Chapter 5: The Elopement Gambit
Sunlight, sharp and merciless, cut across the bed in a golden blade. It found the hollow of Jamie’s throat, the curve of Nico’s bare shoulder, the rigid line of Marco’s sleeping brow. The city’s overnight hum had softened into a distant, polite murmur. Jamie blinked, disoriented. The weight across her waist was Marco’s arm, possessive even in sleep. The warmth along her back was Nico, his breath a slow, steady rhythm against her spine.
Biscotti, unimpressed with the new sleeping arrangements, solved his own bladder issues by trotting up the bed and vigorously licking Jamie’s chin.
“Ugh.” She swatted gently at him, her voice gravelly with sleep. The movement stirred Marco.
He didn’t open his eyes. Just tightened his arm around her, pulling her deeper into the nest of warm skin and rumpled sheets. His voice was a sleep-roughened rumble against the back of her head. “We’re not going.”
Jamie blinked. “Not going where?”
“The lunch.” Nico mumbled the words into her shoulder blade, not stirring. “The big, performative, twelve-person table at Il Gabbiano. The one with your father and my uncle and the fucking mayor.”
“We have to go,” Jamie said, the reality of the day dousing her like cold water. “It’s the first public unveiling. The ‘happy couple’ and the ‘loyal friend’. The whole point.”
“The point,” Marco said, finally opening his eyes. The dark blue was stormy with a defiance she hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t calculation. It was rebellion. “Was to control the narrative. Last night changed the narrative.”
He shifted, rolling onto his back and staring at the stark white ceiling. Biscotti, seeing his opening, abandoned Jamie and padded over to climb onto Marco’s chest. Marco didn’t react, just kept talking, his hand coming up to absently scratch the dog’s head. “We walk into that lunch today, we’re playing their game on their board. We’re exhausted. We’re… saturated. They’ll smell it on us. Your father will see it. My uncle will use it.”
Nico propped himself up on one elbow, his blond hair a mess, the bruise on his ribs a lurid purple in the morning light. He looked from Marco’s hardened profile to Jamie’s confused face. A slow, wicked grin spread across his own. “He’s right. We’d be terrible. I’d yawn through the antipasti. You’d probably throw a bread roll at the mayor.”
“I would not,” Jamie said, but she was smiling now, the idea unspooling in her mind with a terrifying, giddy freedom.
“You would,” Marco stated, still staring upward. “You’d get that glint in your eye. The one you had when you told my father his taste in art was ‘aggressively municipal’.”
“It was! Those paintings looked like they were ordered from a hotel supply catalog.”
Nico laughed, the sound warm and loose in the sun-filled room. “See? Not lunch appropriate.”
Marco finally moved, sitting up abruptly. Biscotti tumbled into his lap with a disgruntled squeak. He reached for his phone on the nightstand, his movements decisive. “We’re not going to their fucking lunch.” He started typing, his thumbs flying over the screen.
Jamie sat up too, the sheet pooling around her waist. The cool air raised goosebumps on her skin. “What are we doing, then? Hiding in this penthouse forever? They’ll send a search party.”
“We’re leaving the board,” Marco said, not looking up from his phone. A few more taps, then he put it down, a strange, satisfied tension in his shoulders. “Nico. Pack a bag. A small one. We leave in ninety minutes.”
Nico’s grin turned feral. He was already swinging his legs out of bed. “Where?”
“Vegas,” Marco said, finally looking at Jamie. His gaze was electric, a live wire of pure, unadulterated will. “Vegas doesn’t ask questions. Vegas prints money and weddings and forgets both by sunrise.”
The words hung in the air. Vegas. Weddings.
Jamie’s breath caught. “You want to… get married. Today.”
“I want us to be seen getting married today,” Marco corrected, but the distinction felt thin, semantic. “A spontaneous elopement. A romantic whirlwind. The young, impetuous Don and his fiery new love, witnessed by his oldest friend. It’s better theater. It’s our theater.”
Nico was already at the walk-in closet, pulling out a sleek black duffel. “Vegas doesn’t ask questions about three-piece wedding certificates,” he called over his shoulder, his tone light but his meaning devastatingly clear.
Three pieces. Him, Marco, her. A certificate for the world, and a private truth.
The scale of it—the audacity—was breathtaking. It was a middle finger raised to tradition, to expectation, to the carefully orchestrated puppet show their families had planned. It was taking the narrative and burning it to the ground, then building something else from the ashes, on their own terms.
