Chapter 2

The soft swinging of the hammock lulled me into a half-slumber as I watched the frothy waves lap at our jetty and beach. The hammock in our mansion in the Hamptons was my favorite place on a sunny day, and there had been weeks of sunny, hot summer days since the beginning of June, but I hadn’t had much time for leisure.

I wiggled my toes, releasing a sigh. The last few days had been tiring and so a few days to relax were sorely needed. The organization of my nineteenth birthday party had meant weeks of intense preparation with cake and menu tasting, clothes shopping, guest list corrections, and many more tasks. Even an event planner had hardly reduced my workload. Everything needed to be perfect. My birthdays were always one of the most important social events of the year.

After the big party two days ago, Mom had taken me, and my younger brothers, Amo and Valerio, to the Hamptons for a week of much needed relaxation. Of course, Valerio didn’t understand the meaning of relaxation. He was out on the waves, water-skiing while one of our bodyguards steered the boat in risky maneuvers to satisfy him. I doubt I ever had as much energy as that kid, not even at eight.

Mom read a book on a lounge chair in the shade, her blonde hair framing her face in messy beach waves. My hair was always straight, even a day at the beach didn’t change that. Of course, my hair was coal-black and not angelic blonde like Mom’s.

Black as your soul, Amo tended to joke. My eyes cut to him. He had set up a CrossFit parkour in a less needed part of our property and was doing the Workout of the Day. It looked like self-inflicted torture judging from his expression. I preferred Aunt Gianna’s Pilates courses. Of course, Amo’s dedication let him look like Hulk at age fifteen.

The sliding door opened and our maid, Lora, stepped out with a tray. I swung my legs out of the hammock and smiled when I saw she had prepared our favorite strawberry fresca. That drink cooled me down even on the hottest summer days. She poured me a glass and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said, shivering in satisfaction as I sipped at it.

She put down a bowl with iced pineapple pieces on the side table.

“The pineapple isn’t as good as last time.”

I popped a piece into my mouth. It was a bit too tart. I sighed. “It’s so difficult to get good produce.”

Amo jogged over to us, sweat flying everywhere from his glistening upper body.

“Don’t get sweat on my food,” I warned.

He made a show out of shaking himself like a wet dog and I jumped up from the hammock, taking a few steps back to save my fresca. Sibling love only went so far…

He ate a few of my pineapple pieces, not even apologetic about it.

“Why don’t you get your own?”

I motioned at Lora who was currently serving Mom her fresca and fruit.

He nodded at the book of Marketing Analytics on the side table. “It’s summer. Do you really have to take work with you? You’re best in class anyway.”

“I’m best in class because I take my work with me,” I muttered. “Everyone’s waiting for me to slip. I won’t give them the satisfaction.”

Amo shrugged. “I don’t get why you care. You can’t always be perfect, Marci. They’ll always find something they don’t like about you. Even if you organize the birthday party of the century, someone’s still going to complain that the scallops weren’t glassy.”

I tensed. “I told the chef several times to take extra care with the scallops because…” I trailed off when I saw Amo’s grin. He was pulling my leg. “Idiot.”

“Just chill for God’s sake.”

“I am chill,” I said.

Amo gave me a look that said I was most definitely not a chilled person.

“So were the scallops glassy or not?”

Amo groaned. “They were perfect, don’t get your panties in a bunch. And you know what? Most people will still not like you even if the scallops were out of this world.”

“I don’t want them to like me,” I said firmly. “I want them to respect me.”

Amo shrugged. “They do. You’re a Vitiello.” He jogged after Lora to get his hands on more pineapple and fresca. For him, the discussion was over. Amo was going to be Capo, and yet he didn’t feel the pressure as I did. As the oldest Vitiello and a girl, expectations were sky high. I could only fail. I had to be beautiful and morally impeccable, pure as the snow but at the same time progressive enough to represent the new generation of the Famiglia. Amo got bad grades, slept around, and went out in sweats, and everyone just said he was a boy and would grow out of it. If I ever did either of those things, I’d be socially dead.

My phone beeped with a message from Giovanni.

I miss you. If I didn’t have so much work, I’d come over.

My fingers hovered over my screen but then I pulled back. I was glad that his internship in the law firm of our Famiglia lawyer, Francesco, kept him busy. I needed a few days away from him after our almost argument on my birthday. If I didn’t manage to get rid of my annoyance before our official engagement party, I’d have trouble keeping up a puppy-love expression.

I turned the sound off and put my phone screen down on the table and grabbed my book. I was immersed in a particularly dragging part when a shadow fell over me.

I looked up to find Dad towering over me. He had stayed in New York for urgent business—with the Bratva.

