Chapter 16: Convenient Mafia Wife: Chapter 16

New York City, New York Mancini Mafia GIULIA Once we are situated under the covers, facing each other, his hand on my hip and mine on his chest, he says, ‘So, I will come with you to New York twice a year and you will not spend an entire month her in August.’

‘Las Vegas is so hot in August,’ I complain, but my heart is pounding with what all of this means.

‘New York isn’t exactly an icebox.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay?’ He looks at me like he’s trying to figure out the catch.

‘Yes. I don’t like being away from you either, Raff. If you are willing to carve time in your schedule to come with me and Neri twice a year, I am willing to give up my month in August.’

‘And the other week?’ he asks, referring to the fourth trip I usually take.

‘I won’t plan for a fourth week, but there may be times I have to come to New York without you.’

‘May be?’ He presses.

‘Not every year. Just sometimes. Like once Severu’s wife has their first baby. I’ll want to come out to visit and if it doesn’t coincide with one of our joint trips, I’ll still want to come.’

My husband gives a grudging grunt of what I assume is agreement.

This moment feels profound, but I’m afraid to analyze too closely why that is.

‘We should sleep.’ But the looks in his eyes makes it impossible for me to close my own.

They reflect a raw emotion I never thought I would see in my husband’s gaze. Only…it isn’t new, I realize. I’ve just never let myself see it before. I always dismiss this emotional intimacy as lust.

He doesn’t say anything, but his gaze stays locked on mine, as if he is willing me to acknowledge that emotion.

‘You don’t love me,’ I blurt. But for the first time I doubt. Does he?

‘Of course, I fucking love you, Giulia.’

‘You never said.’

‘Neither have you.’

Is he saying he knows I love him? Maybe he’s pretending to feel the same, so I’m not hurt. He’s so protective, he would do something like that.

He sits up and pulls me with him until I’m sitting on his lap, my legs sideways over his thighs. ‘Whatever you are thinking, stop it.’

‘You can’t tell me what to think,’ I assure him.

His smile is devasting. ‘There is the feisty woman I am married to.’

‘We got married to cement an alliance between our families.’ There’s no love in that.

‘Only a fool would refuse to see you as anything more than the guarantor of an alliance,’ he informs me. ‘All evidence to the contrary, I am not fool.’

‘I never said you were.’

‘And yet, I have somehow convinced you that your only value to me is your ability to carry my child.’

‘If that’s not true, then why send me to Dr. Hewitt?’ That trauma inducing visit is certainly not evidence against Raff seeing me as a walking womb.

‘I thought you were worried too but hadn’t said anything.’ His hand runs up my side in a distracting caress.

‘How can you say you love me when you don’t talk to me?’

‘I do talk to you, but I didn’t about this and that was a mistake.’

Wow. He’s admitted making a mistake for the second time in our marriage. Is this some kind of new precedent?

Sighing, I admit, ‘I should have told you about the IUD.’ I’ve had a lot of time to think in my lonely bed at night since coming to New York. ‘If I had told you what my OB said about waiting, you would never have pressured me.’

When it comes down to it, Raff has never been willing to compromise my safety, much less my health.

‘No, I wouldn’t have.’ He kisses me quickly and softly, like he just can’t help himself. ‘You can trust me. I will always protect you.’

A lump forms in my throat. ‘It doesn’t always feel like it.’

‘Because of my father.’ It’s not a question.

I nod anyway.

Guilt flashes across Raff’s eyes. ‘I made more than one wrong assumption.’

‘Okay, this whole admitting to being wrong is weirding me out. But also, what do you mean?’

He smiles. ‘I expected you to know how important you are to me. I thought you would see my father’s meddling in our lives as harmless, like I did.’

‘You’re not a tolerant man.’ Which is one of the reasons I believed I wasn’t important enough to Raff to push back against his father. ‘Why let him meddle at all?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘I’m sure I can keep up.’

He kisses me. Again. ‘No doubt. When I returned to Las Vegas after training with your father for four years, my own was ready to hand over the reins, or so he thought.’

‘Patrizio is too controlling for that.’

‘He assumed that I would continue business in his image.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘No. While he was out golfing with his buddies and romancing his latest mistress, I instigated a major shift in how we operated both our legitimate and mafia businesses.’

‘Those changes made things better.’ Capos talk. So do their wives.

Profits have steadily increased in the past few years and many of the wives have said they feel their families are safer with the new direction the mafia business is taking. Not a single made man in the Mancini mafia has gone to jail, much less prison, since I moved to Vegas.

The Cosa Nostra in Nevada isn’t as big as the Five Families in New York, but there are enough made men to make that an impressive statistic.

‘They did.’ Raff’s shaft is hard again…did it ever go soft? And it’s pressing against my hip.

The man is one big distraction.

Taking a deep breath, I attempt to focus on our conversation. It is important. ‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. However, by the time Neri came along, loyalties had shifted. With the exception of a couple of capos and their crews, the organization looked to me for leadership.’

‘But your father hadn’t retired.’

‘Not in his mind, but the minds of his men? He had. He wasn’t there for the day-to-day.’

‘He’s still their don.’ The vows taken by made men (even if they are women) are more binding than the promises made during a wedding.

A man will be forgiven for cheating on his wife, but will die for cheating on his don.

‘I am his son, his acknowledged heir and the underboss. He left me in charge of daily operations. Showing loyalty to me and our family, is not a betrayal of the don. He told his capos and the rest that I speak for him. Even his consigliere comes to me first.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Because I didn’t tell you. I should have.’ He squeezes my waist in comfort? Acknowledgement?

