Emilia: Part 1 (Trassato Crime Family Book 3) Page 7

  Sal shifted on his feet, the slight narrowing of his eyes and his downturned lips broadcasting his discomfort with the conversation. I decided to let him off the hook. He came here and watched the performance. He was one more guest than I usually had. That said enough.

  “Don’t worry, Sal. I’m not asking you to confirm or deny anything. I’m glad you’re here. Usually the seats reserved for my family remain vacant.” I lifted the roses to my nose one more time, checking the urge to shiver, because no joke, feathers were gross. I mean, they were the equivalent of plucking hair off someone’s head and using it for decoration. “By the way, I know these are from you and not my dad. There’s no way the thought crossed his mind to get flowers.”

  Sal’s gaze flickered to the side. “You ready to go? I made dinner reservations. Your dad said there’s a restaurant you like a couple of blocks away.”

  “Miss Trassato? Miss Trassato?” My piano teacher burst through the cliques of people. I had no clue why she insisted we use our last names when speaking to each other after ten years of weekly lessons. I made a few attempts to undermine her desire for formality, and it freaked her out so I backed off. There were only so many people and things I could fight in my life, and my piano teacher wasn’t one of them. My dad took up most of my energy.

  “Mrs. Vitali, did something happen?”

  Her dark eyes bounced all over the place, an overly bright smile on her face that came across as painful. “Don’t worry. It’s all good news. Mr. Corriere wants to discuss a position at the San Luigi music conservatory in Italy. He flew all this way to listen to you play. Can you believe it?” At my blank look, she explained, “It’s a very prestigious school. You should be excited about this, and if my memory serves me, your mother went there too.”

  She waved her stick-like arm and a man with midnight colored hair, golden skin, and a dark suit stepped forward. “This is Mr. Corriere. He’d like a few moments of your time. Another one of my students is performing, so I need to run, but you’ll be fine. He was very impressed with you.”

  Mrs. Vitali hurried away, leaving me face to face with this man. My cheeks heated under his intense onceover. While I waited for him to say something, the air around me grew thick with anticipation and crackling nerves. I wasn’t used to being around men outside of my father’s circle of acquaintances and family.

  “Miss Trassato.” He pressed a kiss to each of my cheeks, his spicy cologne engulfing me.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Corriere.”

  A smile spread across my face. It was like God hadn’t forgotten me after all, and hand-delivered a way to sidestep a marriage to Master Marcello, or whatever the heck his name was. The best part was that my dad couldn’t get mad at me. He’d been pushing me toward this goal all of my life.

  “Piacere, and call me Lorenzo.” His voice was low and slightly accented, rolling over my bare arms like warm syrup. Objectively speaking, he was an attractive man, a little over six feet tall with silver threading the sides of his otherwise dark hair. The creases around his eyes and mouth testified to a life filled with laughter, good food, and wine.

  “This is Sal D’Amico.”

  I waved my hand in Sal’s direction, and he stepped forward, gripping Lorenzo’s hand in a firm grasp. His knuckles whitened, his lips thinned, and I saw the gesture for what it was—a warning shot.

  “Nice to meet you,” Sal grunted out, looking a little irritated.

  “Emilia, may I call you Emilia?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “You’ve been on our radar for years, and we’d like to officially offer you a position at San Luigi.” He pulled an envelope out of his black leather briefcase and handed it to me. “All the details are inside. While I’m confident you’ll find the offer to your liking, we can discuss the details over dinner.”

  “Um, well…” I would have loved to dive into this feet first, but I had a lot to consider before I could enter into serious discussions with this man.

  Sal edged forward, throwing his arm around my shoulder. “Emilia has dinner plans, but she’ll look over the details and get back with you. Your contact information is inside, right?”

  Sal’s face was all hard, unforgiving angles, his jaw muscles working overtime, a complete one-eighty from his greeting after the performance.

  “I leave tomorrow, and I will be traveling for a couple of weeks, so it has to be tonight.”

