Page 41

Chapter 41

Nova

We're in Massimo's ensuite in his huge two-person tub. The only light is from a flickering candle. The tub’s size makes sense, given his massive body—but I still can’t picture Massimo as a regular 'bath guy'. But since he has a custom-sized, two-person bathtub in his private ensuite, and he's in here with me, maybe this is his go-to after sex.

I don't like the thought of him with any other woman. However, my jealousy is idiotic and stupid.

Massimo isn't mine.

Well, that seems like a big fat lie, given his words while having sex.

Yeah, brain, 'having sex' is the key thing there.

I try to push my warring, contradicting thoughts away.

Massimo presses a gentle kiss to the top of my shoulder. "Stay with me, princess."

Regardless of the war in my head, my body has a mind of its own and melts against him.

"Would my cock nestled in your sweet pussy keep you here, present, and in the moment with me?"

Heat blooms and flushes over my face and chest. "What?" I croak.

"Cockwarming." He chuckles and kisses my shoulder again. "Once your soreness has eased a bit, I want you sitting on my lap with my cock nestled deep inside you while I take care of you."

That shouldn't be…so freaking arousing .

Everything about Massimo is a turn-on. The vast size difference between us. How he likes me to show my claws. How he seems to want nothing more than to take care of me. His kinks—such as cockwarming, and where the thought of impregnating a woman—is hugely arousing.

I want a baby. I want his baby.

I stiffen in shock at the thought and mentally kick myself.

Having a baby with Massimo is a very bad idea. I'd be tied to him and this life forever; no chance of ever escaping and living in peace.

Plus, Massimo would never marry me—the Mancini Princess and the daughter of his sworn enemy—so my child would be illegitimate. In normal society and in today's times, no big deal, but in the mafia world, I knew what that resulted in because I seen it first hand in my father's rule. Massimo would never claim the child as his heir, but I also can't see Massimo letting his child leave with me and having no contact, even if it had Mancini blood.

I'm an idiot. Stupid. Foolish.

The laundry list of deprecating and hurtful things my father used to hiss at me—and that my inner critic adopted—is cut off when I'm spun around to face Massimo. The water churns and sloshes up the high sides of the tub, and I find myself straddling his lap.

He studies me, trying to read my thoughts. "Talk to me, please, princess."

I still haven't been able to fully erect my walls against him again, so I close my eyes to block him out.

He cups my face and brushes his lips over my forehead. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter to stop tears that want to break free.

"Nova, please talk to me. Don't be all up in your head."

Regardless of my anguish, confusion, and self-deprecating thoughts, I laugh. "Don't be all up in my head, huh?"

His chuckle rumbles through his broad chest. I lean into him, and he tucks my head into the crock of his neck and holds me while rubbing my back.

"What time is it?" I ask instead of admitting my inner thoughts.

After Massimo had ruined me for any other man, he bundled me up in a sheet and carried me to his bedroom. The house was completely dark and quiet, and we have been in the tub for long enough for the water to start to cool.

I had slept all day today with Massimo after the previous sleepless night, paralyzed with fear that my father was coming, but sleep wants to drag me under now.

"It's about three in the morning." Massimo shifts, and I glance up at him as he stifles a yawn. He drags his knuckle across my bottom lip. "We'll go back to bed soon, but I want to talk first."

Trepidation skidders down my spine, worrying that Massimo is going to force me to talk about the chaotic, confusing mess of thoughts in my head.

"I want to talk about your father's spy that he sent here."

The spy who Massimo made bleed, scream, and who he killed before coming home. The confession hadn't sent me running from him; instead, I fell headlong into the dark depravity he offered me.

"He didn't know any details about your father's plans, but… He knew other things."

"Like…what?" My heart pounds as his words hang in the air, and dread coils in my gut.

Then suddenly, alarm bells blare loud and violently in my head, and I don't want to know.

"How your father tormented you."

