Insatiable - Devil's Stepbrothers MC (17 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“So how does it feel… knowing that the man you spread your legs for killed your cousin?”

Lorna Giovanni had been listening to her father ask questions like that for the last 29 days. The exact amount of days that her beloved Lucca had been killed. There was no reason to try to explain that her; she didn’t really have a title for him. It didn’t help that Aiden had been the hit man that was sent to kill Lucca and met her by trying to pump her for information. They’d ended up doing a whole lot of pumping, but of another kind.

“Just eat a little more, princess, and then he’ll let you go.” Her mother whispered to her looking like a ventriloquist. She never knew how her mother could talk without looking like she was talking while she was doing something else. Lorna knew that her mother had been married to the head of the local mafia for over 42 years, so she guessed she shouldn’t have been that surprised that the woman had a few tricks up her sleeve. She wondered if she’d be able to help her not want to kill the man in her sleep.

“Thanks, Mama,” she said to her mother not even knowing what she was thanking her for. Looking down at her plate, she decided to try eating a bit of food, but the hostility in the air and her anxiety had made eating impossible. She’d lost 23 pounds since the day her world had darkened, and although at any other time she’d have been throwing a ticker tape parade, now she just didn’t give a damn about anything.

“You have no answer for me, princess?” How her father made that pet name sound like profanity she didn’t know, but it turned her stomach. It wasn’t until recently that she’d even liked that title even though people had called her that her entire life. That was just another thing that Aiden had made special for her.

“I’ve been here, in this house, for almost a month practically on house arrest.” Lorna had taken about as much as she planned to from this man. He could have sat at the end of the table with his plate of lasagna and glass of red wine, enjoying the meal and sitting with all 5 of his children peacefully, but that would be too much for Antonio Giovanni. “I’ve listened to your mean words and your hateful glares because maybe in some way I felt I deserved them, but it ends today.”

“Oh, is that so?” Her father wiped his mouth on the fine linen napkin, and he piped up in his chair. It looked like he’d been waiting for a fight, and that was fine because she was about to bring it.

“Yes. You’ve locked me out of my home, closed my boutique, and kept me in this high priced pumpkin shell you call a home.” Lorna heard the gasps around the table where her four brothers and mother sat staring at the two of them like they knew that this conversation was about to get heated.

“A high priced pumpkin shell? That’s a good one. I allow a daughter of mine who snuck off to be with a killer the generosity of my house, and this is what I get?” Her father loved to get himself worked up over injustices that he’d made up in his mind, and the laughing he did as he was speaking sounded like mocking. “Not only snuck off with him but warned him about family business. Let him be free so he could then kill your cousin.”

Her father was standing up and yelling now, and the ‘Alright Pop’ that everyone was saying from around the table sounded like the murmuring of a crowd. The red face and the bulging veins at his temple made her fear his death if he didn’t settle down.

“It wasn’t like that, Papa.” Lorna tried to keep her voice at a respectable level. “You’ve never listened to what I’ve had to say. You’ve made up your mind about what I did and why I did it, and then you closed the case. I’m 27 years old and I’ve made some mistakes, but I didn’t have anything to do with killing Lucca. No one loved him more than me.”

She was looking down at her lap, so she heard more than saw her father sit back down in his seat. When she took a chance to scan the table, she noticed that everyone was looking down into their plates like it took an advanced degree to clean their plate. Her Papa was looking at her like he didn’t know who she was. Lorna understood that. She had changed in the few weeks she’d known Aiden.

“May I be excused,” Lorna asked her mother because if she asked her father and he said no, it was debatable if she would end up in jail or a mental facility.

“Yes, honey.” Her mother was a sweet woman who only wanted peace for her family. It was probably where Lorna had gotten her desire for clean living and nonviolent tendencies.

She went up to her room and closed the door longing for the two bedroom home she had before this whole fiasco started. It was bad enough she had nothing to do with her days, but her nights were long, lonely, and boring as well. This is the reason why she wanted to have her own shit. Her father wouldn’t have been able to lock her out of her own home and business if it was actually hers. She was such a hypocrite in saying she didn’t want to be a part of her father’s business, but she didn’t mind accepting the fruits of his criminal labor. His money paid for everything and was probably a money laundering facility.

Falling on her bed, her mind went to where it normally went when she had a few minutes to herself… Aiden Barnes. That black haired, green eyed devil had given her more experience in three weeks than anyone else in her whole life. The talks they had when they finally opened up to each other made her feel close to him. From his life in foster care feeling alone and abandoned to his life with this club that seemed to fill that void. He was working hard to find a way around the Lucca situation, but if her father was telling the truth, Aiden had shot Lucca in cold blood as soon as he met with him at their warehouse.

It didn’t make any sense to her. Aiden had told her that there was another man there that had followed him from a tracker his club put on his bike. Was that a lie? She knew that he made up tales about where he’d been and who he was when she met him, but she only recognized it because she, the eldest daughter of the local mob boss, was well versed in making up a new story for her existence. A lie, was a lie, was a lie… she knew that, but she felt like they were too close for him to do that to her, especially since he knew how much Lucca meant to her.

