The Woman with the Scar (Costa Family)

One of his hands pressed down slightly on my lower stomach, making me feel him even more intensely as the orgasm built—slowly, then all at once.

It caught me off-guard, leaving me gasping for breath as it slammed through my system, this time, taking Brio with me.

My chest was tight when I finally managed to pull in a proper breath again.

Looking up, I found Brio’s head pressed to the outside of one of my ankles, his eyes closed as he tried to pull himself back together.

Seeming to feel my gaze on him, his eyes opened.

“Looking forward to a day when we can do that anytime we want,” he said, pressing a kiss to my ankle before releasing me legs and moving away from me.

“How long do you think that will be?” I asked, folding up so I could look for my panties.

Brio found them first though, swinging them around on his finger with a smirk before I snatched them away.

“I wish I knew. Lot of working parts right now. Couple weeks, maybe?” he said, giving me a sympathetic smile. “Sucks,” he added.

“But then it will be over for good,” I said, pulling my skirt back into place. “And we… I…” I fumbled, not sure if we were in a ‘we’ place yet.

“We,” Brio said, nodding.

“We can move on,” I said, then let out a humorless laugh. I don’t really even know what that means,” I admitted.

“It means your life is yours to do whatever the fuck you want to do with it. Sell that apartment, bank that money, maybe retire your mom with it, or send your sister to college with it…”

“I haven’t even been able to speak to them in a year and a half,” I admitted, feeling a familiar ache in my heart.

I could call.

I had my cell now.

But a part of me really wanted to see them, throw my arms around them, cry with them over the lost time and all the things we’d missed in one another’s lives.

A phone call wasn’t good enough.

“You can see them every day if you want when this is done. And then everything else is up in the air. You can be a part of the restaurants, or just rake in the money. You can go to school or just enjoy life since you won’t need to do anything if you don’t want to. You could have a family of your own…”

That last part, I could have sworn there was a little bit of desperation in his voice.

“Do you want a family?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

No beating around the bush. No “if the right person comes along” bullshit.

He wanted it.

Case closed.

“Including kids?” I asked, thinking of how much I’d always wanted them. But how sure I’d been that I didn’t want Eren’s children, so my IUD had kept me childfree during our marriage.

“Yeah. You?”

“I’ve always wanted kids.”

“You haven’t…” he started.

“My mom took me to get an IUD before my wedding. I want kids. I didn’t want his kids.”

“Seems like that whole fucking family tree needs to die off,” Brio said, shaking his head.

And seeing as Berat and Deniz didn’t have wives or kids of their own, if they didn’t live through this, it would die off.

And good riddance to that particular Polat family. The world didn’t need any more of them.

“Yeah,” I agree.

“But the world could use a bunch of little yous,” he added, giving me a soft smile.

“How many?” I asked, knowing it was a leading question, that it was probably too soon to even imply anything like that. But I didn’t care.

“Oh,” he said, reaching for my hips, pulling me against him. “At least five or six,” he said, and we were both smiling when his lips pressed down on mine.

I had no idea it was the last moment of genuine peace I would know for a while.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Brio

“It’s, like, just let me kill them already, y’know?” I asked as I yanked the chain over my shoulder to haul the body up from the hook in the ceiling, leaving him dangling just a couple inches off the floor.

“The fuck are we waiting for at this point?” I added, going over toward my little table of tools.

We were in the room at the butcher shop. Since this was official business and all.

Emilio had gotten a lead on who’d stabbed his little brother.

Lorenzo had been smart enough to send me to scoop the fucker up, knowing Emilio wouldn’t keep him alive long enough to get answers out of him.

“Scum like them, they got to die. You don’t keep a dog with rabies alive to see if they are gonna bite again. They will. Might as well put ‘em down first, that’s what I always say. Oh, relax,” I said, turning back with brass knuckles because I was supposed to keep the fucker alive.

“I wasn’t talking about you,” I told him, seeing the snot and tears slipping down the guy’s forehead as he dangled by his ankles. “See, this shit here,” I said, waving between us. “This isn’t personal. I mean, yeah, you stabbed someone in my Family. And that can’t go unpunished. But the way I see it, you had a job to do.