AUCTIONED TO HER DAD’S MAFIA ENEMIES: A MAFIA AGE-GAP REVERSE HAREM ROMANCE (AUCTIONED SERIES Book 4)

PLANETARY SHIFTS

Something is shifting. Like a meteor knocking a planet off its axis, Aemelia Lambretti has come into our lives and changed our course.

After Antonio helps Aemelia cover herself, he leads her up the stairs. I exchange a look with Alexis, and through silent communication alone we decide to follow them.

The video is on my phone, and I should distribute it to Enzo immediately, but somehow, it doesn’t seem as important.

In the bedroom, Antonio strips his sweater and gently pulls it over Aemelia’s head. He encourages her to put her arms into the sleeves, gentle and patient as a father with a small child. The sweater is oversized on her, covering her thighs as she lets the towel fall. Her eyes are glossy and wet, her hair still in disarray. With tender hands I don’t recognize as belonging to my brother, he begins to stroke the knots from her hair, and she closes her eyes and lets him try to undo the damage we did.

Will it ever be possible?

I recall the first time I saw my father kill a man. It was nothing like those stupid TV cop shows or the movies. The bullet left my father’s gun and pierced Alberto’s gut, and he bled like a stuck pig, groaning and writhing for what seemed like an eternity. I couldn’t watch, so instead, I focused on my father. He was a tough man. Nobody becomes the boss of a family without being hard as nails, but he wasn’t like that with his kids. Strict but fair, we grew up respecting him more than we feared him, but that day, I saw a different side of him. Cold. Hard. Ruthless. And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.

For the rest of his life, I viewed him through different eyes and faced a truth I wish I hadn’t had to face about someone I loved. Men, when pushed, are capable of anything. It’s a fact I learned about myself in time, the limits of my conscience easing outwards until I was no longer restricted by the boundaries I’d grown up with.

We’ve all done things our mama would be ashamed of but will always find a way to look past. I, too, look past horrors when it suits me but watching my brutal brother pet Aemelia Lambretti is a gear shift. Seeing him touch her with such tenderness is unsettling. In the garden of the Venturi estate, there’s a low wall that we all used to walk along, balancing on the narrow stone. Right now, it feels like I’ve misstepped and am about to tumble off the edge.

Antonio finishes combing through Aemelia’s hair and helps her lower herself onto the mattress where she curls up, hugging her knees close. Without a word, I leave the room, descending the stairs. In the kitchen, I uncork a bottle of red wine and pour it into four squat glasses that would be better suited for whiskey. If I had some whiskey, I’d have poured that. Aemelia needs this. Pretty sure Antonio needs this, too.

My head isn’t on straight like it usually is. I gulp back a full glass of wine and pour more. The scar on my ribs, long healed, aches. It wasn’t a life-threatening injury like Mario’s, but it’s a permanent reminder of the night that changed all our lives. The night that brought us here.

Emotions are a weakness. I gave up on feeling anything a long time ago. Those who were already in my circle of love and trust have remained there. Anyone new is kept out in the cold. The world could burn around me, and I’d usually keep my composure. Alexis calls me the eye of the storm. But tonight, I don’t feel that way.

I take the glasses upstairs, clutched in my broad hands. The snake around my left wrist seems ready to pounce, ever the reminder that evil lives in the shadows, ready to strike at any time. Some people get tattoos to remember good things. I got mine so that I’d never forget how easy it was to trust a man who could have ended us all.

Back in the bedroom, Alexis is slumped on a mattress, his back pressed against the terrible pink wallpaper left by the family who used to live in this house. The room is dim, casting shadows that stretch across the walls. Antonio is sitting behind Aemelia, who’s still curled into a ball.

“Luca,” Alexis says as soon as he sees me. “You brought out the good stuff.”

It is good. Wine from our own vineyard, carrying the warmth and the sweetness of the Sicilian summer in its depths. He reaches up to take a glass from my hand. I place my feet carefully between the mattresses, allowing Antonio to take two glasses. “Aemelia.”

Like his voice is the only one that can rouse her, she sits suddenly at his call, and he passes her the glass. Her dark eyes find mine as she brings the glass to her lips.

