The events of the past twenty-four hours had twisted me up like a pretzel, and I needed a diversion, so with a sigh of resignation, I fixed my gaze on the mystery box. The chances that this was from anyone but Romeo were slim, but what if it was? What if one of my siblings had managed to deliver this and had devised some specialized method for me to successfully collect the others and flee?
Hope sprung eternal, after all.
So with a flourish, I unfastened the big blue bow and removed the top. Inside lay an overabundance of white tissue paper, but after I shifted it, I saw what the gift was: a black negligee as risqué as my flannel nightgown was old-fashioned and unassuming. It was one of those garments I’d seen occasionally in magazines meant to “tantalize your man.” This negligee looked to be less of a gown and more of what I believed was called a teddy, the shape of it more like a swimsuit. It consisted of lace, felt extremely lightweight, and bore a low neckline.
Nervous but unable to not study it more closely, I picked the garment up to inspect it and found a note. One word had been written on the sheet of notepaper.
Farfalla.
So, that solved the mystery. Romeo had indeed sent me this gift. I should throw it back in the box and shove it beneath my bed. Or better yet, flush the thing down the toilet. But now that it was in my hands, I could feel the high quality of the fabric, the softness of it. When I’d donned lacey garments before, they’d sometimes been itchy, but this felt smooth and lovely. Seductive almost.
Seductive? I questioned myself. Where had that come from? Before Romeo Cavetti had barreled into my home, I’d never considered myself someone who liked anything having to do with seduction. And now, I’d used the word as a positive way to describe his present? My bad girl side had obviously encroached again. Though I didn’t know what time it might be exactly, since Philippa had brought me dinner a while ago, I assumed it must be late. Romeo probably wouldn’t drop by now, so I decided to give in to my compulsion.
Shoving off my daytime outfit of a belted khaki dress, I stood there in my undergarments, staring at the teddy. I couldn’t help wondering how luxurious it might be, so tossing my bra and panties onto my bed, I took the negligee and rubbed it over my body. It felt so amazing against my skin, and when it caressed the fevered flesh of my nipples, it reminded me of how titillated and turned on Romeo had made me feel. I continued like this for a couple of minutes, then tried the nightie on properly. In the process, I noticed that the panty part had been assembled in an unusual manner. The piece meant to go between my legs was missing, which made the garment crotchless.
The thought both terrified and stimulated me, as I gazed at myself in the cheval mirror. I looked so different in this, like I was no longer the girl I had always been. In this, the good Lucia had been pushed aside to become the bad version. What would it be like to have Romeo see me in this? How would it feel to have him tug at my nipples again through this extra thin lace? How wet would I grow if he caressed my center again, especially since this negligee gave him full access to my folds?
I shivered in anticipation.
4
Romeo
One of the reasons I’d taken my farfalla to that specific interior room was due to the surveillance equipment within. Lucia didn’t know this, but everything she did within the confines of those four walls was mine to peruse at my leisure. That first week, I peeked at the cameras occasionally but hadn’t seen much I considered worthwhile. But now that I’d revved her up, I wanted to check to see what if any affect my attention had had on her.
Yet, I found myself disappointed. Even as tightly wound as I’d left her, she did not pleasure herself on her bed as I’d hoped. She’d merely hopped in the shower to clean up. And while watching her soap herself up and rinse herself excited me to a certain degree, it wasn’t what I was truly after.
I spent the whole of the next day running errands for my father. He’d wanted me to contact all of our distributors to do some market research on how well our recent development had fared. Though calling our new income stream selling cocaine and other opiates like heroin a development was inaccurate. The truth was that that business had been one of the Bonifacios long-held businesses, and we were discovering bit by bit that they’d been laundering the money received by this venture through several local “legitimate” establishments.
I chuckled at the Bonifacios ingenuity. They’d covered their tracks well, moving money through a check-cashing store, a dry cleaner, a bistro, a bowling alley, and even a barbershop. Yet we’d done things in a more straightforward way and had found success, too. When my famiglia had started our own drug trade in marijuana decades ago, it hadn’t been legal. We’d raked in money hand over fist, and this had allowed my grandfather to leave his humble beginnings as a servant of the Bonifacios to become one of their indirect competitors.
They had not been pleased.
That was when all the rivalry and animosity had started, long before my birth. Hell, long before my father’s. In response, they’d ramped up their efforts to outdo us by adding heroin and meth to their already flourishing cocaine line. Then, during my lifetime, they’d added on substances like oxycontin. We found a distributor to sell oxycontin, too, which upped the ante and turned us from indirect competitors into direct ones. Then suddenly, some of our runners would go missing.
We made sure to repay the favor.
When marijuana became legal in Illinois, we immediately involved ourselves in opening the centers where it was sold, gaining a foothold the Bonifacios didn’t have. Our sales exploded, and again, we heard grumblings that the Bonifacios were not pleased. This enmity escalated for years until my brother Gianni convinced my father that our best solution would be to combine our two famiglias into one. To quit competing and begin to combine our resources. It had always made sense to me from a business point of view.
And once I saw Lucia, from a personal one as well.
What I hadn’t bargained for was just how strongly I had wanted her, had needed to tease and provoke her, to possess her. When I looked back on that day I’d planned to kill her, what I discovered was a lie. I might’ve tortured her, taken my own gratification from her, but I would’ve regretted eliminating her from my life.
When I’d slain her father, I’d felt the darkness in my soul grow by almost ridiculous proportions. I personally joined our security teams scouring the Bonifacio lair and enjoyed taking down as many of their former employees and loyalists as I could. I spent several days doing this, ignoring my home and the fact that Lucia remained enslaved there. I’d gotten my hands dirty and reveled in the act. I now knew I could indeed execute Lucia by my own hand.
And that scared me.
I’d always felt that well of dangerous darkness within me, and now it’d been unleashed. So far, my farfalla had tantalized the other side of that darkness, drawing out my sexual dominance rather than the demon inside of me who enjoyed slaughtering others. The tiny sliver of me that remained in the light felt glad that Lucia made me ache for her so completely. My desire for her kept the more destructive part of me at bay.
I’d scanned through the recordings of her and hadn’t seen much to draw my attention other than the fact that at one point, Philippa had spoken to her without bringing her food. But even that small aberration didn’t rouse me. I’d caught up to the live feed, and though Lucia had been ignoring the present I’d sent her, now she opened it. Smirking, I watched as she picked up the naughty lingerie, waiting to see her reaction. And what I saw next made me nearly swallow my tongue.