doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.

Well, maybe I imagined it then. Fucking dreamed it, for all the sense it makes.

Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and realize most of this insane day has been a dream. I’ll open my eyes in the morning on the day after the anniversary of Mom’s death. Elio will still be up north. And I’ll still be a virgin who hasn’t visited her mother’s grave in years.

But that version of reality doesn’t feel comforting either and I’m too tired and shaken up to figure out why.

Elio returns and resumes studying me. Then, as if mostly satisfied with what he sees, he gets down onto his knees and works off one boot, then the other. He holds my ankles and rotates me so that my legs go lengthwise along the couch and my socked feet don’t get soaked by the puddles on the floor.

But for some reason, he doesn’t let go yet. My muscles tighten and then relax in one big, wave-like movement when he begins to slowly massage the arches of my feet with his thumbs. He’s thorough. Endlessly meticulous. Drawing deep, slow strokes against parts of me that I didn’t even know were sore and tired until now.

Whether it’s the tea or the massage or the warmth, I’m even more exhausted now. My limbs feel like lead. I sag back against the arm of the couch and watch him. His face is mostly cleared of the pulsing rage I saw from the side in the car. His hard, scarred jaw and dark brows seem to be set in a fairly neutral expression, though I doubt Elio Titone has ever felt truly neutral about anything important in his entire life.

His expression puckers slightly when I flinch. His thumb has pressed into the tender place where my foot was injured from the piece of ceramic from the broken cup. Thanks to his ministrations, the surface skin healed up just fine, but there’s still some lingering sensitivity in that spot. Very carefully, he peels off my sock and puts it to the side. He regards the bottom of my bare foot with that same cool look.

And then his eyes fall shut and he presses his mouth to the place that I was hurt. My leg jerks at the unexpected kiss in such a ticklish place, but his hand turns to iron on my ankle, holding me there. When he draws back and opens his eyes, his expressionless façade is still mostly in place. Except for the eyes. They’re liquid, molten black. Heat and darkness combined.

Elio places my feet down on the couch, then bends over me, his fingers rising to my throat. I suppress a small whimper, not even knowing if I want him to touch me or not, my skin already anticipating the possessive glide of leather. But instead, he simply grips the collar of my parka and unzips it, letting the coat fall open. He’s quick but careful in his movements, pulling one of my arms out of one sleeve, then the other. But just as he’s pulling my right sleeve all the way down, he freezes, his gaze stuck on one spot on the sleeve’s cuff.

Elio’s face goes briefly cataclysmic with rage, and when I look down at the bit of the sleeve he’s holding in his hands I can suddenly see why. There’s a singed, ripped part on the puffy outside, near the wrist. It takes me a moment to fully realize that a bullet actually grazed me. Or the parka, anyway.

Elio’s like a statue, staring at that blackened rip like it’s someone he wants to murder.

“It’s OK,” I say. I know even as the words leave my mouth they’re ridiculous. None of this is OK.

But for some reason I just can’t stop myself from saying them.

Elio gives me a potent, angry stare, then rips the coat off the rest of the way and hurls it into a heap on the ground. In a second, he’s on his knees again, his trousers soaking in the slushy puddles. But he doesn’t seem to notice that. He’s too preoccupied with a silent, frantic examination of my hands. He holds each of my fingers right up to his face, then scrutinizes the palms, then the backs. Then, he shoves the sleeves of my hoodie up to my elbows, running his ferocious gaze up and down each forearm, then the tender places at my wrists, like he’s counting every vein and artery.

“You already did this,” I remind him softly. He checked my hands back in the cemetery.

“That was before I knew a bullet actually grazed you,” he bites out. “Shut up and let me fucking focus.”

“Right,” I say, irritated by his command. “Guess I’m no use to you if my fingers get shot off and I can’t play violin anymore.”

He goes still, his gloved hands locked around my wrists like handcuffs.

Then his gaze rises to mine once more, and the rage has taken on a new depth. This time I can tell it’s aimed at me.

