Chapter 45: Grief-Stricken Fucking
The humid Monaco night pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows of Enzo’s study, the glittering harbor lights below doing nothing to pierce the gloom inside. Six months had grafted a new, tense rhythm onto their lives. The public vigils had ended, replaced by the private, grinding reality of Sergio’s slow decline in a specialized clinic in Switzerland. Alma had become Enzo’s anchor, her belief in the tragic accident an unshakable foundation upon which he rebuilt his world, his control now absolute.
She was curled on the deep leather sofa, reviewing Dutch logistics contracts, her brow furrowed in concentration. She wore one of his discarded dress shirts, the crisp cotton swallowing her frame, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. Enzo stood by the window, a glass of Amaro in hand, motionless. The quiet between them was companionable, dense with understanding.
Then his phone buzzed on the desk. Not a ring, but a short, decisive vibration. The sound was a pinprick in the silence. Alma glanced up, noting the way his shoulders stiffened before he turned to pick it up.
“Bellini.” His voice was flat.
Alma watched his profile. She saw his jaw clench, a muscle ticking just beneath the skin. His eyes, fixed on the dark window, went blank, then terribly focused. He didn’t speak. He just listened. The seconds stretched, filled only with the faint, tinny rasp of a voice on the other end.
“Quando?” The single word was grated out, rough as stone.
Another pause. Alma set her tablet down slowly, the unease a cold trickle in her veins.
“Grazie,” Enzo said, and ended the call. He placed the phone on the desk with exaggerated care. For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then his hand swept out, catching the glass of Amaro and sending it screaming across the room. It exploded against the stone hearth in a burst of bitter liquid and sharp, glittering shards.
Alma flinched, her hand flying to her mouth. “Enzo?”
He turned. The look on his face wasn’t grief. It was a feral, terrifying emptiness. “He’s gone.”
The words didn’t make sense at first. Then they did, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. “Sergio?” she whispered.
A curt, brutal nod. “An infection. They said it was… quick.” He breathed the last word like a curse, as if even the mercy of a swift end was an insult. The lie, crafted months ago and polished to a hard shine, served its purpose perfectly.
“Oh, God. Enzo, I’m…” She stood, the shirt hanging off one shoulder, and took a step toward him.
“Don’t.” The word was a whip-crack. He covered the distance between them in three long strides. His hands came up, not to embrace her, but to fist in the fabric of the shirt she wore. He yanked, hard. Buttons pinged off the marble floor, scattering like fallen teeth. The shirt was torn open, baring her to the waist.
She gasped, not in protest, but in a sharp intake of understanding. She saw the storm in him, the black, writhing thing that had no words. He needed an outlet, a language beyond speech. And she was his to speak it with.
“Yes,” she breathed, her own eyes filling not with fear, but with a fierce, willing fever. She reached for his belt, her fingers fumbling with the buckle. “Use it. Use me. Give it to me.”
He smacked her hands away, unbuckling it himself with a vicious tug. He pushed his trousers and boxers down just enough to free himself. He was already brutally hard, a stark, angry arousal born of devastation. There was no preamble, no kiss. He spun her around, bending her over the back of the sofa, her papers fluttering to the floor. One large hand splayed between her shoulder blades, pressing her down. The other gripped the swell of her hip, fingers digging into her flesh.
“You’re mine,” he snarled, a statement of possession, a rejection of the death that had just stolen his greatest possession.
“I’m yours,” she sobbed into the leather, arching her back, presenting herself. “Fucking take it. Take what you need. Please.”
He didn’t test her readiness. He spit roughly between her legs, the wet sound obscene in the quiet room, and then he drove into her in one brutal, deep thrust.
Alma cried out, a sharp sound punched from her lungs. It was too much, too dry, too fast—a delicious, punishing stretch that bordered on pain. She welcomed it, the physical shock mirroring the emotional one.
“Is this what you want?” he grunted, pulling back and slamming home again. The sofa legs squealed against the floor.
“Yes! God, yes!” she screamed, her fingers clawing at the cushions. “Harder! Fuck your grief into me, Enzo! Do it!”
He set a punishing, rhythmic pace, each thrust a furious piston driven by a chaotic engine of guilt, rage, and a twisted, liberated triumph he could never name. The wet, slapping noise of their bodies colliding filled the study, a stark, carnal counterpoint to the silent death miles away. Sweat gleamed on his back, muscles corded with the effort.
“Tell me you’re my fuck,” he demanded, his voice ragged, bending over her, his chest damp against her bare back.
“I’m your fuck!” she shouted, tears streaming down her face, mingling with the sweat on her cheeks. “I’m your cock sleeve, your dirty little relief, whatever you need!”
He fucked her with a kind of animalistic fury, his gestures devoid of tenderness, every snap of his hips a condemnation of fate. He hooked a hand under her thigh, hiking her leg up higher, opening her wider, changing the angle. He buried himself so deep she felt him in her throat, each impact jolting through her core.
“Come for me,” he commanded, a guttural order. “Come on my cock while I think of him.”
It was the cruelest, most intimate thing he could have said. It shattered her. Her orgasm ripped through her, violent and involuntary, her inner walls clenching around him in rapid, fluttering pulses. She screamed, the sound raw and broken, as the sensations overwhelmed her.
Feeling her clamp down on him tore the last thread of his control. With a final, ragged roar that was part agony, part release, he plunged into her one last time, hilting himself completely as he came. Hot jets of come pulsed deep inside her, a savage, claiming release. He stayed there, lodged within her, his body trembling with the aftershocks, his forehead dropped between her shoulder blades. His breath sawed in and out, hot against her skin.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. The harbor lights twinkled, indifferent.
“Mia forza,” he whispered, his own eyes suspiciously bright. My strength.
She leaned into his hand, nuzzling his palm. She saw only a man shattered by loss, finding solace in the one person he trusted with his darkest, most unvarnished self. She would never see the monster. She saw only her love, bleeding, and the vessel he had chosen to hold his pain.
“Always,” she murmured, her voice hoarse. “I am always yours.”
He kissed her forehead, a chaste, tender brush of his lips. Over her head, his gaze drifted to the shattered glass on the hearth, and a profound, silent calm settled over his features. It was finally, truly, over.