“Hard-working as always, my princess,” he said and bent down to kiss the crown of my head.

“How was business?” I asked curiously, putting the book down.

Dad smiled tightly. “Nothing for you to worry about. We have everything under control.”

I gritted my teeth against the desire to question him. His gaze sought Amo who immediately stopped his workout and came over to us. Dad had wanted him to be present for whatever went down with the Bratva but Mom had talked him out of it. She couldn’t stop protecting him.

“Hey Dad,” Amo said. “Did you have fun smashing Bratva heads in?”

“Amo,” Dad’s voice swung with warning.

“Marci isn’t blind. She knows what’s going on.” I sometimes thought that I understood the brutality of Dad’s job better than Amo did. He still considered it great fun and didn’t really see the danger. Mom was probably right to keep him away from the big fights. He’d only get himself killed.

“I need to talk to you. Come down on the boat with me,” Dad told Amo.

Amo nodded. “Let me grab a sandwich. I’m starving.” He jogged back to the house, probably to pester Lora to make him a Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

Dad’s face was tight with anger. He obviously wanted to talk right away.

“He thinks the conflicts with Tartarus and the Bratva are great fun, like another level in one of his computer games. He needs to grow up,” Dad said. His eyes snapped to me, as if he’d forgotten I was there.

I shrugged. “He’s fifteen. He’ll eventually grow up and realize the responsibility.”

“I wish he was as responsible and sensible as you are.”

“Being a girl helps with that,” I said with a smile. But it also meant my responsibility and sensibility would never be of use to me. I could never be a part of the business.

Dad nodded, his face becoming protective. “Don’t worry about any of this, princess. You have enough on your plate with college and your engagement and wedding party planning…” He trailed off as if he was at a loss what else I did in my free time. Dad and I didn’t have many common interests, not because I wasn’t interested in Famiglia business, but because he didn’t want me involved. He tried to show interest in the things he thought I liked instead, and I pretended to like them.

“The engagement party is already planned. And there’s still plenty of time until the wedding.” Our engagement party was scheduled in two weeks, even though we had been engaged for almost two years, but the wedding was still another two years away. A meticulously planned future lay ahead of me.

“I know you love it if things are perfect.” He touched my cheek. “Will Giovanni come over?”

“No,” I said. “He’s too busy.”

Dad’s brows pulled tight. “I can call Francesco and tell him to give Giovanni a couple of days off if you want—”

“No.”

Dad’s eyes tightened with suspicion. “Did he—”

“He didn’t do anything, Dad,” I said firmly. “I just want a bit of me time to study and think about the color scheme for the party,” I lied and smiled broadly as if I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon than to mull over the difference between cream and eggshell. I hadn’t even begun to plan anything for the wedding and didn’t feel compelled in the slightest to do so right now. After a few days of relaxation after the birthday party planning, I’d probably feel more enthusiastic.

Amo came out of the house with a plate stacked with three sandwiches while already stuffing his face with a fourth. If I ate like that, I could kiss my thigh gap goodbye. Dad kissed the top of my head again before he and Amo headed down to the jetty to discuss Famiglia business. I sighed and picked up my book, immersing myself in the pages. Dad wanted to protect me from our world, and I had to accept it.

“Do you know what this is about?” Gunnar asked as he pulled up beside my Harley. I swung off and ran a hand through my entangled hair. It was the shortest I’d ever worn it, only long on top so I could brush it back, but the helmet still made a mess out of it.

“Earl didn’t say anything to me.”

Gunnar got off his bike, an older model with plenty of chrome. My bike was an all-black Fat Boy, even the spokes were matte black. The only dash of color was the small Tartarus MC script stitched into the leather seat in blood red and the hellhound beside it.

Gunnar looked around. “Where’s the kid?”

“Probably lost in pussy somewhere,” I said with a grin as we headed toward the clubhouse. It was the fourth home base we’d had in the last two years. Vitiello and his men kept sniffing them out, so we had to abandon them frequently. There wouldn’t be another massacre.

We settled around the oak table where Earl was already waiting, lounging in his fucking massage chair. We had to lug the heavy thing from one clubhouse to the next. Earl had an expression as if he’d won the fucking Nobel Prize. More and more brothers settled around the table until every member with a vote had gathered, except for one. Earl shook his head, got up and removed the vacant chair from the table, and moved it into a corner of the room. Then he settled back into his own chair, ready to open the meeting.

The door flung open and Gray staggered in, his fly open and his cut put on the wrong way. His long blond hair was in complete disarray. I stifled a smile. This boy had a lot of growing up to do.

