PROLOGUE
He watched her as she slept. He was smiling and admiring everything about her. He took the gun he held in his hand and traced the outline of her gorgeous dark face as she slept so peacefully. M & M he nicknamed them. Marco and Marie. His bella dama. A woman who trusted him with her life. She was his.
And his alone.
The tapping on the door was very light. They knew, when Marco was in that bedroom with his woman, that they had better tread lightly no matter what. But even Marco could sense the urgency.
He got out of bed gingerly. He didn’t want to wake her. Then he headed for his bedroom’s double doors. He wore trousers and a t-shirt, with a gun holster across his chest. His jet-black hair was slicked back, and his coal-black eyes were blazing. He opened the door quickly so that the tapping would cease.
When he saw that it wasn’t even his number two, but it was Torres, one of his lesser-ranked men, he frowned. “What the fuck you want?” he asked.
“Tu esposa esta aqui!” Torres whispered urgently in Spanish.
Marco was born and reared between Canada and the United States and rarely spoke any Spanish at all. But by necessity he understood it. And when he heard what Torres had said, he was shocked. He looked back at his lady, saw that she was still sound asleep, and then stepped out into the hall and quickly closed the door. “What the fuck is she doing here?” he asked angrily.
“No se que,” said Torres. “Pero ella esta aqui, Marco. Ella esta qui!”
Marco angrily whispered expletives in Spanish as he pushed past his man and hurried down the stairs. Hyacinth Bellamy, a beautiful woman twenty years his senior and the one who first started bankrolling him when he was a two-bit punk on the streets, stood in the living room in her mink coat and gloves. She was also his wife. And he could tell, by the fire in her eyes, that somebody had told her about Marie.
“I can explain,” he said as he began walking up to her, his arms outstretched.
“Is this the whorehouse?” she asked as soon as he walked up. “Is that the explanation? Where’s the whore?”
“Hyacinth, enough. I can explain!”
“Then explain motherfucker. Explain! What is this bullshit?”
“It’s one of our safe houses. That’s all this is. I don’t know what anybody else told you, but that’s what this is.”
“You’re a liar, Marco. A liar!” she yelled and then pushed past him. “Where is she?” she hurried across the room.
“Where’s who? What are you talking about?”
“Where’s that bitch?” Hyacinth began hurrying up the stairs.
“Hyacinth, wait!” Marco hurried behind her. “Hyacinth, stop. What the fuck you think you’re doing? Come here!”
Marco’s man Torres was hurrying down the stairs even as Marco’s wife was hurrying up those same stairs. “Que depo hacer, jefe?” he nervously asked Marco.
But Marco didn’t want to even hear his voice. “Shut the fuck up!” he yelled. “That’s what you do. Shut the fuck up!” Marco was running behind his wife.
But nobody was going to stop a woman scorned. Hyacinth was as agile as he was, and made it up those stairs in record time. She threw open the double doors to the master bedroom so fast that one of the doors almost flew back shut.
Marie, who was still asleep in bed, opened her big eyes quickly when she heard the intrusion. When she saw a woman she didn’t recognize, she quickly sat upright, her breasts exposed.
When Hyacinth saw who it was, and more importantly, how beautiful she was, her anger flared. And she ran for Marie. “You bitch!” she yelled as she ran toward the bed. Marie attempted to get out of the bed, away from the crazed older woman, but Hyacinth was too determined. As Marco reached for Hyacinth, to pull her back, Hyacinth reached for Marie and grabbed hold of her long, thick weave and pulled Marie out of bed so violently that Marie fell onto the floor with a hard thump.
Marco, now furious, grabbed Hyacinth by her own extensions, flung her to the floor, too, and then he got on his knees pistol-whipping his own wife with his gun. He was bashing her face in with the kind of violence and anger that stunned Marie. Marie began backing away and screaming as Marco beat on his wife as if she was not a human being. Blood was pouring as he beat her. His men ran into the bedroom, after being notified by Torres, as he beat her. But they wasn’t about to interfere either.
They watched him beat her. They watched him beat her to death.
When he had finished, with the blood all over his face and hand, he kicked the woman as if she was a mangy dog. “Get her ass out of here,” he said. He was breathing so hard his voice sounded hoarse. “And when I find out who told her, they will not survive the night.”
The men, knowing who they were dealing with, hurriedly did as he commanded and dragged the woman once known as Marco’s wife, out of the bedroom, a trail of blood dragging with her.
But when Marco turned toward Marie, to make sure she was okay, Marie had terror in her eyes. She began backing up even further on her butt. She wanted no parts of what she had just witnessed. She knew he carried a gun everywhere they went. She knew he was no boy scout. But she didn’t know he was this.
She got up, crawled her naked body across the bed quickly, and attempted to run out of that bedroom door and get away from that mad man as fast as she could go. But Marco, confused that she would even try to get away from him, hurried up to that door and slammed it shut violently just as she was about to run out.
And he flung her around, and looked at her, as if she was the one insane.
“What are you doing?” he asked her, his eyes searching hers. He pushed her small body against the back of the door. “Where do you think you’re going?”
His body was so close to hers that she could barely breath. His bloodied hand began to trace her face as his other hand lifted her chin. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked her again. “You’re mine. You know that. You belong to me. You know that too. You know you aren’t going anywhere, my love.”
He stared into her eyes. Stared as if he was disappointed that she would even entertain a thought about leaving him. And then he leaned down, and began to lustfully, angrily, violently suck and ravage her breasts.
Marie could hardly believe it as tears trailed down her narrow face. She just witnessed a horrific thing. She just witnessed the man she loved commit a horrific crime. And now, finally, her heart realized what her head had been telling her all along: that this man who treated her better than any man ever had and always seemed too good to be true, truly was.
CHAPTER ONE
Four Months Later
Criminal Defense Attorney Gemma Jones-Gabrini, the wife of reputed mob boss Sal Gabrini, stopped her Bentley at the curb in front of Champagne’s Clothing store and quickly stepped out. She left her suitcoat and briefcase inside the car, but took her cell phone and keys and made her way across the sidewalk and into the high-end boutique. She only had a couple hours to help out at the store before she had to be back in court, and hoped she could make the most of it. It had been a while since she had any time off from her lucrative practice to drop by at all.
Oprah, their store manager, was already opening boxes of brand new merchandise just delivered, and Trina Gabrini, the wife of casino mogul Reno Gabrini, was behind the counter reviewing the inventory spreadsheets. A few customers were also in the store.