“If you weren’t on the edge of going into traumatic shock, I would spank your fucking ass for what you just said.” Elio lays my hands down in my lap, his movements tightly controlled, then lets me go. “But as it is, I will instead inform you that a thought like that was about as far from my mind as possible.”

“I mean, you’ve said something like that to me before,” I remind him, hackles rising further. “Remember? When you gave me mittens and said I wouldn’t be able to play for you if all my fingers fall off from frostbite?”

“Yes,” he seethes, “and I seem to recall that I was joking when I said it. If I remember correctly, you even laughed.” There’s anger harsh as iron in his voice. “Look me in the fucking eye and tell me what you just said was a joke.”

I avoid his eyes because I can’t and he knows it. There was no humour in my comment, just bitterness. Maybe even something mean.

My gaze settles on his gloved hands at his sides, and that bitterness withers in my chest, replaced with guilt. If anyone knows what it’s like to go through life with mangled hands, it’s him. Is it so hard to believe that he might not want that same fate for me?

I nod.

“You’re right. OK,” I say quietly after a long, tense pause. I’m not ready to apologize, not to him, not after everything we’ve been through. But I can accept what he said. That he’s acting out of concern for me as a person instead of just worrying that I might not be able to perform like his little Songbird inside the glittering cage he’s created.

“OK,” he repeats after me, and it looks like he’s calmed down ever so slightly. The anger is still there, but it’s retreated somewhat, replaced with a nameless rawness in his gaze. “OK,” he says once more, a little quieter this time, and I wonder if he’s saying it to me this time or to himself.

And then, as if this has been the most normal day in the world, he suddenly holds out his hand to me and casually says, “Let’s go to bed.”

I stare at his outstretched hand, at the hard, strong shape of it, cloaked in that dull-yet-luminescent black. It’s a hand that’s hurt me and held me, possessed me and protected me. It’s choked the breath from my lungs and left its stinging imprint on my skin.

I don’t entirely trust it.

But I rise and take it anyway.

Chapter2

Deirdre

Elio holds my hand the entire way up the stairs and into my room, and I can tell that if I make one wrong move or even stumble slightly he’ll be scooping me up into his arms again. But it feels good to walk on my own, even if my legs are wobbly.

It feels good to hold his hand too. I can’t deny it.

We walk through Elio’s room into mine. The bed draws me towards it like gravity, but despite how bone-tired I am there’s also a buzz of nervous energy in my brain and I don’t know if I can sleep right away.

“I’m going to have a bath,” I announce. Yes. That would be good. Wash the night off of me.

“Fine,” Elio replies. “But no holding your breath this time. Just a normal, relaxing bath, you got it? Put some bubbles or some other shit like that in there.”

I nod, because I’m pretty sure if I try to hold my breath for any significant period of time in my current state I’m just going to pass out. I head into the bathroom. It’s almost funny, or maybe kind of sad, how my natural impulse to reach out and close the door is entirely gone now. Just like the door itself, I suppose. I peel off my hoodie and let it drop to the floor. Bare and braless, I turn on the light, only to let out a strangled yelp when I see the huge, hulking silhouette in the mirror, standing directly behind me.

“How are you so quiet?” I gasp, spinning to face him and clapping my arms over my chest. “You’re like a hundred feet tall! You should make at least some kind of sound when you enter a room. It’s got to be against the laws of… I don’t know, physics or something!”

I’m babbling. I know it and Elio knows it. But he doesn’t try to stop me, just listens quietly.

Or maybe doesn’t listen at all, tuning me out as his gaze roams over my exposed skin. I assume it’s in a sexual way, but then I see the slight tightening of concern around his eyes, and I realize that he’s once again checking my skin for injuries.

This is only confirmed when he takes me by the shoulders and turns be around so that we’re both facing the mirror once again. He keeps one hand on my right shoulder, the other skimming between my shoulder blades, slowly tracing the line of my spine until it comes to rest on my left hip.

“All in one piece,” I murmur, my eyes on his in the mirror.

“We’ll see,” he says. He gently squeezes my hip. “Pants off.”