“To good wine,” I say softly, tipping my glass.

Silence stretches between us as I settle onto my mattress, the one nearest the door.

I rest my head against the cool plaster and close my eyes as I swallow the wine, allowing the rich flavor to warm me down to my stomach.

“Do you like it?” Alexis asks Aemelia.

“It’s good,” she says, licking the remnants from her top lip.

“Have you been to Sicily?”

She shakes her head. “No. I don’t even have a passport. It must be beautiful.”

“It is,” I say. “Very beautiful. The sea glitters like a never-ending spill of sapphires, and the sun shines like it’s found its favorite place and never wants to leave.”

“And, if you hadn’t already noticed, Luca missed his vocation as a poet.”

I ignore Alexis teasing. There isn’t much beauty in this life, so I will never regret seeing it or finding the best words to describe it. Then Aemelia speaks, stealing my breath. “Do you ever wonder what your lives would have been like if you weren’t born into this?”noveldrama

I glance at Antonio, finding his expression flat, then Alexis, who’s considering an answer but doesn’t share his thoughts. Finally, I sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe easier. Maybe not. The world’s cruel, no matter what side you’re on.”

“Can you imagine Luca with an ordinary job as a car salesman or a server in a restaurant?” Alexis says.

Aemelia shakes her head.

“What about me? Can you imagine me working in an office with a wife and three snotty brats at home?”

“Definitely not,” she says.

“And Antonio? He’d make a great priest, don’t you think? He has a fierce intensity about him, and he’s a great listener.”

Aemelia finishes her wine and rests her glass on the floor. “Antonio could have made a great priest.”

Alexis grins in the dark, and I study Antonio, trying to imagine him wearing the black robes of a catholic priest. He might have had some of the traits required, but he couldn’t have remained celibate, that’s for sure.

“I’d be in prison by now,” Alexis adds.

“Or dead.”

Aemelia focuses on Antonio, maybe realizing from his tone that he’s talking not just about himself but about all of us.

“And me?”

“You should have stayed in Maryland,” I say. “You would have been safe.”

She tenses but doesn’t respond. She knows as well as I do, there’s no changing the past.

“Will you go back there?” Antonio asks. “After this is over.”

Her head swivels quickly to scan his expression, but he’s looking directly at me when he says it. He’s given her hope that her leaving us is an inevitability, a surety, so that she feels confident of her safety. We haven’t discussed it, but Antonio has made his feelings clear. If Carlo doesn’t come forward, our lust for revenge doesn’t extend to his daughter.

The relief that spills through me makes no sense. Only revenge should give me this feeling. Only the tying up of loose strings. Not the idea that this beautiful woman will be allowed to fly free from our hands and return to her boring life of drudgery and self-sacrifice.

The room falls into silence again, but this time it’s not tense. Something else has taken its place. Something like understanding. Like an easy kind of peace. In one sentence Antonio has brought Aemelia to our side.

Alexis yawns. “If you bastards snore, I swear to God…”

Aemelia lets out a quiet surprised laugh and for a moment, the weight pressing on all of us feels a little lighter.

***

Sleep has never come easy for me. My brothers seem to tumble into rest like kids rolling down a hill, effortless and unconscious, while my mind refuses to shut off. The room is dark but not so dark that I can’t make out the shape of Aemelia beneath her blankets. Her breathing is steady and even, and I marvel at her ability to sleep between us, at the level of trust she must feel to do so.

Trust we don’t deserve.

Or maybe it’s just exhaustion.

I lay back against the pillows, hands behind my head, staring up at the cracked ceiling. We had never lived in a house like this—small, cozy, with walls too close together, forcing intimacy. I never shared a room with my brothers. My father’s sense of pride in providing a house large enough for us each to have our own space eclipsed the childhood experience of growing up together in close quarters and the comfort that comes with it.

Solitude is something I was forced to grow comfortable with, not something that comes naturally. The need to have my brothers close is a secret I keep. Maybe they feel the same way. All I know is that no woman has ever come between us, and nothing in this business has ever challenged our unity.

But Antonio made a unilateral decision tonight, one he should have discussed with us before communicating, and for the first time, I can see how Aemelia might have already created a fissure in the foundation we’ve built.