Jamie felt a wild laugh bubbling up from her chest. It escaped, bright and loud in the quiet room. “They’ll lose their minds.”
“Yes,” Marco said, and for the first time that morning, a real smile, sharp and dangerous, touched his lips. “They will.”
The next ninety minutes were a controlled cyclone. Nico moved with a soldier’s efficiency, packing clothes, weapons, passports. Marco made calls, his voice dropping into a low, authoritative register—the hangar, the jet, the paperwork waiting at the other end. Jamie stood in the middle of the marble-floor chaos, dressed only in one of Marco’s discarded t-shirts, feeling strangely weightless.
She called her studio manager, Elena, voice effortlessly breezy. “Something came up. Family thing. Out of town for a day or two. Reschedule the conservationist from Florence, yes? Tell him… tell him I had a visionary emergency.”
She threw a few things into a bag—a simple black dress, her kit of pigments “for luck,” as she told Nico, who raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Biscotti was corralled into his travel carrier, protesting with indignant squeaks.
They took the private elevator down to the subterranean garage where a dark, unassuming SUV idled, a man named Leo behind the wheel who nodded once at Marco and asked no questions. The drive to the airfield was silent, tense with the thrill of the escape. Jamie watched the city blur past, the landmarks of her old life shrinking in the rearview.
The jet was a white bullet on the tarmac, sleek and impatient. They boarded, the door sealing behind them with a pressurized sigh. The cabin was cool leather and muted brass. As the engines whined to life, Marco finally looked at Jamie, who was staring out the window at the shrinking world below.
“Last chance to be sensible,” he said, not unkindly.
She turned to him, then to Nico who was buckling himself in across the aisle, his green eyes bright with adrenaline. “Sensible,” Jamie said, “is highly overrated.”
The flight was a blur of clouds and coffee. They didn’t talk much. The significance of what they were doing sat amongst them like a fourth passenger, silent and immense. Nico napped, his head lolling against the window. Marco worked on a tablet, his brow furrowed. Jamie sketched in her notebook—not plans or concepts, but quick, gestural lines: the strong line of Marco’s jaw as he concentrated, the lazy drape of Nico’s hand over the armrest.
They landed in a blaze of Nevada sun, the heat hitting them like a physical wall as they descended the airstairs. A car was waiting, just as seamless, just as anonymous.
The Strip at four in the afternoon was a surreal, sparkling diorama. They bypassed the grandiose theme-park chapels. Marco had instructions. They pulled up to a mid-century modern building, all clean lines and frosted glass, that looked more like an architect’s office than a wedding venue.
Inside, it was cool and quiet. A tasteful lobby, a friendly woman in a severe black dress who didn’t blink at their lack of luggage or their slightly disheveled, sleep-deprived air. “Mr. Romano,” she said. “Everything is prepared.”
The ceremony itself was performed by a nondenominational officiant with a soothing voice in a sun-drenched room with a single abstract sculpture in the corner. It was fast, simple, devoid of frills. Marco held her hands, his grip firm. His voice was steady as he repeated the words. Hers surprised her with its certainty.
Nico stood as their witness, his signature a sharp, slanted thing on the document next to Leo’s, the driver who had silently appeared for the purpose. When the officiant pronounced them married, Marco kissed her—a firm, lingering press of the lips that held more promise than passion. It felt like a seal. A covenant.
Then, Nico stepped forward. He didn’t ask. He just looked at Marco, a silent question in the tilt of his head. Marco gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
Nico kissed her next. It was softer, sweeter, a ghost of the night before. It lingered too, a second signature on the same contract.
The officiant smiled, professionally serene. “Congratulations to you all,” she said, her tone gently inclusive, betraying no surprise at the trio.
Back in the car, the marriage certificate—a single, elegant sheet of paper—was tucked into a leather folio by Leo. Jamie stared out at the garish, rolling spectacle of the Strip, the certificate a stark, real weight in her imagination.
“So,” Nico said, breaking the silence. He was leaning forward from the back seat, his arms resting on the console between Jamie and Marco. “We’re married. Now what?”
Marco looked at Jamie, then at Nico. The controlled mask was back, but his eyes were alive, the storm in them finally breaking into something like triumph. “Now,” he said, “we have dinner. And we let the phones start ringing.”
He gave another address to Leo. Not a hotel. Not a casino. A restaurant, high atop a mirrored tower, with views that could make you believe you owned the whole glittering, desperate city.