“Oh, come on! You know nothing happened to my legs!” I snap. Unlike the sleeve of the coat, there’s no ripped fabric or singe marks. Just a few wet spots from the snow.

“Either I check every inch of you here and now, or I do it with you laying sprawled and naked in my bed.” His tone is darkly menacing, and once again it doesn’t seem as if it’s intended to be sexual, just a simple threat. But the words go straight to my tender pussy, because that part of the night is resurging to the forefront of my mind now.

The memory of him slamming into me, claiming every part of me, telling me to come on his cock like a good fucking girl.

Which I did.

And I guess I’m still his stupid good girl, because I hook my thumbs into the waistband of the sweat pants and let them fall without further argument. Elio stands back slightly and then bends to examine my legs, his cool, leather-clad touch sparking sensations that I try and fail to ignore.

“Good,” he says. “Now those.”

There’s nothing left but my panties.

“No way,” I say quickly. “What, you think I’ve got a bullet stuck up there or something?”

“You planning to wear them in the bath?” he counters.

“Obviously not.”

“Then off.”

My face flames. It’s not like I haven’t taken off my panties for him before, but I can feel the damp pad against my skin, and there’s something extra humiliating about letting him see that.

“Now, Deirdre.”

Oh, screw it. He’s not going to leave me alone until I do it. Letting out a huff of irritated breath, I shove my panties down and then I step out of the whole heap of clothing, keeping my arms crossed tightly over my chest as I do it.

Elio’s gaze falls to the bloodied pad, and the muscles go rigid in his jaw. When his eyes lift to mine, I inhale sharply, because his gaze is so fierce and heated it feels like a physical touch. That look claims me with just as much need and force as his cock did earlier, and I hate the way my insides curl needily in response.

Scowling, I stoop and swipe the panties and pad up, hustling over to the garbage can. I’m about to toss it all in when Elio stops me with a word.

“No,” he says, his voice thick with something I can’t identify. “Not the panties.”

I peel the pad off and throw it away, keeping the panties in my hand. I didn’t position the pad far enough forward when I put it on earlier, and there’s a small area of now-dry blood remaining on the underwear’s fabric. A damning splotch of dark red on the white cotton.

Shouldn’t have worn white underwear when I’m bleeding. That’s just asking for trouble.

“Now to me.”

I look over to see Elio with a hand outstretched, eyes hungry.

Of course he wants them. Of fucking course he does.

“You have a serious panties fetish,” I say, shaking my head.

“Nope,” he responds, not appearing even the slightest bit embarrassed by this situation. “Just a Songbird fetish. Now hand them over.”

I make a fist, crumpling the fabric possessively in my hand. In Elio’s twisted brain, these ones have to be extra special. They’re the ones I wore right after he claimed my virginity. They’re marked with my blood.

“What are they worth to you?”

Something flashes in his eyes. I can’t tell if he’s surprised or impressed, but either way he recovers quickly.

“We’re back to bargaining, are we?” he asks.

“Yup,” I reply. As insane as it is, it feels safe here. Safe in the dangerous place where I still owe him millions. Because money is just money.

But marriage is…

Elio shrugs his good shoulder. Then he turns and takes out a couple of bottles from under the sink, squinting at the pretty fonts with so much focus it’s as if they’re written in a foreign language. He must have found what he’s looking for, though, because he takes one of the bottles – a container of bubble bath – over to the tub and turns on the water. He bends to put in the plug, then unscrews the bottle’s cap, dumping some of the bubble bath liquid into the roiling water. Scents of vanilla and lavender bloom in the air.

Elio puts down the bottle then turns back to face me. I’m extremely aware of my nakedness, and I clutch the panties in front of me like some kind of shield. I want to dive into the protection offered by the thick layer of bubbles forming in the tub, but I’m strong enough to at least finish out this conversation first.

“So?” I ask, and I want to freaking applaud at the way my voice doesn’t shake. “How much?”

Elio rubs the scarred part of his jaw as he stares at me, his look calculating. I wonder what mental tallies he’s conducting in that messed-up head of his. Which sums he’s putting up against which others. Blood and money and what it’s all worth.

