Daring Delfina's Heart

Hotel Room Interrogations

She hadn’t expected to feel this awful. She’d taken the first pill orally in the clinic and then they’d inserted a different medication vaginally an hour after. She thought she’d be swallowing both pills, but the nurse said it was faster and more efficient this way. Then they’d sent her on her merry way nearly six hours ago.

Now she was experiencing cramps which felt very much like the worst period she’d ever experienced. Nek was quietly watching the television laying on the other bed in the room, his eyes frequently flitting to her with concern but not saying anything.

She rolled to her side pulling her knees to her abdomen, a small painful moan erupting past her lips.

“Are you okay?” Nek’s concerned voice floated over the space between their beds.

“I’m fine. Feels like bad menstrual cramps.” She stared at a dot on the wall, “Mom is going to be furious with me.”

“It’s not her place.”

A knock on the door had them locking gazes before Nek kicked off the bed and moved to the door. He looked through the peephole. He knelt next to the bed and whispered.

“Dark hair, maybe a man bun, tall, brown eyes, looks meaner than a snake. Is it one of the Rapallino family?”

“No. Both men were dark hair and dark eyes.” She had a sinking suspicion on the identity and offered a silent prayer it wasn’t.

“I know you’re in there, Delfina. Open up.”

She knew the voice and a shiver of terror slid down her spine.

“Who is it?”

“The CEO.”

“Who is the CEO?”

Images of the tall man with his long hair always neatly tied back unless he was drinking with Ercole and it hung loose over his shoulders rattled her brain. When he was put together, he was alarmingly handsome and lethal. When he was relaxed and dressed down, he was a whole other bottle of sexy scariness. The first time he’d ever pulled his hair elastic out and shook his hair with his fingers running through the thick black tresses she’d almost came. He’d shot her a pleasant smile and a wink accepting the drink Ercole demanded she pour him. Since then, she’d tried her best to avoid him when he was in the house with Ercole. The last thing she needed was for Ercole to notice she was ogling his godson or how she more than once fingered herself in the bathroom while listening to him laugh in the other room.

“Ercole’s successor or maybe even his boss. You have to let him in. He usually travels with a full complement of armed guards. He was trained by Ercole personally to run Ercole’s company but he’s scarier than Ercole by a long shot.” She took a breath, “I think Ercole was his bookkeeper and him taking over the company was a cover of some kind.”

“Now Delfina or my men will open the door for you.” The man outside the room barely raised his voice an octave but it stopped the whispering with the swiftness of a dog whistle.

“Open it.” She ordered a very pale Nek. Swinging her legs to the edge of the bed she was barely in a seated position when she felt a gush and grimaced. Nek protectively stood in front of her as Furio Matrone entered the room bringing with him the scent and aura of pain and destruction.

“Get out.” He glared at Nek.

“No.” Nek stood his ground. “My cousin is unwell and I’m not leaving her.” Six guns were suddenly drawn and pointed at his head. His trembling was visible, yet he stood in front of Delfina. “She’s ill. Please. Leave her alone.”

Delfina reached and grabbed his hand, “Nek, can you wait in the hall? I don’t want them to hurt you. Please.”

“No. I already owe you my life Dellie.”

“You do realize I can simply kill you and still have my conversation. Either way she is talking to me.”

“Nek, please.” Delfina rubbed a tear from the corner of her eye.

“Watch him. Don’t let him leave the room across the hall and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.” Furio looked at her cousin with loathing. When the door shut, he looked at Delfina, “your family is stupid.”

She couldn’t argue. “How can I help you Mr. Matrone?”

“Twenty-four hours ago, my,” he paused, “mentor’s family descended on your family restaurant. Rumor has it you shot your mouth off. Did you violate your NDA?”

“I did not.” She lifted her chin. “In fact, I specifically said I would not violate my NDA when they were asking me why I married Ercole. I refused to tell them anything other than it was a contractual marriage but a real one.”

There was no way a man as frightening as him should be as attractive as he was. Ercole at least had the decency to look the part of a scary man. This man could grace the cover of GQ without any need for retouches. It was what made her even more afraid of him. He could slit your throat while he chatted with you easily. She more than once dreamed very vivid s*x dreams of the man which included being tied up, blood and death surrounding them and plenty of orgasms. She’d avoided ever being alone with him completely knowing full well he’d never looked at her twice and how she might have begged him to do to her what Ercole always did.

“You made a couple of blasé comments about body parts and offices.”

“Are you having me watched?”

“Yes.” He didn’t deny it.

“I didn’t violate my NDA.” She was feeling increasingly unwell as the medication she’d taken earlier began to do exactly as it was intended to do. “Mr. Matrone, please, I’m unwell.”