Earl’s face darkened, accentuating the many scars even more. Even though he shared Gray’s and my hair color, his had turned gray over the years. “You’re late.”

Gray seemed to grow smaller as he stumbled toward his usual spot at the table, freezing when he realized his chair was gone. He looked around, finally spotting it in the corner. He went to pick up the chair.

“You can sit in the corner until you learn to be on time, boy,” Earl barked.

Gray gave him a disbelieving look but Earl sure as fuck wasn’t joking judging by the pissed-off gleam in his eyes.

“Sit down or leave,” he ordered. “And put your fucking cut on right, you idiot, or fuck off from this meeting.”

Gray glanced down at himself, his eyes widening. He awkwardly pulled his cut off and turned it inside out then put it back on before he sat down in the corner.

“Done? I don’t have all day. We have matters to discuss.”

Gray nodded then sunk deeper into his chair.

I gave him a wink and relaxed against the upholstered headrest of my chair. Earl had a carpenter make the heavy mahogany chairs with the red padding to give our meeting table a royal look. Even his massage chair was upholstered with the red satin. Of course, after Earl himself had managed to get the first burn mark from his cigarette into the expensive satin, things had only gone downhill.

Gray still hunched in his chair like a drowned dog. He always took Earl’s reprimands to heart. Maybe it was his age, but I hadn’t been this eager for Earl’s approval when I was seventeen. Yet, Earl had always given it to me more freely than to his son. But even I had hardly ever received a warm word. I’d learned at an early age to find warm words with women and not my club brothers, much less my uncle.

“So what’s going on, Prez?” Cody asked.

Earl’s disapproval was replaced by a sly smile. “I’ve come up with the perfect plan to kick Vitiello’s ass.”

“Hear, hear,” I said. “What did your pretty head come up with?”

“We’re going to kidnap Marcella Vitiello.”

“His daughter?” Gray quipped. His open shock reflected my own feelings—only I had learned to keep them to myself. I’d later talk to Earl in private about my concerns.

Earl sent him a harsh look. “Who else? Or do you know anyone else with that fucking name? You’d think God didn’t grace you with more than two brain cells the way you sometimes act.”

Gray’s neck turned red, a clear sign of his embarrassment.

“You think Luca Vitiello gives a rat’s ass if we kidnap his spawn? She’s not his heir. Maybe we should kidnap that giant boy of his,” Cody said. He was Earl’s sergeant at arms, and royally pissed because I was the second in command and not him.

“He’d eat the hair right off our fucking heads,” I muttered, which earned me laughter from everyone around, except for Cody, and Gray who was still nursing his hurt pride.

“I want you to vet her, Maddox. You’re going to lead the operation,” Earl said.

I nodded. This was personal. I would have insisted on being part of the job even if my uncle hadn’t asked me to do it. The spoiled Vitiello princess would be mine.

Earl shoved a newspaper article over to me. The headline announced the engagement of Marcella Vitiello with some slick asshole. My eyes were drawn to the image below.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “That’s her?”

Several men let out low whistles. Earl leered. “The whore who’ll cost Vitiello his fortune and life.”

“They must have used some kind of filter. Nobody’s this goddamn gorgeous,” Gunnar said. “I think my dick would fall off in awe if it ever got near that pussy.”

“Don’t worry, it won’t,” I said with a wink. “Your Old Lady would probably chop it off before you got close.”

Gunnar touched his heart. He’d been the treasurer of our club for a decade now and often acted more like a father figure than Earl.

“The photo is manipulated, no doubt,” another brother said.

I could only agree. Vitiello had probably paid extra so the photographers retouched his daughter’s image until she looked like an apparition. Long black hair, pale skin, sky-blue eyes, and full red lips. The asshole beside her in his button-down shirt and carefully combed dark hair looked like her tax consultant and not the one who made her cream.

“Like Snow White,” I whispered.

“What?” Earl asked.

I shook my head, dragging my eyes away from the photo. “Nothing.” Sounding like a fucking imbecile wouldn’t do me any favors. “I assume she’s heavily guarded?”

“Of course. Vitiello keeps his wife and daughter in a golden cage. It’s your job to find the loophole, Mad. If anyone can do it, then it’s you.”

I nodded distractedly as I scanned the photos on the table once more. Risky maneuvers were my specialty, but I had grown more cautious over the years. I wasn’t a teen anymore. At twenty-five, I realized that getting killed before I got my revenge wouldn’t do the trick.

My eyes drifted back to the photo as if pulled by an invisible string. Too fucking gorgeous to be true.