She was so wired up. There was no way she was going to be able to calm herself down if she didn’t stop beating herself up about loving a man who’d killed her greatest protector and friend Lucca. All her life she thought she had intuition on her side. She knew things about people… sometimes it was just a feeling, and other times it was just as clear as if the person yelled out their personality type. Aiden was a lover she knew that for sure and whomever else he’d killed, it didn’t touch his desire to do good when he thought it was the right thing to do. But somehow she’d missed something or maybe he was such a psychopath that believed his own lies he’d fooled her.

The bracelet that Aiden had taken to give to Lucca as proof that she still lived hadn’t shown up anywhere, and she’d found surveillance that her father had done on Aiden that said he was living it up fucking every available piece of ass in sight and spending money like he’d won the lottery. That one piece of jewelry was worth over a million dollars, so if he could find someone to give him even half of that he’d be able to live like a rock star… for a few minutes at least. When she looked down, she saw what she usually saw when she thought about her bracelet: her one hand cradling and rubbing the spot where her sparkler used to be.

The biggest complaint she had with herself was how aroused she got when she thought of the man. It wasn’t enough that he killed her cousin and stole her million dollar sparkler, but she still lay in the bed with her nipples hard and her pussy wet wanting nothing more than to be filled with the cock of a killer. That was humiliating. Had she no shame? He was good at what he did; this was true. He was a dirty talking, nipple biting, clit sucking, ass slapping, hair pulling, throat grabbing god, and her body missed him fiercely.

Was it true that she played with her pussy as she replayed the hottest sex she’d ever been unfortunate to have? Did she cry out his name when she came only to cry real tears of disgust and anger in herself only a few minutes later? Were there times she just wanted him back to hold and talk to in the dark knowing that she’d listen to his lies if only she could get a few moments of comfort? All of these things were true. She had thought she was a strong woman with her morals in check and her compass set on all the good things in life, but she was wrong. She was a fraud all the way around, and for that she could barely look at herself in the mirror. Only a loser would have the phone number of the man who was tormenting her mind. He’d given it to her when she was on her way out, and she’d looked at it every day as she battled the desired to curse his ass out or beg him to come and get her.

It was early in the evening, but she took out the rose flavored tequila that she’d confiscated from her Papa’s liquor cabinet. There were only 10 bottles left of the prize possession as the man had ruined the business and the owner when he couldn’t collect on the money the man owed him. There wasn’t a time when her father hadn’t drank a shot of the pink liquid and cursed his hot head. ‘I should have let him live and forever make this for me.’ That is was what he said with every sip, but her dad would forever regret this like she’d forever regret the biggest love of her life.

***

Was she dead? Lorna felt like she’d been thrown in the back of a trunk and driven around in circles. Opening her eyes to the overly bright room, she saw the reason she had been jarred.

“Jeezus.” Frankie, her 20 year old brother, said in a voice that was way too loud. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”

Lorna tried to remember what she’d been doing before she blacked out, but her mind wouldn’t recollect what had happened. She sat up and discovered that wasn’t a good idea as the room spun like she was on a broken amusement ride that was going full speed uncontrollably.

“What do you want?” She attempted to get up and get some water from her bathroom when she saw her room. It looked like someone had ransacked it. All of her clothes were on the floor and her bedding was all over the place. There was a pillow near the floor lamp that was broken, and her favorite Tiffany lamp that was usually by her bed had been shattered. “Who did this?”

“Oh my god, Lorna. You did this. We all went outside and when we came in we could hear you up here moving around with a thump here and there, but no one wanted to disturb you. No one knew you were doing all this. You are the quiet, peaceful one. I was sent up here to check on you since you’ve been quiet for a good while.” Frankie was one of her favorite people, so it didn’t surprise her that he was the one to check up on her.

She made it to the bathroom and bowed to the porcelain god until it seemed like her stomach was going to turn itself inside out. There was nothing left in there, and she felt a bit better. She took her time wiping her face with cold water and then patting her cheeks because she didn’t want to go out there and see her younger brother. Her siblings used to look up to her, and now she was a disappointment to them all.

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said as the room had slowed down a little, but all was still not right in the world. Lorna sat on the couch that hadn’t been touched by whatever she’d used to make this mess.

“Damn, girl. This is what came over you,” he said as he held up the rose tequila and turned the bottle in his hands as he inspected the contents inside. “Were you trying to kill yourself?”

She looked at the 250 oz bottle and was amazed herself at how much was missing. “That wasn’t my plan, no.”

“It’s a wonder you didn’t die with all that in your stomach.” Frankie looked like he was ashamed, and that made her want to cry even more. What in the world was happening to her?

“I won’t do this again. Sometimes it’s hard with how much my life has changed, but I don’t want to let you guys down again.”

If anything, he looked worse. She decided that looking somewhere other than at the brother who used to think so much of her would be a better idea than kicking herself when she was down and damn near out.

“Hold on,” Frankie said as he walked out the door.

She wondered what he was going to get. He was the sneaky one of the bunch. If anyone wanted to know anything, he was the person to go to. She didn’t know how he did it… maybe he had a calming way about him that made people want to confide in him or maybe he just looked through people’s shit until he dug up the information. It was probably a bit of both, but he was everyone’s keeper of secrets, and that was definitely the way he liked it.

He came in the door and sat on the couch next to her. “I know you’ve been beating yourself up about the whole Lucca thing.”