“All of it,” he suddenly says as he holds out his hand once again. “The entire sum of your debt. Null and void.”

He says it so casually. Like he didn’t just make a bomb go off in my brain.

“What?” I breathe the word, sucking it in on a hissing inhale. I narrow my eyes at him, because I know him and I’m certain there has to be a trap in here somewhere.

His face gives nothing away. He takes one huge step towards me, plucks the panties from my hand, then says, “No point in owing millions of dollars to myself. What’s yours is mine and all that jazz.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your debt, Songbird. I will take control of it, and since it doesn’t make sense to write my own damn self a seven-figure-cheque, I’ll wave it all. You can consider the figure paid in full.” He leans down, brushing a stray curl behind my ear before adding in a murmur, “When we’re married.”

Chapter3

Elio

My words send a physical shock through Deirdre, which is kind of odd, considering I already told her that we’re engaged in the car. And I sure as shit know that she didn’t forget or mishear me, because she spent the entire ride back here saying that we weren’t. And yet, it’s like I’m telling her for the very first time based on the way that she reacts.

“We’re not getting married,” she spits like an angry cat.

She needs more of that bedtime tea. The cat on that box looked chill as fuck.

She swipes her hands like little claws at the panties I’m already holding. As if by taking them back, she can reassert some sort of control over this situation.

Only problem is she never actually had control over this situation in the first place. She can’t take it back if I’ve never relinquished it to her.

I step smoothly out of her reach, tucking the garment of clothing carefully into my pocket.

“We are,” I counter. “It’s your only option. Being married to me will protect you and you’ll be free of your debt all at once. What’s not to like about that?”

“What’s not to like?” she gasps, disbelief making her words all high and huffy. “How about the fact that I’ll be married to you!”

She tenses, then clamps her mouth shut, her eyes huge. She’s probably afraid that she’s just offended me or hurt my feelings or something, but she hasn’t. I’m more than aware that I’m not the prize in this relationship.

But I’m also the only one who can give her what she needs now.

I’m the only one who can protect her.

I’m the only one who will own her.

Deirdre Titone.

My wife.

Goddamn, do I ever love the sound of that.

I smirk, and that appears to confuse her, because her fury abates slightly.

“I don’t understand,” she says, slowly shaking her head. “This makes no sense. You’ve got to have some actual bride lined up out there somewhere. Why would you marry me just to get Darragh off our backs?”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever made a decision in my entire life for the sole purpose of getting another man ‘off my back.’”

Her cute, freckled nose wrinkles with incredulity. “So… You’re telling me you actually want this? You just… You just decided you want to marry me?”

“Do I look like the sort of man who does a single fucking thing he doesn’t want to do?”

Though to be fair, I never wanted to get married before Deirdre. I know that Uncle Vinny’s got some candidates in mind, and that someone like Nat Rizzo would literally claw another girl’s eyes out for the chance, but before now I always looked at it as a chore to be put off for as long as possible.

But now…

Hell. I’d marry my Songbird right here, right now. In this sweet-smelling bathroom, my furious, beautiful bride without a single stitch on her.

But she deserves a better ceremony than that.

She deserves a better groom, too, but that part is decidedly non-negotiable.

“Your tub is getting full,” I point out blithely when she doesn’t answer.

She doesn’t move. She’s studying me with her pretty mouth pinched and her arms crossed over her breasts, like she’s attempting to figure something out. Trying to see a trap from all possible angles.

But there is no angle here. No secret card up my sleeve I’m waiting to play.

I want to marry her and I will fucking do it.

I’ve already come to possess everything else in her life.

Might as well add her vow to the list.

My fiancée – because that’s already how I’m starting to think of her, and Cristo Santo, it kind of makes my dick hard – shakes her head again and then walks over to the tub. She turns off the water then carefully gets in. I watch her closely, primed to grab her if I need to because I’m worried those trauma-weakened legs are going to give out like a baby deer’s. But my Songbird’s made of strong stuff and she gets in just fine on her own.

