Chapter 3: Convenient Mafia Wife: Chapter 3

Las Vegas, Nevada Mancini Mafia GUILIA When I arrive at the casino, I head straight to the private elevator that services the office floors. I bring up the access key on my phone and place it in front of the reader before pressing the button for Raff’s floor.

‘I texted the boss and he’s making time in his schedule for you in thirty minutes,’ Lara says to me as we ascend to the 32nd floor.

‘Hmm.’

The elevator doors open onto the impressive lobby with a man and a woman seated behind a large half oval shaped reception desk. Everything is modern elegance in here, including my husband’s corner office.

Even though the only access to this floor is with an electronic key, like the one on my phone, there are still armed guards stationed in strategic locations.

‘I’m here to see my husband.’ I yank off my cardigan, dropping it and my purse on the reception desk.

‘He is in a mee—’

I don’t wait for the receptionist to finish, but storm past their desk and head for Raff’s office.

The door is locked. Of course.

I don’t let that deter me and pound on it. ‘Raffaele Mancini, you had better open this door right the fuck now.’

My mother would be appalled, but that fiasco at the fertility clinic? That is so beyond okay, I don’t have words. So, I pound again.

‘Giulia…’ Lara tugs at my upper arm. ‘Come on.’

I put her on her back before and take only a second to enjoy the look of shock on her face before turning back to pound on the door again. We spar three times a week. Did she think all those martial arts lessons were for nothing?

Lara jumps to her feet just as the door opens.

His face a study in shock and fury, Raff stands on the other side. ‘What are you doing, Giulia?’

I sweep past him, crossing the large expanse of his office and scramble up onto his desk. I whip my dress off and have my bra unclasped before Raff can reach me. I yank the lingerie off just as he grabs me around the waist.

I throw it. ‘This is what you want isn’t it? To take away my privacy and expose me to whoever!’

I don’t even look at the people he is meeting with. My ire and attention are directed entirely on the son-of-a-bobcat I am married to.

‘Get out!’ he barks.

I hear people moving.

‘Funny how that didn’t work when I told Dr. Hewitt and his minions to leave me alone.’ I’m so angry, my throat aches with the need to scream.

Tears are burning at the back of my eyes, but I blink them back. I will not cry. Not right now.

Raff’s suit jacket comes around my shoulders as his office door closes with a bang.

He holds me near him with a grip on the lapels of his jacket. ‘Is there a reason you want me to have to gouge out the eyes of three of my top capos?’

‘They’re your father’s capos.’

He growls.

I usually find that sexy. Right now, I just want to punch him. So, I do. Right in his rock-hard abs, which is what I can reach the way he’s got me trapped close to his big body.

Without much oomph behind it, he doesn’t even grunt from the impact. But my hand stings.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he demands.

Raff is a full foot taller than my five-feet-three-inches. With his Italian good looks, chiseled features, and that sexy divot in his square chin, he’s easily the most gorgeous man I have ever seen. Dark hair. Grey eyes that go molten when we are naked together. Sculpted muscles, including drool worthy eight-pack abs and a backside I could look at for days.

All of it makes for a devastating package.

Right now, his grey eyes burn into me like molten steel.

I force myself to ignore my body’s usual response to his closeness and that intensity in his gaze. Unfortunately, anger seems to heighten my reaction to him, not dim it.

But my ovaries are not the boss of me.

‘What is wrong with me?’ I yell. ‘You made an appointment with a fertility doctor without talking to me.’

‘Apparently you had an IUD inserted without talking to me.’

So, Lara can tell him that, but not tell me that I’m on my way to a visit with a fertility specialist? My absolute belief that I am safe with my husband’s people, but especially my personal security detail is shaken.

And that hurts. It also makes me angrier.

I shove against Raff’s chest, but it’s like trying to move a brick wall. ‘Step back.’

‘No.’ He maneuvers me around his desk and sits down in his executive chair.

Sleek black leather and imposing in size, the three-thousand-dollar chair is the equivalent of a modern throne. There’s no doubt that the man who sits in this chair commands the room.

Pulling me into his lap, he slides his hand inside his suit jacket and presses an arm around my naked waist. ‘Talk to me, cara.’

‘Why? When you won’t listen.’ For six years, I’ve convinced myself that the physical closeness is enough. That his need to touch me and the way I feel when he does makes our marriage strong.

I’ve been fooling myself.

‘This. This is what is wrong.’ I wave between the two of us. ‘You sit here acting like you don’t know why I’m mad when I just told you…’ I shake my head. ‘Let me up. I don’t want you to touch me right now.’

Eyes narrowed in anger, now widen and reflect pure shock.

We’ve been married more than a minute. Of course, we’ve argued. Though I keep it under wraps most of the time, I do have an Italian temper. However, I have never before told him I don’t want to be near him.

In fact, sex is usually how we resolve most of our conflict.

That is so far off the table right now, it might as well be in another country. No matter what my body wants. My mind and my heart are screaming in accord.

I need distance. I shove off of his lap and he lets me go.

‘I did not think you would be upset about the appointment.’

‘You were wrong.’

‘I see that. I didn’t like you seeing a man, but he’s the best.’ Raff says this like I’m supposed to give him points for allowing a male doctor examine me for the sake of supposed superior care.

Yeah, not happening.

‘So he told me.’ I search the room and see where my bra landed after I tossed it.

All I want to do is to get out of here, to get away from him and the knowledge I am not, and have never been, anything more than a body to slake his lust and a womb to carry his children.

‘Newsflash, a doctor who would treat a patient without her consent, who would try to sedate me to do so? That’s not the best. That’s a creep.’