Vitiello had been the center of my attention, never his family, and definitely not his children. For some reason, it annoyed the fuck out of me that he’d managed to father such a stunning daughter. I really hoped the photos were heavily retouched and Marcella fucking Vitiello was butt ugly in real life.

I wore civil when I followed Marcella the first time. Her bodyguards would only get suspicious if a guy on a bike showed up repeatedly. Vitiello had certainly given out the headshots of every known member of our club to his soldiers so they could kill us on sight. Luckily, I’d laid low in the last few years and lost the boyish features and shoulder-length hair of my teenage years. Those wild years that had almost cost me my life and gotten me the nickname Mad. Right after returning to New York, I’d run one attack after the other on Famiglia establishments until a bullet grazed my head and almost ended my life. I’d die once Vitiello got what he deserved, not a day sooner.

Today, I even wore a goddamn long-sleeved turtleneck to cover up my tattoos and scars. I looked like a fucking mother-in-law’s delight. But even looking like that, I made sure to keep my distance. Marcella’s bodyguards were as cautious as could be expected from soldiers who’d have to answer to Luca Vitiello if something happened to his precious offspring. Worse than my choice of clothes was the Toyota Prius that Earl had organized for me to pursue our target. I missed my bike, the vibrations between my thighs, the sound, the wind. Riding in this car, I felt like an idiot. But my camouflage gave me the chance to trail Marcella’s car closely, and when they finally came to a stop in front of a fancy boutique, I parked a few cars away. I got out of my Prius just when one of the bodyguards held open the back door for Marcella. The first thing I saw of her was a long, lean leg in red high heels. Even the goddamn sole was red.

When she straightened, I had to suppress a curse. This girl didn’t need a filter. She wore a red summer dress that accentuated her narrow waist and round butt and made her legs look miles-long, even though she was a petite woman. I forced myself to keep checking the shop displays because I’d frozen in my tracks upon spotting the Vitiello princess. Her gait spoke of unwavering confidence. She never once swayed despite her ridiculously high heels. She walked the streets as if she owned them—her head held high, her expression cold and painfully beautiful. There were girls that were pretty, there were girls that were beautiful, and there were girls that had men and women alike stop in their tracks to admire them slack-jawed. Marcella was the latter.

When she disappeared in the boutique, I shook my head as if I was trying to wake from her spell. I needed to focus. Marcella’s looks were completely irrelevant to our mission. The only thing that mattered was Vitiello’s insane protectiveness. If we had her in our hands, we owned him, and then the bastard would pay.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I peeled out of the fucking turtleneck after returning to the clubhouse that night. Only in boxers, I went down to the bar area and grabbed myself a beer. Mary-Lu came out of Gray’s room when I opened my door. She wore hot pants and a tank without a bra.

Her face lit up when she spotted me. “You look like you need company.”

I took a swig from my beer. I needed a female body to distract me from Marcella Vitiello. “And I suppose you want to be that company?”

She sauntered over to me and raked her nails down my bare chest, tugging at my nipple piercing as she did so. She leaned up as if to kiss me.

“Did you just give Gray a blowy with that mouth?” I asked with a smirk.

She flushed. “He passed out drunk before he—”

“I don’t want to know if my brother shot his load down your throat, Lu,” I muttered then I opened my door wide. “No kissing, but I’m in the mood for a blowy and I promise not to pass out before shooting my cum down that pretty throat of yours.”

She giggled when I clapped her ass and closed the door after us. Lu was one of our pass-around girls but she had every ambition to become an old lady. Not mine, that was for sure, though.

I woke in the middle of the night from a dream—or maybe nightmare, depending on the viewpoint. The last remnants of it still whirled around in my head. Blue eyes peering down at me, red lips parted for a cry of ecstasy and a pussy over my mouth.

My eyes opened wide. Fuck. I could almost taste it. Dreaming of eating out Marcella Vitiello was the fucking last thing I should do. A warm body stirred beside mine, and for a fucking heartbeat I wondered if I’d somehow managed to forget kidnapping Marcella and took her into my bed.

“Mad?” came Lu’s drowsy voice, and my heartbeat slowed again.

“Go back to sleep,” I said gruffly. My cock pulsed with excess blood. The last time I woke with a raging hard-on like that I had been a teenager.

Lu curled toward me, her hand brushing my dick. “Want me to suck you off?”

Yes, shit, but I’d only imagine it was Marcella.

That would take things down a very dangerous road.

“No, go back to sleep.”

Her breathing evened out within minutes and I kept staring at the ceiling, ignoring my throbbing dick.

I should have known Luca Vitiello’s spawn would make my life hell even before she was in our hands. Her father had haunted my nightmares for years. It was only fitting that now his daughter took over.