She refuses to look at me, instead staring mulishly at the foamy bubbles that currently conceal her from her elegant collarbones down. She lifts her wet, soapy arms, tugging at the loose hairstyle on the top of her head until it all comes tumbling down in a wave of liquid fire that makes my heart feel like it’s beating both too fast and in the wrong place – in my cock instead of in my chest.

“Alright. I’m in the bath,” she tells me. “I’m not going to pass out or hold my breath or anything. You can go now.”

I do, but just for a couple of seconds. I leave the bathroom only for as long as it takes to grab the chair from Deirdre’s room. Then I carry it into the bathroom and set it down beside the bathtub.

Deirdre had been leaning back against the tub eyes closed, but they pop open at the sound of the chair being set down and my body dropping into it.

“What are you doing? I said you could go!” she snaps.

“See, the thing is, I actually can’t,” I say. The chair is facing away from the tub. I’m sitting in it backwards, straddling the seat. I rest my forearms along the chair’s back and make myself comfortable.

Deirdre gives a bitter laugh.

“You’re Elio Titone. Pretty sure you could do anything you set your mind to.”

“Almost anything,” I correct her. “Leaving you alone tonight isn’t on that list. I am physically fucking incapable of that right now.”

She rolls her eyes at me, but I’m not exaggerating. I feel like if I walk back out that door, if I put any meaningful distance between us after everything that’s happened tonight, then some vitally important blood vessel inside my head is gonna pop for good this time.

I could have lost her tonight.

It’s something I’ve been pushing down, down, down since we got home. A reality I’ve been stuffing behind softer things like tea and baths because stopping to confront the fact that she could have gotten killed tonight, could have died right in fucking front of me, literally makes me think my goddamn heart might give out.

I’m thirty-four years old. I’m way too young to have a heart attack or an aneurysm or whatever the fuck it is I feel like I’m on the verge of when I imagine losing Deirdre.

Darragh doesn’t know how lucky he is that his men have garbage fucking aim.

If that bullet had so much as nicked her freckled skin…

Rage, and something else, something that feels far too close to panic, make an ugly mess of my guts. My hands prickle and burn. I grip my elbows, forearms still resting along the back of the chair, and I fucking fuse my gaze to Deirdre, as if the intensity of my eyes alone can create a protective layer around her.

She looks like she’s decided to pretend that I’m not here. She doesn’t glance at me and she doesn’t speak, and that’s just fine by me, because I have shit to sort out in my head.

I have to decide what I’m going to do about Darragh. My instincts tell me to gut him like a fish, fill his belly with bricks, and dump him into a frozen fucking lake.

But I also have to be smart about this. Darragh isn’t a lowly soldier or some sniveling ex-boyfriend of Deirdre’s. He’s the head of the Irish mob, protected at all times. Killing him would be astronomically difficult, and even if it were achievable, there’s a very good chance I’d take a bullet to the brain in the process.

And then what? Curse steps up to avenge me, Darragh’s men step up to avenge him, Toronto’s streets run red with blood. And in the Shakespearian-level chaos of the fallout, who the hell is gonna be left to take care of my Songbird?

Fucking nobody, that’s who.

Mad Darragh might be a nutcase, but he’s not an idiot. Right now, he believes he’s taking back something that belongs to him, just like his soldiers said. But I don’t think that he would be dumb enough to try to abduct or kill a Titone. His men might not have even realized it was me with her tonight, now that I think about it, because I highly doubt they would have let loose a single shot if they’d been close enough to see who I was. Darragh Gowan chews on grudges like a starving dog with a bone, but I also know that he wants to stay in business and make a shitload of money. Not embroil his entire operation in a feud with the highest levels of La Cosa Nostra over a sweet but ultimately worthless little nobody like Deirdre.

Because really, that’s what she is to them. Her father was bottom rung mafia. Deirdre is even further removed. She doesn’t have money or status or friends.

But she’s got me now.

Yeah. I definitely need to think this through. Don’t rush.

That’s never been a problem for me before. I do what needs to be done – always – but I take my time and I do it with my head screwed on straight.