  “Emilia needs to run this by her father before she can arrange a meeting.”

  I took in a deep breath, tamping down the compulsion to contradict Sal and cause a scene. This wasn’t his business even if my dad had appointed him as my official chaperone after the incident at the warehouse. Sal kept me safe that day, so my dad rewarded him by sticking him on daughter duty. I couldn’t complain when it meant I got to see Sal nearly every day and I liked him. A lot. Even if he hadn’t so much as touched me inappropriately since that night in my room.

  “She’s over eighteen, no?” Lorenzo shot back, the vein at his temple throbbing. “She can make her own decisions, and the offer includes a full scholarship, along with living expenses, so there’s not much to consider. Her needs will be taken care of.”

  My heart vaulted against my chest. I wanted to scream yes at the top of my lungs. The offer bordered on being too good to be true. While I was an accomplished pianist, I didn’t have any notoriety outside of New York. I’ve never performed anywhere that would draw international interest, and that alone made me hesitate to come right out and accept the offer.

  “Excuse us for a second. I need to talk to Emilia in private,” Sal announced, already hauling me across the room by my wrist.

  “You overbearing ciuccio…Oh, I can’t believe you dragged me away like I’m incapable of…of…” I sputtered, seething. I glared at him for a long time, unable to form a coherent response.

  “Em, listen to me,” he implored, his arms coming around me.

  “No, you listen to me. I don’t need you telling me what options I can consider. I have a father to do that, and trust me, he doesn’t let me make a single decision by myself, and I’m starting to think you’ll turn out to be worse than him.”

  He scoffed. “You can handle me. Compared to your dad, I’m a walk in the park. I don’t have any ulterior motives. What you see is what you get.” With every word, his mouth brushed against my ear, and his hands skated up and down my upper arms. A shiver rolled through me.

  “Yeah, I’m not that stupid. I know you’re not as straightforward as you seem. You have secrets. You have motives. Everyone does, and you’re no different. I just haven’t figured out what your angle is yet.”

  His calloused hands sunk in the back of my hair, and he tipped my face upward, forcing me to meet his eyes. His thumbs moved in a circular pattern near my temples. “Think about this for a second without going off half-cocked. Your dad would kill me if I let you go to dinner with some man without his permission, and I’m pretty sure he’d lock you in your room for weeks. You know how particular he is about accounting for your time. I’m not blind. I see how much you want this, but pissing off your dad right now isn’t the way for you to go about getting it.”

  In my heart, I acknowledged the truth in his words, and it scared me. Would I ever be free of my father? Maybe I was spinning my wheels here. I could run away, join the circus, accept this scholarship, and none of it mattered. My father would always be right around the corner, sucking me back into his life and everything that came along with being at the center of the Trassato Crime Family. The restrictions, the expectations—all of it conspired to enslave me and permanently chain me to a future I didn’t want.

  “I know.” I rested my forehead against his chest. “I want out so bad, and this might be the simplest way to go about it.”

  “Out of what?”

  “This life. The Trassato family duty stuff. The marriage my dad’s negotiating. All of it. If I jump on this opportunity, my dad might be mad. He can’t do anything, though, because it’s
harmless. I’m following my dream. The same dream he’s jammed down my throat since my mom died, and if everything works out, I might never have to come back here or marry that guy I don’t know. It’s perfect.”

  He tightened his hold on me for a split second, the roses flattening between our bodies. “Okay, Em, I get it. I do, and I’ll help you. It can’t go down like this. We have to be smart about it. You need to break it to your dad first and let him think he’s in control, otherwise he’ll shut this down so fast your head will spin. And I hate to point out the obvious, but we need to research this guy before you commit to anything. Using you would be the perfect set up to get to your dad.”

  A shuddery groan tore from my lips, my mind whirling with the implications. The fact he said “we” not “you” stuck out like a blinking, neon sign, and I liked that a whole lot more than I’d ever admit. Since my mom died, nobody was on my team. While I didn’t want to read too much into Sal’s words, I couldn’t deny they made me feel all warm and fuzzy deep in my belly, kind of like a shot of grappa.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll go tell Lorenzo I’ll be in touch after I review the materials and discuss it with my family.”

