LOGINLenny’s Pov
I spent the next four days being extremely professional. I arrived at eight. I walked Shadow. I fed him. I sat at David's kitchen table with my laptop and applied for jobs. I maintained a clean and sensible distance from the man who had touched my face in the dark and told me nobody was taking me from him. I was doing very well. "You're avoiding me," David said on the fourth evening. He came in, set hiLenny's Pov “Vincenzo….fuck!” I moaned, legs shaking. He leaned down and sucked my nipple hard, biting it, then moved to the other one. He kept pounding me, the bed creaking under us. He pulled out, flipped me onto all fours, and re-entered me from behind. He gripped my hips and fucked me like an animal, fast and nasty.He spat on my asshole and pushed his thumb inside it while his cock wrecked my pussy. Double penetration made me scream. “Yes, fuck both my holes!” I moaned. He thrust harder, thumb pumping in and out. I came violently, my pussy gushing around his cock, juices running down my thighs.He didn’t stop. He pulled his thumb out, grabbed my hair, and yanked my head back. “Again.” He reached under and rubbed my clit roughly while slamming into me. I came a second time, shaking and moaning his name.Vincenzo pulled out, sat on the edge of the bed, and dragged me onto his lap facing him. He guided his cock back into my dripping pus
Lenny's Pov His hand closed around my wrist before I got the door open."Let go," I said, without turning around."No.""Vincenzo.""Turn around.""I don't want to turn around right now.""I know," he said. "Turn around anyway."I stood at the door with my hand still on the handle and his hand still on my wrist and neither of us moved for a long moment.Then I turned around.He was right there. Closer than I expected. He hadn't pulled me back, just held the wrist, and when I turned we were almost chest to chest in the narrow space by the door."You don't get to do that," I said. "You don't get to tell me the truth about what you did and then stop me from leaving like you have the right.""I'm not stopping you from leaving," he said. "I'm asking you to stay, those are different things.""Your hand on my wrist is not asking."He let
Lenny's Pov He stayed seated and watched me stand up, and didn't move toward me.That was the thing about him. He never grabbed. Never blocked. He just stayed where he was and let things happen around him and waited to see where they landed.Right now I needed him to not be so calm about this."Say something that makes this make sense," I said."I can't make it make sense," he said. "What I can do is explain exactly how it happened and let you decide what to do with it.""Then explain it."He stood up from the table, not coming toward me. Just not sitting anymore, he went to the kitchen counter and turned around."Rico was feeding information to Dante," he said. "My half-brother. The man who has been trying to remove me from my position for months. Rico was his asset inside the family's lower ranks and he was leaking operational details that got people killed." He paused. "I was task
Lenny's Pov He left at noon and told me he would be back by three.Shadow watched the door close and then looked at me with the particular expression he had when something had shifted in the apartment and he was waiting to see what I was going to do about it."I know," I told him.I sat on the couch for about ten minutes. I drank my coffee. I looked at the kitchen table where his laptop sat closed exactly where he always left it. I thought about the photo at Francesca's house. Rico and Vincenzo, arm around each other, comfortable and easy in a way that didn't fit the story I had been given.The story was that he had investigated a leak. The trail had led him to Rico. Rico had a connection to me so he moved in next door and established proximity.That was the version.But the photo was older than the investigation. The photo was mid-twenties Vincenzo with his arm around Rico like they had history. Like they
Vincenzo's Pov She was still asleep when I left the room.I stood in the bedroom doorway for a moment and looked at her. She was on her side with one hand flat under her cheek, Shadow pressed against the back of her knees and she looked completely settled in a way that made what I was carrying feel heavier than it already was.I went across the hall to make coffee and call Luca."The session is today," Luca said, picking up before the second ring."I know.""Giovanni's written statement landed with the full commission last night," Luca said. "All five captains have it. His attendant confirmed delivery.""How did they receive it?""Two of the five called Giovanni's house directly to acknowledge it," Luca said. "Which means it landed with weight. The other three said nothing which could mean anything.""And Dante.""Dante requested additional speaking time this morning," Luca said. "The commission chair granted ten minutes. Standard procedure.""He's going to use it to run the comprom
Lenny's Pov I worked through the cut on his jaw, the area around his eye, the forearm. He sat with his hands on his knees and looked at the wall above my head and breathed evenly. "Did you at least make your point," I said. "Yes." "Clearly." "Clearly enough that he's going to be thinking about it when he walks into that session tomorrow," he said. "He needed to feel that I wasn't rattled. That the pressure he's been applying hasn't changed anything." "You proved that by letting him hit you." "I proved it by walking into a room I wasn't supposed to walk into and standing in front of him and not backing down," he said. "The hitting was a side effect." I smoothed the last piece of tape on his forearm and sat back. "Your ribs." "Left side again," he said. I pressed carefully along his left side and he exhaled once through his nose. "Same ones," I said. "Yes." "Vincenzo these ribs are never going to heal if you keep—" "I know," he said. "After tomo
Lenny’s Pov The first thing I did was drop the rolling case. I cut right toward the gap between the SUV and the market stalls. The space was tight enough that two men could not flank me from the same angle. Prison taught that lesso
David's Pov The meeting in Baltimore was legitimate. That was the irony of it. An actual logistics dispute between two captains who had been circling each other's territory for eight months and finally needed a neutral presence to stop it from becoming something the commission would have to wei
Lenny's Pov I started writing things down. Not in an obvious way or a list titled things David Gale has lied to me about, though the thought had crossed my mind. Just a notepad on my kitchen table where I had been keeping track of job applications, and sometimes, in the margins, other things.
David’s Pov She was not afraid of me. She had looked at me standing over three men and said, “ You came like it was the only relevant fact, everything else was supporting detail. I drove with one hand on the wheel. Lenny sat in the passenger seat wi