Or just because he likes touching me?

This is not working.

I shift around to straddle his thighs but keep my sex away from his. ‘We should have talked about a lot of things.’

‘So, we will talk about them now.’ He presses against my bottom, drawing me inexorably forward.

‘Is it…uh…’ His hardon presses against my still slick and swollen nether lips.

‘Is it what?’ he asks, his voice rumbly with passion.

Is what…um…what? Then I remember what I was trying to ask. ‘Is it that easy?’

‘Yes.’

How is he talking so easily? ‘You’re so certain about everything.’ And inhumanly resistant to the effects of his arousal.

‘I learn from my mistakes.’

And apparently, he doesn’t have any trouble admitting them. To me. Right?

Just to confirm, I ask, ‘Do you ever admit being wrong to anyone else?’

‘No.’

As I thought. Warmth radiates out from my heart and suffuses my body. ‘What now?’

‘Now you tell me why you insisted on staying in New York when I told you to bring our son home to Vegas.’ All tolerant compromise has disappeared from his set masculine features.

‘You’re not my boss.’ It’s my kneejerk reaction but I was expecting him to talk about something else.

Maybe even tell me he loves me again. Not take me to task for refusing to fly home today.

‘When it comes to your safety, I am.’

‘If you think that, why didn’t you arrange for the use of my brother’s jet and have me and Neri taken there by our security?’ I might sound a little testy.

‘Would you have gone without physical coercion?’

‘No.’

‘There is your answer.’

‘So, you came to New York instead?’

‘Don’t misunderstand, wife. I am here to bring you home. But the only one that will carry your resistant body onto that airplane is me.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘Can’t I?’

We both know he can. And more importantly, that he would.

I cross my arms over my bare breasts, hiding them from his gaze as much as I am showing my annoyance with body language. ‘I’m perfectly safe here with my family.’

‘I am your family.’

‘So are they.’

‘Neri and I are your primary family,’ Raff says, no give in his deep tones.

‘And am I your primary family?’

Raff kisses me. Hard. ‘Yes.’

‘Then you should never have let your dad make that appointment with the fertility clinic.’

‘You are right.’

I am? I mean, I know I am. But he does too?

‘The shift in the power dynamic in our syndicate has been hard on my father and I chose to let him meddle in our lives rather than business.’ Raff sounds almost ashamed.

‘That’s a crappy thing to do.’ How am I supposed to believe he loves me?

Raff’s smile isn’t a happy one. ‘Yes. But remember, I was operating on the false belief it would not hurt you.’

‘What did you think was going to happen?’

‘I damn well didn’t think you would see allowing my father to insert himself into our lives as proof that I don’t care about you.’

‘How was I supposed to take it? It sure as heck wasn’t a compliment, or proof that my opinions mattered to you.’

‘When did I ever dismiss your opinions?’ He shifts my body against his, rubbing my nether lips up and down his shaft.

My clit is so sensitive that I jerk every time he brushes against it.

‘Stop that.’

He stops moving me, but doesn’t let me shift back on his thighs.

I roll my eyes. ‘Do you really have to ask that?’

‘Yes, I do. Even the appointment with Dr. Hewitt was made under the assumption you wanted to get pregnant. You’d never told me otherwise.’

I think back to all the times my father-in-law stuck his oar into my marriage. He insisted on me and Raff moving into the mansion Raff and his brother had been raised in. I’d wanted to buy our own home and build our own memories.

But I’d never told Raff that.

All the heavy hints about getting pregnant were annoying and I mentioned that to my husband, but how was Raff supposed to know that they hurt me as well? First, I didn’t tell him and second, he had no idea I didn’t want to get pregnant.

Patrizio had inserted himself into the search for both Neri’s preschool and then elementary school. However, my husband refused to simply go with his father’s suggestions for either school. We made the decisions together, and neither brought up his father’s stated opinions when doing so.

My whole marriage, I’ve taken Patrizio’s interference as proof that Raff valued his opinion over my feelings, but looking back, I can’t help seeing that my husband isn’t the only one who should have done a better job of communicating.

‘I’ve been operating under some mistaken assumptions myself,’ I admit.

The hand not holding me pressed against him like a safety bar on an amusement park ride, brushes my hair back from my face with tender softness. ‘That right there is only one of the many reasons I love you.’

He said it again. Why don’t I say it back? What is holding the words inside me.

‘What reason?’ I ask instead.

‘You are fair.’

‘Oh.’

‘You are also stubborn and hold onto a grudge like Super Glue.’

He is not wrong. ‘Thank you.’

He chuckles and shakes his head. ‘Both can be a strength,’ he agrees.

‘But they can also hurt me and the people around me.’

Raff doesn’t reply, but I see in his stormy grey eyes that he’s one of the people who has been hurt.

‘I love you too, Raff. I always have.’

The lovemaking that comes after my confession is no surprise, but the way he holds me after, listing all the things that made him fall in love with me? It’s a lot. And one of the most amazing moments in our marriage. I will treasure his words forever.

It is only fair for me to tell him what made me fall in love with him too.

‘You loved me before we got married?’ He sounds stunned.

‘Yes.’ He’d lived in New York the four years I went to university.

We’d spent time together when I came home for visits and every summer, he was there. We didn’t date. My father wouldn’t have allowed us to spend time alone. My college was an all women campus.

But I got to know Raff and what I knew I learned to love. Only now, I realize I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.

And the love I feel for him is deeper and stronger than what I experienced before our marriage, despite the challenges that marriage has been to my emotional equilibrium.

‘You should have flown home, Giulia.’

‘I told you, my OB appointment is tomorrow.’