  He brushed a few teasing kisses on my lips, and my heart stalled for a flash. He hadn’t kissed me since that night after the warehouse incident, and sometimes I wondered if I imagined the whole thing.

  I curled one of my hands into the tight weave of his suit and the other in the short hair on the back of his skull, not wanting to let go of him and this moment yet. Who knew how long I’d have to wait until I felt his mouth against mine again. He ran hot and cold—well, a little less cold lately, and more mysterious. I couldn’t get a read on what he wanted from me, if anything at all.

  His mouth skated hot across my jaw, and he nuzzled the hollow beneath my ear. Incomprehensible warmth traveled through me, and I sagged against the solid planes of his chest, the steady thump of his heart beneath the palm of my hand. His relatively innocent kiss lit me up like a stick of dynamite.

  “I’ll wait here while you talk to him. Then we’ll go.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  We didn’t go out to dinner, and the conversation with Lorenzo quickly vanished from my mind when I discovered Sal’s intended destination. My legs teetered, and my heart galloped, both nervous and excited to be alone with Sal at his studio apartment.

  I’d tried to keep my feelings for him in check, not wanting to get my hopes up or read anything into his kisses, his lingering touches, or the way his eyes followed me from place to place like he had less than honorable intentions. It was an uphill battle, and it wasn’t long before stage five clinger thoughts rambled nonstop through my mind.

  I cleared my throat. “So what are we doing here? I can’t imagine that this is on my dad’s list of approved destinations. These days he only lets me out of the cage to go to family events and piano lessons. I take that back. He did let me do lunch with Lettie that one day way back when, but that doesn’t count.”

  Sal peeled off his suit jacket and unknotted his tie. His eyes gleamed with so many layers and unspoken intentions that my toes curled inside my heels. Giddiness and want coiled around my chest, fogging up my brain. The all too familiar draw of Sal sucked me under like quicksand, and I knew I was a goner. I’d follow him to the end of the Earth right now if he asked. He threaded his fingers through mine and led me to the worn black leather sofa, pulling me into his lap.

  “Well, the performance won’t end for another hour and a half so I figured we had some time to kill.”

  My heart kicked up a notch. Sal’s startling eyes studied me, his lids dipping lower and his lips inching upward. Since that night in my room, I couldn’t stop reminiscing about the way his hands and lips felt against my skin. I’d spent my entire life in the cocoon of my dad’s making, only breaking out a slight amount recently, and I wanted more.

  I fidgeted with my hands in my lap, not sure where to put them. His thighs? His shoulders? “Uh-huh,” I mumbled, knowing he expected an answer.

  “We are going to have dinner. They’re delivering it here in an hour. The question is what are we going to do until then?”

  I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and get hopelessly lost in him. Every time Sal touched me or kissed me, I tasted freedom. Freedom from my life, from my dad’s rules, and freedom from the future looming over my life like a heavy storm cloud ready to burst. The scholarship to the San Luigi music conservatory was akin to a one-way ticket out of this hell. Before I took it, I wanted to explore this mystifying connection with Sal, damn the consequences.

  I couldn’t hold back any longer. I needed to touch him again, especially now that I knew I could be gone in a matter of months. I raised my hand, leaving it suspended next to his head for a beat, deliberating, deciding. I pushed the pads of my fingers through his silky brown locks. The light rippled through his hair, bringing out strands of gold, copper, and coffee all plaited together to create the complex brown.

  His hand looped over one of my knees, separating them fractionally, and heat flared between my legs. He tipped up his chin, more or less daring me to act on what was written all over my face. Giving into the temptation, I touched the sharp angle of his jawline, his five o’clock shadow abrading my fingers as they made their way to his mouth. I planted my pinkie finger in the center of that dent in his lower lip.