Only problem is I haven’t had my head on straight since that summer day when Deirdre and the sparking music of her soul blew a big fucking hole in the middle of my life.

I look at her while she sits in the tub, so quietly oblivious to everything she’s done to me.

Deirdre slides down a little, tipping her head back until her hair is submerged in the water, then comes back up. She looks around, her tresses rust-red and sealed to the glorious curve of her neck meeting her spine. Her gaze seems to snag on something in the shower in the corner of the room, and she sighs and stills.

“What is it?” I ask, leaning forward until my chin comes down on top of my forearms.

“Nothing.”

“Deirdre.”

“I just wanted to wash my hair, OK? Is that allowed or do I have to ask permission first?”

“It’s allowed.”

Though I have to say, the idea of her coming to me to ask permission even for the most mundane things is appealing.

Can I take a shower, Elio? Can I go to class today, Elio?

Can I come for you, Elio?

Fuck.

“Whatever. The shampoo’s all the way over there. It’s fine. I’ll wash it tomorrow.”

But I’m already up, crossing over to the shower and entering the big glass enclosure of it. I scan the text on the bottles in here, grab the one marked shampoo, then figure she might want the others too, so I bring them all. Three in total.

I drop back down in the seat, straddling it once again. I put the other two bottles down on the stone floor but keep the shampoo. Deirdre holds out a wet hand for it, but I make no move to pass it over.

Instead, I peel off one glove, and then the other.

Then I squeeze the shampoo into my bare hands, lathering it up without looking at them. I lean further forward until my chest presses against the back of the chair and my elbows reach the edge of the tub.

“Come here.”

“I can wash my own damn hair.”

“I didn’t ask if you were capable of washing your own hair,” I say. “I told you to come here.”

Maybe it’s the baggage of this night weighing down on her slender shoulders. Or maybe it’s the fact that she knows she can’t win against me. With an expression of wary resignation furrowing her brows, she slides over to me, then slowly spins on her ass in the tub until her back is to me.

Merda, she’s got a gorgeous neck. And shoulders so lovely that they just about convince my agnostic ass that God must actually be real, because somebody had to have sculpted them. Beauty that fucking ethereal doesn’t just come out of nowhere. I’m not even entirely sure how someone so beautiful can exist in a world like mine at all.

Fuck me. Even her ears are pretty.

I don’t know if she’s turned me into that much of a needy fucking fool, or if she really is just that terrifyingly special, but in that moment I feel the truly feral need to stroke myself to climax while staring at her ears. Not her tits. Not her cunt.

Her fucking ears.

Cristo help me.

I ignore the twinge in my dick and instead focus on gathering up all that thick, sodden hair in my fists. But then she makes a small, whimpering sort of sound when I run my soapy fingers along her scalp, and ignoring my arousal becomes a hell of a lot harder.

I want to fuck her again.

And it’s not even lust driving me. Not just obsession or physical desire.

There’s this deep, unnerving sort of feeling that stirs up when I think about being inside her again. Bizarrely, it almost feels like… sorrow. Or homesickness. Or some kind of breath-stealing nostalgia. Whatever the fuck it is, it hurts. Hurts to even imagine fucking her again because I want it, want her, so damn bad.

But that’s not what she needs tonight.

She needs tea, which I’ve made her. She needs a bath, which I’ve drawn her.

She needs her hair washed, which I’m doing for her.

She needs to be tucked all safe and cozy into bed. I’ll be the one to do that, too.

Right before I tuck my own scarred body in next to hers.

Chapter4

Deirdre

“You’re way too good at this,” I mumble. I want to be resentful about it, but the bone-melting pleasure of Elio massaging my scalp makes it impossible.

“I know how to take care of my Songbird.”

“Hmm,” I say noncommittally. His fingers dig and glide along every point of my head, rubbing slow, firm circles in the lather, making my whole neck tingle. The bubbles in my bath are starting to disintegrate into nothing, putting more of my body on display, but at this point I’m too tired and relaxed from the massage to care. My skin is warm. The place between my legs stings.

