“You shouldn’t be texting, Cara,” Massimo murmured from beside me, looking a little cramped on my single bed at my parents’ house. “You should be getting some sleep. You’ve been through a lot today.”
“I’m just texting Luciana,” I murmured back, my eyes set on my phone screen. “I don’t want her returning to the apartment and finding it all taped off.”
“But after that you’ll get some sleep?” he asked, shuffling closer to me on the bed and throwing an arm over me as he snuggled into my lap.
Yasemin: I hope you had a good time last night and don’t have too bad of a hangover
Yasemin: I know it’s not ideal but you’re going to have to stay at Tony’s place
Yasemin: For a few days at least
Yasemin: Someone broke into our apartment while I was asleep last night and when I woke up to find them, they tried to strangle me
Yasemin: Don’t worry. I’m completely fine
Yasemin: But the police have taped off the entire place so we probably won’t be able to return there for a few days at least
I sent off that last text before slipping my phone under the single pillow on the bed. I didn’t expect Luciana to text me back for some time. It was only eight in the morning and probably hadn’t gotten into bed until the late hours of the morning.
Well, at least one of us had a fun night last night.
“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” Massimo asked quietly, his eyes closed.
“I’m too tired to eat,” I murmured as I lowered myself on the bed and pulled the sheets up high to cover the both of us.
We both lay on the bed in a peaceful silence, our eyes closed. My eyelids felt heavy and I could feel sleep beckoning me, but I was startled awake by some sudden movement from Massimo.
“There’s not enough space in this bed for the both of us, Cara,” Massimo murmured before he threw back the sheets and rose from the bed. “You’re going to have to sleep on top of me.”
“Just ask me to shuffle up more. I know the bed is small, but there’s just about enough space for the two of us,” I chuckled, turning over onto my side and moving so that my back pressed up against the wall. I was now taking up far less room on the bed, and there was just enough space for Massimo, but he didn’t seem all that pleased by my solution.
“That’s not going to work for me, Cara,” Massimo chuckled, and I watched with heavy eyes as he reached for the bottom of his shirt, quickly pulling it off his person. His dress pants were quick to go next, and I gulped, unable to tear my eyes away from him as he pulled back the sheets once more and dropped himself on the bed next to me.
Massimo was quick to curl an arm around my waist and pull me into his side. Except, he didn’t stop there.
He chuckled at the startled gasp that escaped me, and he was quick to take advantage of my surprise to pull me on top of him, just as he had requested earlier.
Suddenly, I felt rather awake.
“You don’t play fair,” I complained, but didn’t make any moves to get off him as I nuzzled my face into his bare chest. Instead, I exhaled deeply, feeling so at peace with his arms around me, protecting me and holding me close to him.
“I just wanted to hold you,” he chuckled.
“You could have just asked,” I huffed, but didn’t bother hiding the smirk that my lips turned up into.
“I did, but you weren’t budging.”
“You didn’t ask me,” I chuckled into his chest. “You just demanded that I get on top of you. That could be interpreted in many different ways, you know?”
Massimo chuckled, the sound deep and husky, sending a pleasurable shiver down my spine. When he noticed this, his chest vibrated from underneath me as he chuckled, and I couldn’t held but notice that he held me a little tighter.
“Call me old-fashioned but if there’s one place that I’m going to refrain from fucking you, Cara, it’s going to be your parents’ house,” he chuckled from underneath me, lifting his head to skim his lips against my hair. “Besides, we need sleep more than anything right now.”
“You’re not wrong there,” I murmured. “I couldn’t have gotten more than an hour’s sleep before I was rudely woken up.”
“I should have told you this earlier, Cara,” Massimo murmured in a quiet voice as he lifted up the back of my shirt and stroked a gentle hand up and down my back as he held me close to him.
“Told me what?” I asked, my eyebrows furrowing together curiously. When he didn’t answer my straight away, just continuing to gently stroke my back, I propped my chin up on his chest, watching him as he gazed down at me from where his head was propped up against the slanted pillow.
“Those papers with numbers that you’ve been finding, it’s a countdown,” Massimo told me, his voice quiet.
“A countdown to what?” I asked, my breath hitching in my throat.
“To your assassination.”
“To my what?” I shrieked, my eyes wide in shock. What was even worse was that Massimo had said it so casually. As if there wasn’t a group of people out there who wanted me dead.
“To your assassination,” he repeated, just as casually as before…but I didn’t miss the way he held me a little tighter. “But don’t worry, Cara. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You tell me that I’m going to be assassinated in five–no, four days, and then tell me not to worry?” I laughed, on the border of sounding delirious. “You know that’s not the way it works, right?”
“I promise I won’t let anything happen to you, Cara. I won’t let anyone touch even a single hair on your beautiful hand, and I’m so sorry for tonight. I should have come over sooner.”
“You need to break this down for me,” I demanded of him, a stern expression on my face as I struggled to piece together the influx of information. “Start with who wants to assassinate me.”
“The Romano’s,” Massimo told me, his face morphing into one of disgust. “This kind of thing, the countdown is very typical of them. I’ve seen them do it in the past with others.”
“But why do they want to assassinate me? What did I ever do to them?”
“Remember Riccardo?” he asked in a quiet voice, and that’s when it dawned on me.