But it’s only a fissure if I disagree.

And I don’t. Maybe the fissure comes from watching a woman, one who’s barely been in our lives, change my brother. When I think of Antonio’s gentle hands in her hair, I let out a ragged breath. That question Aemelia asked earlier about what we would have been like if we hadn’t been born into this life still lingers in my mind.

There’s no walking away so what’s the point in thinking about it.

Aemelia stirs, then whimpers. It’s not loud enough to wake my brothers, but it slides through me like a blade. She whimpers again, her hands gripping the sheets, her feet shifting under the blankets. She’s having a nightmare. I push up to my knees and crawl from my mattress into the gap between her and Antonio.

Her hair is still tangled, despite his careful hands, and I push it back from her face. “Aemelia,” I whisper, my lips close to her ear. “You’re dreaming. It’s just a dream.”

She moans, twisting, her eyelids fluttering frantically. “Aemelia,” I say again, firmer this time. “Wake up.”

Her eyes shoot open, wide, and unfocused before settling on me. “It’s okay,” I murmur. “You were dreaming.”

I stroke her cheek gently, her skin impossibly soft beneath my calloused fingers. When her eyes brim with tears, my body reacts with instinct. I tug her against me, holding her close.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s nothing. It’s gone.”

“Luca?” she whispers, small and unsure.

“Yeah, kitten. It’s me.” Even as I say it, I expect her to pull away. Instead, she burrows against my body, like she’s seeking warmth and safety, her tears bleeding through my thin shirt. I hold her, trying not to think about how I might be part of the nightmare still haunting her.

I stroke her hair, adjusting so I’m lying on the edge of her mattress and she’s pressed against me. She won’t stop crying, and I don’t know how to fix it. When I was a kid, my mama used to sing a lullaby, one I loved, so I sing La Simizina as softly as I can, like a whisper, the words brushing against the crown of her head, and she listens, and her breathing slows. She quiets in my arms.

When I’m finished, she whispers. “What does it mean?”

I think for a moment, then admit, “I never thought about the words much,” I say. “My Italian is rusty.”

“Mine, too,” she murmurs, her voice small but steady.

“Are you okay now?”

“Yeah,” she whispers. I expect her to pull away, but she doesn’t. Instead, her grip on my shirt tightens, like she’s anchoring herself to me. I duck to look at her more closely, and when our eyes meet, a frisson of electricity runs along the length of my spine. She’s so tiny in my arms. Delicate. A beautiful rose on the brink of blooming. Awareness is a river of lava, burning everything in its path. I want this girl with a fierceness that could obliterate universes, but it’s wrong. She’s young enough to be my daughter, if I’d married when I was supposed to. Her father is my generation, a friend who turned into the worst kind of enemy. And yet, she’s a woman in body and spirit. Strong and resilient with a soft vulnerability that makes me ache to be a better man. I want to kiss her soft lips, feel her lithe body against mine, and discover the sweetness Antiono described for myself. I want to chase away the green-eyed monster that squats in my stomach at the idea of this woman with my brother and not me.

“Aemelia.” Her name drips from my lips like sweet wine, and she shivers in my arms. I draw the blanket over her, and as I pull her closer, her mouth presses to the corner of mine.

It’s like I cease to exist in the real world and enter a celestial plane where soft music plays and only happiness and pleasure exist. I don’t move because I don’t want to destroy this precious moment and remind Aemelia where she is and who she’s kissing. She’s still half asleep.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing.

She can’t because if she did, she’d never want to kiss a man like me. Her warm breath tickles my cheek as she lingers. I thread my fingers into her hair, holding her gently with just the pads against the warm skin of her scalp. I want to kiss her, touch her, wipe away all the misery of her life and leave only joy and ecstasy. I want to disappear into another life where money and power don’t rule my mind and heart.

Her lips drift across mine like a ghost of a kiss and I close my eyes, waiting for more, but it never comes. Instead, she pulls away and snuggles against me.

And that’s how I end up falling asleep next to Aemelia Lambretti—my captive, my prisoner, my possession, and the woman who is slowly, without effort, peeling away the layers of protection around my heart.