Elio works the lather down the lengths of my hair, tugging ever so gently, which makes my scalp prickle pleasantly.

“How the fuck do you have so much hair?” he asks. A question like that would have made me bristle before. Because I used to get comments and questions about my hair when I was younger and they were almost never nice.

And while I can’t say that Elio is exactly nice, there’s not the undertone of icky judgment that usually accompanies a question like that. He sounds like he’s genuinely asking, like my hair is some new, confusing thing that needs to be explained to him.

“Um. Genetics?”

“No way. I’ve seen your papà.”

“It was thicker when he was younger,” I say, but then bitterness creeps up my throat, and I don’t want to talk about my dad anymore. “My mom had a ton of hair. Different colour, though. It was the most beautiful shade of blonde. I used to want blonde hair so badly. Especially after she died.”

The fact that it’s the anniversary of her death hits me all over again. The events of tonight have distracted me from my grief, but it comes rushing back. So heavy that in normal circumstances it would push my head beneath the water.

But Elio is here. Holding my hair. Anchoring me. Keeping my head above the water.

It occurs to me that it’s probably after midnight by now. The anniversary of her death is technically done. There’s usually a wooden sort of relief that accompanies the days after the anniversary. A numbness different from the sharper pain. Like I have to slowly claw my way back to living.

Strangely, I don’t feel that. At least, not yet.

Maybe it’s because this year was different. Maybe it’s because I went to see her, even if the night did end in a total shitshow. I chew on the inside of my cheek, honestly wondering if, had I known what I know now about how the night unfolded, would I still have wanted to go? I assumed my instant answer would be “no,” but I truly don’t know. And maybe that makes me a terrible person, because people ended up dead tonight.

But still…

It felt right for me to be there. At least at the beginning.

And it felt right with Elio.

In my state of relaxation, I find myself able to slink around the bad parts of the night and remember what happened before. Remember the heart-achingly beautiful bouquet of blooms Elio picked out just for her. Remember the way he knelt down, more respectful than I’ve probably ever seen him, painstakingly cleaning the snow from every nook and cranny of her headstone.

Elio is quiet for a while. He twists my hair, squeezing some of the lather out of it, then suddenly says, “Don’t ever dye it.”

“What, you’re in charge of my hair colour now too?”

“Yes.”

Isn’t that what he said to me on the very first night in this house? Every flaming hair on your pretty little head. All. Fucking. Mine.

I almost want to dye it now just to spite him.

Maybe I would. If…

If some twisted part of me didn’t feel immense pleasure at the thought of him liking it. Maybe even loving it.

I pull away, needing to rinse and for this to be done.

In response, Elio’s fist tightens on the rope of my hair, and for a second I think he’s going to snap it back towards him like a leash. But he doesn’t. He brushes his knuckles against the tender place at the base of my skull, running them gently down the back of my neck, before he lets go.

Once he’s released my hair, I’m off like a shot, as if I’ve built up some kind of careening momentum being held in place there. I skid along the bottom of the bath to the other side so forcefully that a small tidal wave sloshes up against the white wall of the tub. I clumsily dunk my head backwards, scrubbing viciously at my scalp, trying to get rid of all the good feelings Elio has created there. But I can’t. Because it’s like his touch has sunk in deep. Past the surface of my skin, into the muscle and bone.

I give up, and once my hair is rinsed decently enough I sit up again.

“Want me to scrub your back now?” he asks, and there’s a crooked sort of smirk on his mouth. But there’s nothing casual or teasing in his eyes. He looks at me like his gaze can swallow me whole.

“No,” I say. “I’m going to get out now.”

I’m too tired to do the rest, and if I’m too tired then that means Elio is going to take over and wash every single inch of my body, I just know it. I cannot handle that right now. Soaking in the sudsy water is enough for tonight. At this point I just want to dry off and get into bed.

Elio rises from his chair and grabs a clean, fluffy towel from the nearby rack. He pats his hands dry on it without looking at them, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s specifically avoiding looking at the scars, or if it’s because he’s so unwilling to let me out of his sight. Even when he bends to retrieve his gloves, sliding them back on one at a time, he’s still watching me.