“You left your mother’s house with your cousin, to come here, why?”

“A difference of opinion.”

“Did it have anything to do with her baby comment?”

Another gush and a cramp which had her doubled over made her groan and rub sweat from her brow.

His curse filled her ears. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Abortion,” she whimpered. “I went into the marriage with nothing, and I’ve left it with nothing, including this.”

“Oh, you did not!” he growled furiously as he knelt down and lifted her chin, his dark eyes accusing. “You’re joking? Why?”

“He is dead and wouldn’t have wanted it anyway. I am a broke pastry chef living in her childhood bedroom with her overzealous catholic parents while working in their restaurant. The last thing I need is a reminder of the hell I’ve been through.”

“You’re a fool.” He growled angrily, his furious eyes staring into hers. “He adored you.”

“He hated me. He used me and that was that.”

“You’re wrong. He was in awe of your strength. He said it to me all the time how you might not be the smartest woman he ever met but by Jesus you were the toughest. You held no rights to abort his child. This child would have been the heir to his company.”

“The company is yours.”

“I would have trained him.”

“Why?”

“Because Ercole deserves to have his legacy live on.”

“He has a daughter for his legacy.”

“Speaking of,” he sat back on his heels as he glared at her again, “you told Ruggero of the hidden office. What do you think he found last night?”

“A drawer full of fingers,” a twitch of her lips forced his eyebrows jutting upwards. “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t find it funny. They constantly made it seem like I was taking advantage of an old man and were forever questioning his sanity for having a twenty-year-old wife. They got a very clear picture of who he really is and honestly, I bet Ruggero Rapallino with his perfectly coiffed hair and three-piece suit his mom probably still picks out every morning puked when he saw it.”

“He’s soft. He’s a ruthless businessman in the boardroom but he doesn’t have the stomach for the cutthroat industry your husband was employed in.” His lips twitched, “and he puked so much he filled a wastebin. His sister was stronger than he was.”

“My husband was your underboss. I’m not a fool, at least not as much a fool as he purported me to be.”

He reached out and tapped her nose, “and that is why I know he cared for you. He wouldn’t have told you all these things.”

“It wasn’t anything he told me, Mr. Matrone. He would take me to his meetings to keep me in line and more than once your name come up. When he would say he was taking p*****t for Mr. Matrone it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. He brought me there to scare me, not give me an education on your family.”

“True. A frightened person is much easier to control than a wilful one.” He rose from his squatted position. “What is the timeline of this then?”

“What do you mean?”

“When did you find out? How far along?”

“The night before he had his heart attack, he kept me up extra late. Maybe he subconsciously knew it was the last time because he was extra attentive to my needs,” she looked away feeling ill simply thinking of it. “When we got into the ambulance, I grabbed my purse, and it had all my ID in it. When he was declared dead, I walked out of the hospital and took a train back home to my parents’ house. I forgot to bring my birth control with me. I didn’t think anything of it because I wasn’t intending on sleeping with anyone anytime soon. Stupid me. The damage was done. I spotted last month but then my last period didn’t come at all. I took some tests yesterday morning. My mother walked in on me in the bathroom peeing on a stick.”

“You need your own place.”

“No shit.” She rubbed her forehead. “She started quoting bible verses at me. Then we had the blowup in the restaurant, and she blurted it out in front of Olympia who immediately started screeching about me using it as a means to get money. Who would want his dirty money? I just want my life back. I’ll have it too.”

“Your cousin brought you to the city then to do this?”

“Yes.”

“And it never once dawned on you to reach out to us, Ercole’s true family for guidance? Myself? Valente?”

“My debt was to Ercole, not his family. The poker game was a personal game with Ercole. It wasn’t a Matrone family matter. Our contract was a private contract. He may have used all of you for witnesses and to keep me in line both before and after his death, but I owe no further debt to him, and I never owed a debt to the Matrone organization. I made an agreement with him to part my legs and let him f**k me until death do us part in exchange for letting my cousin and parents live. He died. Debt paid. I have no obligation to continue coming to you for every little matter which arises.”

“This was not a little matter. You decided on something which should have been run by the family. While your debt was paid, the child which was in your womb was part of our family. You should have at least called Valente for advice.”

“He’s your new consigliere, isn’t he? Valente took Ercole’s role. You’ll forgive me if I’m not too keen on calling him Ercole two-point-oh. I have a feeling he’s more ruthless than his predecessor.”

“You should have reached out.”

“I went into the marriage with nothing. I am making sure I left with nothing of Ercole’s.” Where her bravery was coming from in arguing with the man in front of her, she didn’t know but she was grateful for the fact she was feeling steely in her resolve.

None of them would make her regret this decision. Not her parents. Not Furio Matrone

His flared nostrils told her otherwise.