Antony (16 page)

She was bliss to him. She had always been. It took his breath away every time he had the pleasure of fucking his wife. Nothing ever felt the same. She was new—her sounds, smell, and the feel of her around him.

Pure love. Carnal ecstasy.

Perfection.

Cecelia crumpled against the wall as Antony’s cock bottomed out in her pussy. He pressed his hand to her lower back and used his other to pin her arms over her head. She was under his mercy, unable to move, and so willing to be used and loved by him.

Because he didn’t know how to take Cecelia Marcello without love in his heart.

Tortuously slow, Antony pumped his hips, letting his wife feel every inch of his cock spreading her open and filling her. Cecelia tried backing her beautiful ass into him, but his hold on her kept her in place.

“Stop teasing me,” Cecelia hissed.

“Patience is a virtue.”

“And I’m a spoiled woman because of you. I want you feel you fucking me hard, Antony.”

“
Mmm
, words like that will get you everything. You’re so fucking full of me, Cecelia. Soaking me so good. God, you smell like heaven.”

Cecelia whimpered. The sound came out desperate and aching. “Fuck me.”

“Whatever you want.”

“
Fuck me
.”

Antony didn’t hold a thing back as he pounded into his wife from behind. Cecelia’s arms strained in his grasp as her cries bounced off the walls. The sounds of their fucking burrowed straight into Antony’s heart, making his cock harder enough to pound concrete.

“Christ, that feels good,” Cecelia mumbled.

“Been too long,” Antony forced out between his clenched teeth. “Love fucking you. God, you make me crazy.”

More than anything, Antony adored hearing his name in his wife’s mouth. Like he was the only man for her. Like only he could do for her what she needed and wanted. The harder he fucked her, the rougher his thrusts became and the more forcefully he pinned her body to the wall, the better Cecelia seemed to like it.

“Yeah, fuck, way too long,” Antony breathed. “There is nothing fucking better than you, Cecelia.”

“I’m going to come,” Cecelia whispered.

Fuck, yes.

Chapter Seventeen

“We’re always going to be like this, right?” Cecelia asked quietly.

Antony hummed under his breath, wrapping his arm around his wife’s lower back as she stretched over his body under the blanket. Their makeshift bed on the floor wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it worked.

“Together, you mean?”

“In love,” she replied.

“Yes. I can’t think of a time when I haven’t been in love with you.”

Cecelia cleared her throat, refusing to meet his gaze as she asked, “Never?”

“Nope. Not since I met you, anyway.”

“So, there’s never been someone else for you?”

Antony didn’t understand what his wife was asking. “I was with other women before you, but you knew that.”

“No, I mean … after we—”

“Cecelia! What the hell?”

His wife hid her face from his view, but Antony could practically feel her cheeks burning red. “I had to ask, Antony. I
had
to.”

God,
why
?

“Have I ever made you think there was someone else?” he asked.

Cecelia shook her head.

“Why ask me that,
Tesoro
? There’s never been anyone but you since we met. I haven’t even thought about stepping out on you or having someone on the side. I’m not … that’s not my thing, okay. You’re mine. You’re all I need and want. You always have been, Cecelia.”

“But …”

“What?” Antony asked.

“Johnathan and Kate. We didn’t really talk about what happened at that dinner last month. You knew he had a mistress, didn’t you?”

Antony sighed harshly. “Yes, but he knows I don’t approve and I’ve never met the woman.”

“But you
knew
.”

“So?”

“Wouldn’t it be easy for you, too? Like it is with John?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I love you and he doesn’t love Kate.”

“My father loves my mother. Or so he says, anyway.”

“Not in the right way, obviously.” Antony shrugged. “If he did, Liliana would be all Vinnie needed. Instead, he’s always had a whore or two on the side. You’ve probably got a sibling or two out there somewhere he’s keeping quiet.”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t believe in infidelity, Cecelia. I don’t help John keep his secrets and really, he doesn’t even talk to me about his mistress anymore because I don’t want to hear it. I didn’t even know he was still running around with someone, actually.”

“Does he love her?” Cecelia asked.