Riccardo was a Romano, and if he wasn’t, then he had to be part of the Romano mafia at the very least. He was doing all of this to me, sending someone to break into my apartment in the middle of the night and kill me, or rather, attempt to kill me, because he hadn’t been able to rape me. Because Massimo and Dino had been there to stop him and save me from them.
How low and disgusting could a person possibly get?
“I can practically see the cogs turning in your pretty little head, Cara,” Massimo chuckled with a small smile on his face, one which assured me more than it probably should.
“He’s doing all of this because his ego was hurt?” I frowned, unable to believe everything that I was hearing right now.
“Stupid, corrupt men have done a whole lot worse for less,” he chuckled, the sound heavy and dark. Distasteful…and then something darker. Angrier.
“So, what’s the plan?” I gulped, gnawing on my bottom lip. How could Massimo be so casual about all of this? How was he not just as worried as I was? “The number eventually gets to one and then he kills me?”
“That’s usually the way it goes,” he murmured, and I felt him shrug from underneath me. “But I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Cara. No one but me gets to touch you. You don’t have to worry about another man getting close enough to you to touch you, let alone hurt you.”
“Riccardo’s going to have to do a whole lot more than just touch me if he plans to kill me,” I murmured, my heart beginning to speed up.
“Like I said,” he began, and I could tell that his jaw was clenched as he spoke. “There’s no point worrying about because that’s never going to happen.”
“Tell me, Massimo,” I prompted him, trying not to let the fear of death and murder overcome me. “Have the Romano mafia been successful in their countdown assassinations before?”
“Yes, Cara,” he answered as he continued to gently stroke my back. That, his soft touch on my skin, was probably the only thing keeping me sane right now. If it wasn’t for Massimo, being here with me and holding me, I would probably be an emotional mess right now.
I had never spent much time pondering over death before. I had always just assumed that I would eventually die in my old age, perhaps in my seventies or eighties. Living a nice, long life was the goal, but it appeared the Romano’s were out to dwindle down that number to one much smaller.
“Sending countdowns to the people they intend to kill has been a Romano tradition for over a century. They send out these numbers to their enemies and when it gets down to one, the person is expected to die.”
“But today is day four,” I told him, my lips tugging down into a deep frown. “Why did they try to kill me tonight?”
“I can only imagine it’s because they’re scared,” Massimo told me, his gaze lingering and smouldering as he held my eyes. “I’m afraid that they’ve figured out our romantic entanglement, though it’s not like I was trying to keep it secret.”
“What are you saying?”
“Unfortunately, Cara. Dating me, the Mancini mafia boss, comes at a price. It’s worth a whole lot more to the Romano’s as you – or we – duped one of their own and made a fool out of him.”
“How can you be so confident that nothing will happen to me?” I asked in a small voice, dropping his eyes.
“Because I won’t let it,” he promised and with his free hand, he reached down to take my hand and lace our fingers together. Our eyes remained locked as he lifted it to his mouth and pressed a soft, sweet kiss to the back of mine. “I will sooner die than let anything happen to you, Cara. And then after that, my brothers and my men will look after you. Now get some sleep, Cara. It’s been a long day for the both of us.”
There was a whole lot more that I had left to say. There was more that I wanted to ask him. That I needed to know, but I found myself gulping and nodding. I turned my head to the side and rested it on his chest once again, just over where his heart lay. Our fingers remained laced together by our side, and his other hand continued stroking my bare back.
When I turned my head to graze my lips against his chest, over his heart, I felt it thump wildly and skip a beat. My lips turned up into a large grin and I did nothing to hide it. Instead, I pressed another kiss over his heart before I turned my head to get comfortable once again.
“Feel that?” Massimo whispered, his voice so quiet that I had to strain my eyes to be able to hear him.
But I did. I did hear him, and it sent my heart off in a wilder frenzy than his beneath my face.
“I do,” I whispered back.
“It’s yours,” he whispered again, holding me a little tighter. “Take good care of it.”
Massimo didn’t need to ask me twice. In fact, he didn’t even need to ask me the first time, but it was nice to hear how much he trusted me with something so precious.
“Sweet dreams, Cara,” Massimo whispered and not even a few moments later, my eyes grew heavy until finally, I lost the battle with sleep.
When I awoke later, my bedroom was dark and after a quick glance over my shoulder, I found it to be that way because the blinds had been pulled shut sometime while Massimo and I had been asleep. A quick glance at me phone told me that we had both slept through most of the day and it was now nearing six in the evening.
Well, I guess being attacked by an intruder tended to really take it out of you.
“I’m starving, Massimo,” I groaned as I lifted myself up on my arms, staring down at him, but he was still fast asleep. “It’s probably best that you continue sleeping,” I chuckled quietly, gently trailing my fingers down the side of his face. “Let me deal with my crazy parents and explain all of this to them first, and then we can tell them about you being here.”
It was difficult to detangle myself from Massimo, and then it was even more difficult to leave the room knowing that he was half-naked and asleep in my bed. However, both times, my rumbling stomach pushed me forward as I embarked down the stairs, following the delicious taste of roast chicken which wafted through the air.
I didn’t realise it until I had finished yawning and was on the last step, but I had all eyes of the Turgenev family on me.
-
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Layla Knight
05.02.2022