I jerk back in shock and denial.

That's not possible.

The spy my father sent would've been someone disposable in his eyes—a grunt, a nobody. Not someone in his higher ranks who witnessed the psychological abuse my father had used to control me.

This means that Massimo is trying to trick and manipulate me to learn things I don't want to tell him. He's trying to play me.

Hurt—ridiculous, but very real—slashes through me.

Massimo is a monster, just like my father, maybe worse… No, definitely worse, because he's using my gullible hope against me to pick me apart piece by piece. It's his way of punishing me, of making me learn the lessons he wants me to learn .

During sex, and those insane, earth-tilting orgasms, I stupidly felt like I was being forged into something new. Something better, something stronger.

" Let go, Nova. Let go of it all. You've lived in those fires of hell for too long. Walk through the flames and emerge forged as my queen ."

His queen.

I'm such a fucking idiot.

My hand rises without conscious thought. The startling slap across his face echos like a gunshot in the dimly light bathroom. The wetness of my palm made the strike that much more vicious.

Good.

Tears blur my vision and cloud Massimo's shocked, gorgeous face as I try to climb off his lap. My heart feels like it's being ripped out of my chest—torn between agony at his betrayal and terror of what I've just done.

His massive hands hold me in place, but I'm done .

I'm done playing the meek and mild princess. I'm done hiding away from the monsters in my world. I know I have no chance of surviving, but I'll be damned if I go out like my mother. I may be completely broken and ruined in the end, but at least I'll fight.

She tried to fight, but by then, it had been too late. I won't repeat her mistakes.

"Fuck you," I seethe, happy that I sound pissed off rather than scared shitless.

"Nova." Massimo's hands tighten on my hips. "Where the fuck did your mind go?" He gives me one hard shake. "Tell me."

"Why?" I jerk in his hold, to no avail. "So you can use it against me? So you can make me learn more fucking lessons?"

He looks like I stabbed him. "No. Fuck. That's what you think?"

He finally lets me leave his lap, and I push away to the other side of the big tub. He raises like a Leviathan from the depths of the ocean—water running down his corded, strong body, all dark and menacing.

But he doesn't come at me. He steps out of the tub and paces the bathroom, uncaring of the dripping wet mess on the floor. He grips his head, making the usually smoothed, neat hair stand up. "Of course you do. Fucking Mancini. I'm going to enjoy skinning that snake."

His large frame heaves and his fists clench. I can sense he's trying to remain calm and in control.

Finally, he turns back to me and comes to kneel beside the tub. His expression is open, his Don's mask—stoic and unreadable—is gone.

"Your father didn't send a foot soldier, Nova." He pushes my hair back from my face. "It was one of his men from his personal team of guards; someone who witnessed firsthand what you've lived through."

My body trembles.

The first reason is fear because if my father sent someone that high ranking to get the evidence he needed, that means he wants me back even more than I initially thought. This means something even more horrendous waits for me if he gets his hands on me.

The second reason is shame because Massimo knows .

Not only about the food control, being locked in the basement cell, and making me watch while my mother was beaten to death.

It's being locked in a pitch-black room.

It's having our staff beaten in front of me.

It's my father holding a gun to a guard's head—his only sin was he was too nice to me—and forcing me to whip the guard's back in order to save him. And then my father shooting him in the head afterward, anyway.

The list and the shame feels endless.

Tears blur my vision. When Massimo reaches for me, I don't flinch or hide. I tumble into his arms.

"I've got you, sweetheart," he whispers, pulling me out of the tub and wrapping me tight to his chest. "I got you, and I'm never letting you go."

His words make sobs wrack my frame, and he cocoons me in warmth and safety. He carries me to his bed and holds me tight, alternating between whispering gentle, loving promises and dark, violent promises of ending my father.

Light and dark.

Monster and savior.

As I fall asleep in his arms, my world has shifted again, and I know and trust that Massimo is a monster.

My monster.