Antony nodded. “He said he did a long time ago. I suspect she’s still the same one. He’s known her for quite a while from what I understand. Since they were teens, I think.”

“Oh.”

“You good?” he asked his wife.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“That’s them, Cecelia. It’s not us. I’ll always be faithful to you. You’re mine.”

“I know. Back to loving, then?”

Antony grinned. “Back to loving.”

Until life caught up with them, he supposed.

Cecelia’s lips kissed a tantalizing path down Antony’s chest. His hand found her hair, knowing damn well where she was going. The closer she came to his cock, the harder he turned. At his navel, Cecelia’s tongue struck out and lapped at his skin. She glanced at him through heavy lidded eyes twinkling with lust and love.

“Tell me, Antony, would you like to fuck my mouth?”

“Goddamn,” he groaned.

“
Hmm
? That’s not an answer. Do you want me to suck your cock?”

“For such a beautiful mouth, it’s mighty fucking dirty, Cecelia.”

“You love it.”

“Love you, you mean.”

Cecelia grinned. “Do you?”

“Yes, you—”

Antony’s words were interrupted by the screech of their home phone. He cussed under his breath and slammed his head back into the mountain of blankets and pillows.

“Fuck my life,” Antony growled.

Cecelia laughed, rolling off her husband. “Go. I’ll be here … I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

Antony jumped up from the floor, fumbling with the pair of sleep pants and a T-shirt Cecelia had brought down with the blankets. “You fucking better not move. I’m not finished with you yet, Cecelia.”

“I hope not.”

He didn’t make the damn phone before it stopped ringing. But he didn’t even get the opportunity to turn back to his wife and someone called through again. Giving his winking wife a grin from the other end of the living room, Antony picked up the call.

“
Ciao
, Marcello speaking.”

Silence answered his greeting, but Antony could hear quiet, slow breaths on the other end of the line.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

Antony was two seconds away from slamming the phone down. “I don’t have fucking time for this shit—”

“Antony.”

The one word was spoken through what sounded like a total haze of pain. Antony felt his own chest constrict from the familiar voice sounding so agonized.

“Paulie?”

“They just … t-they … they just …”

Antony picked the cordless phone up, turned it on, hung up the other phone and turned his back to Cecelia before leaving the living room. Something told him he had to move, that he had to get out of his wife’s view because she might not want to see what was going to come next.

“Paulie, talk to me,” Antony murmured.

“It’s John,” Paulie whispered. “They found him.”

Antony shook his head, confused. “What do you mean, found him? He was home this morning, yeah?”

“Vinnie did it, Antony. Vinnie.”

“Did what?”

“Vinnie did it.”

Antony could hear his old friend’s choked sobs echoing through the phone.

“Paulie, I don’t under—”

“He fucking killed him. They beat his skull in and then dropped his body off on the steps of his father’s house. Vinnie did it!”

Sickness spilled into Antony’s mouth, bile stinging his throat and tongue.

“No,” Antony whispered.

“Vinnie—”

“
No
.”

• • •

The casket was so heavy on Antony’s shoulder, it seemed like he was going to drop into the ground and never be seen again. The taste of salt rested on his lips that were turned down into a frown he couldn’t seem to get rid of. Antony’s heart hurt and all over again, he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

The church bells rang, people separated for the pallbearers—Antony included—and rain fell down.

It was appropriate weather for the day, if nothing else.

At least God had managed to get one damn thing right.

Nothing else was.

Antony felt like his left hand was missing.

At the front of the casket, all he had to do was turn his head and see his right hand. Paulie wore dark aviator sunglasses, but his hand under the casket, holding it up like Antony was on his side, was white and shaking.

Their boss had done this.

Their boss had taken their friend.

Antony couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d ever felt so entirely wrong before. He loved Cosa Nostra—it was, and had always been, his entire life. His ground was shaken, the things he thought he knew and believed in were turned upside down with one simple action.

Cosa Nostra failed him.

La famiglia
hurt him.

It was, undoubtedly, a part of their life. Antony was expected to accept the hit on Johnathan Grovatti as business and nothing more. He was meant to accept Vinnie’s choice to beat Johnathan to death with a baseball bat before leaving him for his father to find bloodied and dead with his head blown apart.