They walked in, a unit. Jamie in her simple black dress, Marco in his dark suit, Nico in a charcoal button-down with the sleeves rolled up, the bruise on his ribs just a shadow beneath the fabric. They were shown to the best table, the one at the window. The maître d’ knew Marco’s name.
They ordered wine. They ate bread. They pretended, for the watching room, to be a young couple celebrating with their closest friend. Their knees touched under the table. Their fingers brushed when reaching for salt.
And as the dessert menu arrived, Marco’s phone, face-up on the white linen, began to vibrate. The screen lit up with a single name: GIO.
Jamie looked at it, then at Marco, then at Nico. Nico gave her a small, tight smile and topped up her wine glass.
Marco let it ring until it went to voicemail. He picked up the phone, silenced it, and placed it gently back on the tablecloth. He picked up his fork instead. “The panacotta,” he said to the waiter, his voice perfectly calm. “For the table to share.”
The first move had been theirs. The lunch in the city was happening right now, an empty table at its center. The story was already rewriting itself, racing ahead of them on a wave of gossip and speculation. Jamie took a sip of wine, the taste dry and bracing on her tongue. The performance was underway, but the script, she realized with a lurch of her stomach, was now entirely in their hands. And they had just thrown the first pages into the fire.
The panacotta was a silent, creamy monument in the center of the table. None of them touched it. The phones began their chorus a minute later, vibrating against the linen like angry insects. Nico’s buzzed next to his wine glass. Jamie’s, buried in her bag, emitted a muffled hum. Marco’s screen lit up again, this time with ZIO ALDO.
He watched it with a detached fascination, as if observing a chemical reaction he’d precisely calculated. “My uncle,” he noted, his voice flat. “Your father called mine. Which means your father knows we’re not at the lunch. Which means the news is already metastasizing.”
Jamie felt a cold trickle down her spine that had nothing to do with the restaurant’s aggressive air conditioning. The reality of Gio Rossi’s anger was a physical memory: the slammed ledger books, the silent, seething disapproval that could frost a room. “He’s going to have a coronary.”
“Good,” Nico said, picking up his fork finally and driving it into the smooth dessert. It quivered. “Maybe it’ll improve his circulation.” He took a bite, his eyes on the glittering city below. “The story’s out of our hands now. Let it run.”
Marco signaled for the check, his movements crisp. He paid with a black card, not waiting for the machine. “Time to disappear into the second act.” He rose, and they followed, leaving the uneaten dessert, the half-finished wine, and the ringing phones on the table.
The ride to the hotel was short. It wasn’t a casino. It was a series of stark, monolithic towers at the quiet end of the Strip, a fortress of tinted glass. Their suite took up the entire top floor of one tower. Leo handed Marco the keycards and the leather folio with the marriage certificate, then melted away with a nod, taking the car and Biscotti to be settled in a staff-approved pet suite.
The elevator opened directly into a foyer larger than Jamie’s entire studio. The air smelled of lemongrass and money. A wall of windows presented the vast, neon-scorched desert canvas, the lights bleeding into the overwhelming dark of the mountains beyond.
Marco tossed the folio onto a long, low credenza. It skidded, coming to rest against a brutalist sculpture. The phones, now a unified cacophony in the cavernous space, seemed ludicrous.
Nico kicked the door shut with his heel. The finality of the thud silenced nothing. He looked at Marco, then at Jamie, a wild, unguarded light in his green eyes. Without a word, he crossed the space, grabbed Marco by the back of the neck, and pulled him into a deep, hungry kiss. It was all teeth and relief, a silent communication that bypassed language entirely.
Jamie stood frozen, her back against the cool wall, watching them. The raw intimacy of it was more shocking than anything she’d seen. This wasn’t for show. This was the pressure valve blowing.
Marco responded with equal fervor, his hands finding Nico’s hips, pulling him closer. They broke apart, breathing hard, foreheads touching. Then, in unison, they turned their heads to look at her.
The look was an invitation, a question, a pull she felt in her bones. Marco held out a hand. Nico did the same.
Her own bag vibrated against her hip. She ignored it, pushing off the wall. She walked to them, placing a hand in each of theirs. Their grips were warm, certain. They led her away from the foyer, past the living room with its silent, monstrous television, toward a wide, arched doorway.
