Page 47 of One Savage Union

With that, he walks out.

I may have to kill that bastard after all.

15

LUCIA

And by soul, I mean my pussy.

God help me, just remembering it makes my thighs clench and my cheeks burn.

He didn’t just go down on me—he worshipped me. Like a man kneeling at the altar of sin, and I was the only god worth believing in.

He ate like he was starving.

Like every moan from my lips was a prayer, he needed to survive.

The only other thing I’ve seen him attack with that kind of hunger?

His secret stash of chocolate cannolis.

Yeah. I know about those.

He thinks he’s slick—sneaking off to his office at midnight like I won’t notice Mr. Discipline stuffing his face with pastry and sweetened ricotta like it’s a holy ritual.

But I see everything.

I should feel guilty for spying.

I don’t.

This man has stripped me of every ounce of privacy I’ve ever known—down to my fucking panties and my sense of autonomy. The least I’m owed is the satisfaction of knowing he has a weakness that comes wrapped in pastry and shame.

It makes him human. Almost.

Maybe that’s why he works out like a possessed demon every morning at 5 a.m.—to punish his body for the indulgences he pretends don’t exist. He thinks I’m asleep when he slips out of bed, but I’m not. I hear the soft creak of the mattress, the tension in his breath, the way he paces before pulling on a shirt like he’s already fighting something I can’t see.

He’s restless. Coiled too tight.

Whatever made Rocco Fieri into the man he is—the calculating monster who dragged me into this world and claimed me as his—still follows him into the night.

And yet…

Somewhere in the last few days, something in him changed, too.

He’s still hard. Still ruthless. Still obsessed with owning me like I’m a prized violin he plays only when the world is on fire. But now, there’s a strange tenderness hiding beneath the steel. A quiet consideration. He asks if I’m cold. He brushes my hair off my shoulder before I fall asleep. He brings me books I never asked for and pretends it’s nothing.

He doesn’t smile—but he sees me now.

And that, somehow, is even more dangerous than his belt or his bullets.

Because the more he acts like I matter, the more I start to wonder what it would feel like to be hiswifein every way that counts.

And that is the start of madness.

“Mrs. Fieri, may I come in?”

The knock at my door, alongside Maria’s welcoming voice, coaxes me out of bed for the day. I’m still surprised whenever she refers to me as Mrs. Fieri. I’m Rocco’s wife, but doesn’t she know that it’s all a sham?