Antony was told to erase the years of friendship with John.

He was told the man’s death was justified—
honorable
.

John was Dante’s Godfather. He’d been Antony’s best man.

He remembered crying a lot after Paulie called. He remembered feeling broken and wondering why. He remembered Cecelia’s hands running over his trembling form, pulling him up from the floor as his emotions controlled what he couldn’t forget.

“I can’t breathe,” Antony whispered.

The mourners were too far away to hear him, but he knew Paulie could.

“I can’t breathe,” he repeated.

Paulie sighed shakily. “Just a little more, man.”

The longer Antony pretended like nothing was wrong with him for the sake of appearances, the more he believed he would forever stay this way. Cold, numb, and detached from the world. He had no other choice.

The proverbial weight bearing down on Antony’s chest, squeezing his heart and lungs to death, only seemed to get heavier with every step they took toward the hearse.

John had done nothing wrong.

He’d been mostly a good man.

He’d been Antony’s best friend.

John’s death was the first thing Cosa Nostra had taken from Antony. He’d watched other men suffer for their mistakes over the years. He’d buried other men he considered friends. John was not the same.

Antony wouldn’t be the same after this.

One word still pounded at Antony’s insides:
why
.

Antony’s gaze found Kate Grovatti.

Her. It was all because of her.

He beat me, she lied.

He hurt me, she said.

Her bruises came out of nowhere. Her cries were as fake as they’d always been. How nobody else could see it, Antony wasn’t sure. They could, he knew, but they all looked the other way because nobody wanted it to be them next.

Kate was rotten right down to her fucking core.

She stood next to Cecelia, Liliana, and an unruffled, cool Vinnie Catrolli.

The boss was watching. He was always fucking watching Antony.

“I wonder if he believes you’re planning something,” Paulie said softly.

“Good, he should,” Antony said, still walking his friend’s casket to his final ride. “I want him to see me coming.”

• • •

March, 1994

One week bled into two before Antony’s eyes. Two turned into three, and then to four. He couldn’t let it go. It ate at him constantly. John’s murder was killing Antony because he had yet to do something.

Anything.

The snow was taking longer to melt that year than it normally would. John had been placed in a crypt until the spring thaw came and he could be properly buried. Antony vaguely remembered pushing John’s casket into the slot, slapping the top one last time to say goodbye, but feeling like he never really let go.

“I miss him,” Antony said quietly. “Dante’s asked to go over there a couple of times. How do you explain to a kid that their grandfather killed their Godfather?”

“Antony, if Vinnie even gets the slightest inclination you’re planning something on him—”

Antony shut Paulie up with a single look. “Keep out of it.”

“How can I?”

“Paulie—”

“
Cazzo
, I just lost John. And this is worthy of you being taken, too. I can’t do that, okay. John was too much. Leave it alone.”

Antony swallowed hard, watching his sons chase one another through the backyard. “I can’t, Paulie.”

“Tony—”

“Antony,” he corrected sharply.

Paulie’s brow burrowed. “What?”

“Antony, not Tony. Not anymore. Tony lived for Cosa Nostra and gave too damned much to it.”

“Cosa Nostra didn’t do this.”

“Same thing,” Antony murmured.

“You swore to this, Antony.”

Antony nodded, his gaze finding his boys again. “I promised it my life. I know what I said when I took the omertà.”

“This is for life.”

It was.

“So I’m going to build it better, make it bigger and stronger. Cosa Nostra is our thing—it’s ours, Paulie. My boys won’t do this like we did. I’ll make goddamn sure of it. Proper
principes
, it’s what they deserve. I will not put my boys into
la famiglia
, not one like this. They will have control. They will make the calls. Only them.”

“What are you saying?”

The killing years were coming. Antony could feel it in his bones. Nothing would be easy or safe for a long time.

“We’re not going to be the Catrolli family for very much longer.”

“Antony!” Paulie hissed. “What about your wife and kids? What would they do if you were the next one to show up beaten to death, huh?”