The master bedroom was a study in shadow and implied space. The famous view was a black void punctuated by distant, lonely stars of light. A bed, impossibly wide and low, dominated the room, a plain of white linen in the gloom.
Their phones, scattered on surfaces in the other room, continued to bleat. GIO. ALDO. UNKNOWN. UNKNOWN. The sound was a tinny, relentless reminder of the world they’d just incinerated.
Marco’s hands went to the sides of her simple black dress, his fingers finding the zipper at the back. The sound was loud in the quiet. Nico’s mouth found the newly exposed skin of her shoulder, his kiss softer now, a slow exploration.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird. This was the consequence. This was the reality after the paperwork. The theoretical triangle was now a physical equation she had to solve with her body, and the variables felt suddenly, terrifyingly real.
“Wait,” she breathed, the word barely audible.
They stilled instantly. Two predators finely attuned to the slightest shift in their environment. Marco’s hands paused. Nico lifted his head from her neck.
She took a shaky step back, the cool air hitting her bare back. She wrapped her arms around herself, not from cold, but from a sudden, acute vulnerability. The bravado of the restaurant, the thrill of the escape, evaporated here in this dark room.
“I just…” She swallowed, forcing her eyes to meet Marco’s intense blue gaze, then Nico’s concerned green. The casual, light-hearted dialogue she usually wielded like a weapon failed her. “I need you to know. The other night… that was… I’ve only ever kissed.”
She stopped, the sentence hanging, unfinished. The silence pooled around them, thick and deep, broken only by the distant, muffled symphony of their ignored phones.
Marco and Nico shared a look over her head. It wasn’t the silent, loaded conversation of lovers. It was a quick, assessing glance between partners, a recalibration. Their expressions shifted, the heat banked, replaced by something sharper and more careful.
Nico spoke first, his voice gentler than she’d ever heard it. “Only ever kissed?”
Marco finished the unspoken thought, his tone devoid of judgment, purely factual. “You’re a virgin.”
It wasn’t a question. She nodded, once, a tight jerk of her chin. She braced for something—amusement, disappointment, a cynical remark about mafia princesses and sheltered lives.
It didn’t come.
Marco’s hands, which had been hovering near her, fell slowly to his sides. He let out a long, controlled breath, his gaze never leaving her face. Nico ran a hand through his blond hair, a faint, kind smile touching his lips—a smile that held no trace of mockery.
“Okay,” Marco said, the single word imbued with a staggering weight of acceptance.
“That’s alright, Jamie,” Nico added, his voice still soft. He reached out, not to pull her back, but to gently brush a strand of dark red hair from her cheek. “We don’t have to do anything. Not tonight. Not until you’re sure.”
Marco nodded, his own expression softening into something that looked like relief. “We can take it slow.” He glanced at the enormous bed, then back at her. “As slow as you want.”
The tension didn’t leave her body, but it changed, melting from the sharp fear of the unknown into a warm, trembling wave of something else. Trust. The phones in the other room finally, blessedly, stopped ringing. In the sudden, absolute quiet, the only sound was their breathing. The fortress suite felt less like a stage and more like a sanctuary they were building, one unspoken rule at a time.
The fortress suite felt less like a stage and more like a sanctuary they were building, one unspoken rule at a time. The silence was a physical presence, thick and forgiving, absorbing the echo of the dead phones. Jamie watched their faces in the dim light, seeing the calculation dissolve into something far more patient.
A smile touched her lips, slow and real, unwinding the tight coil in her chest. “I didn’t say we can’t,” she said, her voice finding its familiar, low cadence. She uncrossed her arms, letting the black dress slide a little further down her shoulders. “How about we continue what we were doing last night and see where it takes us?”
She took a small step forward, the plush carpet soft under her bare feet. “I just wanted you to know. In case I’m really bad at this.”
Nico’s quiet laugh was a puff of air against her skin. Marco’s stern mouth curved, the transformation startling.
“That,” Nico said, his green eyes crinkling at the corners, “would be impossible.”
“Truly,” Marco echoed, his dark blue gaze sweeping over her face with a possessiveness that felt like reverence.
They both leaned in then, as if pulled by the same string. Marco’s mouth found hers, a confident, deep exploration that tasted of expensive wine and unwavering intent. Simultaneously, Nico pressed his lips to the pulse point on her neck, his kiss open-mouthed and hot, a direct counterpoint. The dual sensation shattered her last fragment of nervous thought into a thousand glittering shards.