  Rather than coming right out and saying what I wanted, I shrugged. Sal had to spell out what he wanted because his mixed signals had me turning in circles. “It’s up to you.”

  “Oh, yeah.” His hand closed around my arm, pulling me closer, our noses brushing. “In that case…” His mouth met mine with a staggering amount of passion, and it only took seconds to unravel my inhibitions. We bit, nipped, dueled, dancing around what we wanted to happen. He tasted like the coffee candy he popped in his mouth on the way here.

  Tension wove through my body muscle-by-muscle, and the sensation of my limbs folded over him made me a little woozy in the best possible way. I pressed my legs together, his hand still wedged between them, a reminder of where this would go if I had my way. I was ready to break all of the invisible chains my father had wrapped around me since my mom’s death.

  My hands hooked around his firm shoulders, savoring the feel of his sturdiness, his competence. Sal reached around my back, unzipping my dress. The soft humming noise echoed in my ears, and my eyes widened, panic bubbling up in my chest. Instinctively, I clutched the front of my dress, and my other hand circled his wrist, gripping the sensitive skin on the underside.

  He paused, the pads of his fingers unhurriedly stroking my back. “I only want to see you. Touch you. Make you feel good. I’ll even keep my clothes on so it doesn’t go too far. Are you okay with that?”

  I nodded and released my hold on the front of my dress. It fell to my waist and his breath caught.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered, so softly I damn near missed it.

  His knuckles brushed across the tips of my breasts, pushing the long strands of my hair over my shoulder. Then his palms cupped the mounds, his lips moving across my jaw and down my neck.

  I tensed a little, and he murmured soft, soothing noises. Gradually, I bloomed beneath his touches, my confidence growing second by second until I felt safe and free to explore him and allow myself to luxuriate in the sensations rippling through my body without guilt.

  One second he was guiding me backward and the next he blanketed me, pressing me into the sagging cushions. One of his hands tangled in my hair, gripping and pulling at it like he wanted to crawl inside of me.

  His hand slipped under the hem of my pale pink dress. My nerve endings buzzed with the unknown, and my pulse accelerated. He toyed with the edge of my panties, and my heart bounced around inside of my chest like a bowling ball. All the while, he kept kissing and nibbling. Unhinged ideas whipped through my brain, none of them making much sense except the overarching theme for him to continue with whatever he was doing.


  One finger pushed inside my panties, and I nearly came out of my skin. Air exploded out of my lungs in ragged, needy breaths that burned a path up my throat. My fingernails dug into the sleeves of his white dress shirt like I could melt the delicate barrier between us if I pressed hard enough.

  His long, calloused fingertip found my center, sliding in circles like he owned me. My uncertainty and reservations evaporated. I gasped, my hips arching off the sofa. All sense of reality slipped away until it was only the two of us and the game-changing sensation building inside of me. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. Sure, I’d experimented, touching here or there, but it was like fumbling in the dark compared to this.

  My body pulsed, silently begging for a reprieve. His warm breath spilled across my neck as his honeyed voice told me how much he wanted me, how he couldn’t stay away from me, how he couldn’t tear his eyes away from me on the stage, how perfect I felt in his arms, and so many other things. I couldn’t process each of them.

  “Sal…please,” I rasped, not even sure what I wanted. He knew, though. His hand moved faster, curling upward. My mind whirled, the tension inside of me on the brink of becoming unbearable. Then a white blaze of light detonated behind my eyelids. My muscles tensed, and my toes curled. A moan smothered by a cry split my lips, and he kept going until the tingling sensation died out.

  I went limp, and he buried his head in the crook of my neck. “Jesus, Emilia. That was…” His kissed the underside of my ear.

  “I know,” I finished for him because all I could think about was starting over from the beginning again, and committing each sensation to memory so I’d never forget it.

  A knock sounded at the door, and Sal sat up, gently putting my dress back in place. “That’s probably the food. I’ll answer it and get everything ready while you finish getting dressed. We don’t have much time to eat before I need to drive you home.”