I wonder if he’s going to just stand there and make me get out of the bath to grab my own towel, soaking and vulnerable under his gaze. But, somewhat surprisingly, he instead walks around the bath until he’s behind me. He opens up the towel, letting it hang between us, and I cautiously stand up with my back to him.

The towel immediately envelops me, going around my shoulders in a warm, fluffy hug. Only, it’s not just the towel hugging me, but Elio. He’s got his big arms around me from behind, locking at my front in a tight embrace. He bends down along my right side, the scarred left side of his jaw brushing my cheek as his chin comes to rest on my shoulder. This isn’t just hugging now, this is holding. He inhales, his lips moving against the side of my throat, and I’m sure he’s about to say something to me.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he just straightens up and starts rubbing the towel along my shoulders and arms. Then, he lifts me easily out of the bath, setting me down on my dripping feet. I let out a shaky sigh, because at some point he’s turned on the heated flooring and it feels like pure magic seeping into the soles of my feet. I still find it so surreal, so surprising, when he does those small things solely for my own comfort. He controls me, spanks my ass until it burns, won’t let me go anywhere or do anything that he decides isn’t allowed…

But he also makes me tea and washes my hair and ensures that my feet are warm.

I could have a whole lifetime beside him and maybe never figure him the fuck out.

“Hold this,” he instructs me, thrusting the edges of the towel into my hands. I pull it around myself like a cape while he fetches a second towel and then bends to dry my legs. I go still, shivery heat pulsing through me as he works his way up from my right foot to my calf, my knee, my inner thigh. Blood rushes between my legs so fast it almost hurts when the towel grazes my tender skin there.

But Elio is all business. He whisks the towel away from my sensitive places, moving on to my other leg until the only wet things left on me now are my hair and – I hate to admit it – my pussy.

“Alright,” he says, standing and tossing his towel aside. “Let’s go.”

I don’t want to follow him out of the room – I can at least get my pyjamas on my own – so I go ahead of him. But maybe this is even worse, because I can feel him stalking right behind me, his gaze hot on my back.

I flick on the light in my room’s walk-in closet while Elio looms in the closet’s doorway, leaning his good shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossed. Still keeping my towel fastened around myself, I grab a pair of loose, yellow silk pyjamas. I yank on the pants one-handed, then once they’re on let my damp towel drop and quickly pull on the shirt with my back to Elio.

At the last second, I realize I haven’t put on any underwear, but I don’t seem to be actively bleeding anymore, so fingers crossed it’s alright. And if I get blood on these nice silk pants, does it even matter much? It isn’t like they’re actually mine.

Knowing Elio, he might even like them better that way.

I hang up my towel on an empty hook in the closet, then turn and swiftly head past Elio. He doesn’t move aside for me, and he’s so broad that I’m forced to turn sideways in the doorway, facing him as I squeeze by. My breasts brush his arm, my nipples tightening instantly. It’s like that single brush against him exerts some sort of gravitational pull, because even though I’m more than capable of taking another sideways step out of here, it suddenly becomes a hell of a lot harder. Part of me wants to stay here, trapped between the wood at my back and the man at my front.

Part of me wants him to touch me.

He doesn’t, just keeps his arms crossed while gazing darkly down at me. Although, there is a slight tightening in his biceps beneath the black fabric of his shirt. As if he’s holding himself back from grabbing me.

“Bed,” he reminds me firmly, and I nod, because he’s right. I really need to get some sleep.

I finish sidling out of the closet, my breasts dragging along his arm as I free myself. He lets out a soft hiss of breath at the contact, the muscles in his arms flexing again.

Once out of the closet, I hustle over to my bed. I’m about to drop gratefully into it when Elio’s words freeze me.

“Not that one.”

My stomach does a strange swooping thing, and I can’t decide if it’s good or bad. I hide my confusion behind irritation. Anger is always easier.

“What do you mean, ‘not that one?’” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.