Her knees buckled. Marco’s arm banded around her back, holding her up without breaking the kiss. Nico’s hands, those capable, violent hands, went to the sides of her dress and eased it the rest of the way down. The fabric pooled at her feet with a whisper.
The cool air raised gooseflesh on her skin, followed immediately by the heat of theirs. They were a constellation of contact—Marco’s mouth on hers, his hand splayed on her spine, Nico’s lips tracing her collarbone, his palms sliding up her ribcage with an almost clinical slowness. They were learning her. Mapping the unfamiliar territory with a focus that made her head spin.
“Okay?” Marco murmured against her mouth.
All she could do was nod, a frantic little movement. Her hands came up, fingers tangling in the dark silk of his hair, then skating across to clutch at Nico’s shoulder. The solid reality of them grounded her.
They walked her backward toward the bed, a slow, shuffled procession. Her legs hit the edge of the mattress and she sat, looking up at them. They stood over her, two pillars of ink and intention, shedding their own clothes with a quiet, efficient haste. The city’s light outlined the powerful cut of Marco’s shoulders, the lean muscle of Nico’s torso, the vivid history written on their skin.
Nico joined her on the bed first, stretching out on his side, propped on an elbow. He traced the line of her jaw with a single finger. “Tell us to stop anytime,” he said, and she knew he meant it absolutely.
Marco knelt on the floor in front of her, his hands resting on her knees. His eyes were level with hers. “You set the pace.”
The authority in the room had subtly, completely, shifted. It hummed around her now, a power she held in her trembling hands. She was the novice, yet she was in command. The realization was a bolt of pure adrenaline.
“I don’t want to stop,” she whispered. It was the truest thing she’d said all day.
That was all the permission they needed. What followed was a meticulous, patient dismantling of her world. Marco’s mouth traced a path from her knee up the inside of her thigh, his stubble a delicious abrasion. Nico kissed her shoulders, her breasts, his tongue flicking over a peak until she gasped and arched off the bed.
Their hands were everywhere, but never greedy, always communicative. A press here to request access, a stroke there to soothe a jump of nerve. They spoke to each other in glances and slight nods, a choreography perfected over years, now expanded to include her. When she trembled, they stilled. When she moaned, they echoed it, a dark harmony.
It was nothing like she’d imagined, and everything. It was slow and fast, overwhelming and perfectly clear. There was a moment of sharp, breath-stealing pressure as Marco entered her, his body a solid, patient weight above her, his eyes locked on hers, watching for any flicker of pain. Nico was right there, his mouth on hers, swallowing her gasp, his hand tangling with hers against the sheets.
“Breathe, Jamie,” Nico murmured into her skin. “Just breathe.”
She did. And the pain fractured, transformed, ignited into a feeling so vast it had no name. It was a yielding and a claiming all at once. They moved with a rhythm that felt discovered, not imposed. Nico’s touch was a constant counterpoint, a feather-light trail down her side, the firm grip of his hand on her hip when the sensations threatened to spiral her away.
She clung to Marco’s shoulders, her blunt nails digging into the dark ink, anchor points in a storm of feeling. Her world narrowed to the slide of skin on skin, the ragged sound of their breathing, the low, approving curses Nico muttered into her hair. Then it expanded, violently, into a white burst of static that blotted out the city, the suite, everything but the two of them surrounding her, inside her, part of her.
The aftershocks were long and gentle. Marco collapsed beside her, pulling her with him, keeping her close. Nico curled against her back, his arm draping over her waist, his lips pressed to her shoulder blade. For a long time, the only sound was their slowing heartbeats, a triune drum in the quiet dark.
Jamie finally stirred, a limb at a time, feeling heavy and new. “Well,” she said, her voice hoarse. “That was a more thorough structural test than I anticipated.”
Nico’s laugh vibrated through her. Marco’s chest shook silently against her back.
“The triangle,” Marco said, his own voice rough with sleep and satisfaction, “is sound.”
“More than sound,” Nico corrected softly. He nuzzled her hair. “It’s a fucking masterpiece.”
Exhaustion, deeper than any she’d ever known, pulled at her. It was the good kind, earned and complete. Nestled between them, in the heart of a city built on false fronts, Jamie felt no need to perform. The certificate was signed. The deal was sealed in sweat and trust. As she drifted off, the last thing she knew was the weight of their arms, a living vow more binding than any words spoken in that sunlit room. Sleep took her, deep and dreamless.