Two days before Ansley's questioning
At night, long after everyone in the unsuspecting town had gone to sleep, I pulled the vehicle out of the warehouse that belonged to the mafia family. Ermanno stored Michael's vehicle there after taking him captive at the bookstore.
Making sure to drive cautiously, I made it the forty-five minutes into a different town, not passing a single other driver in the process.
Ermanno followed a few hundred yards behind me as we headed toward the abandoned field where we would ditch the car.
I spotted the old overgrown field with a hazard sign placed in the middle. It warned people of the steep topography, dangerous rocky cliffs, and the river below.
I pulled the car haphazardly into the field, then got out and walked toward the cliffs, making an indentation in the dense grasses that showed something had walked through them.
Once I reached the wooded area that stood between the field and the rocky cliffs, I walked along the tree lines until I found a deer trail that led out back out of the field. Once I reached the road, I opened Ermanno's car door and slid into the passenger seat.
He leaned over and kissed me, pressing his tongue into my mouth. I moaned into his kiss and reached my hand down, just grazing his hardening cock.
He took in a sharp breath and pulled away from me. "Not here, Fiore," he said, grasping my hand in his and pulling it away from his erection.
"We are going to meet the lawyer in the morning, remember?" Ermanno said as he drove us back the way we came.
I nodded. "Yes. I remember," I said as I looked out the window. We were meeting him at one of Arsenio's clubs, which was closed for the day. "I never thought that the contract I signed would actually come to fruition," I said.
"Hmm?"
"The omertà code. I never thought I'd be talking to the police about being involved in a missing persons case and a potential death. I also never thought I'd have two mafia dons and their corrupt lawyer coaching me on how to talk to law enforcement," I said. I shifted toward him, propping my elbow on the center console. "I've had a lot of new experiences with you, Ermanno."
He brought his hand to my head and raked his fingers through the strands. "I wish you didn't have to do this fiore. I didn't want you to know this part of my life."
I furrowed my eyebrows at him. "I married you knowing the kind of lifestyle you live. What do you mean?"
He sighed but continued massaging my scalp. "I needed you to accept me, my profession, my family. But I didn't want what I do to become your life. I wanted to protect you from this, from the crime, and the murder, and the coverups."
I pulled his hand from my hair and held it in both of mine, bringing it to my lips. I placed a kiss in the center of his palm.
"You did protect me, Ermanno. You saved me. I fully accepted this lifestyle when I said yes to your proposal and signed my name on the dotted line. Besides," I said with a shrug. "If it weren't for you and your lifestyle, Michael would still be out there, searching for me. I might've already been dead by now if it weren't for you. I accept and love all parts of you, including these ones. If I couldn't take it, then I wouldn't have married you."
"What did I do to deserve you?" He asked, stealing a glance at me.
"Mmm, you yelled at me when I crossed the street and accidentally walked in front of your car," I said with a giggle.
"I didn't yell, but I should've. You were being stupid that day. You could've gotten run over."
I slid my hand around his abdomen and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "But I didn't, because my knight in shining armor would never hit me with his car."
I wasn't sure what exactly Ermanno did with Michael. I knew he was dead. After days of torture, Ermanno killed him as he knew that the police had most likely found the journal we'd planted in the house, and detectives were now in the process of figuring out what happened to Michele Coopper. He wanted to get rid of the body before the detectives came around.
I wasn't sure what happened to him, Ermanno wouldn't tell me because he wanted me to be as truthful as possible with the detectives when I answered their questions, to minimize any potential anxiety I felt about the situation. The more truthful I appeared, the better for us. I would say, I'm not sure what happened to Michael. You say he's dead? I would say, how? What happened?
I didn't need to know how Ermanno killed him. The peace I felt internally was more than enough. The monster who had terrorized me for years of my life, stripping the remainder of my teenage years and early adult life from me, was gone. All because of my husband.
****
Two days after Ansley's questioning
I was sitting in the interrogation room once again after having been called back. I was more anxious this time. I knew the detectives had said that they would be in contact, but I hadn't expected to be called back for another interrogation.
I received a call from the office that morning, saying they'd like me to come down for additional questioning. I immediately called Ermanno and our lawyer, and both of them reassured me that I'd be okay. They most likely had found an additional piece of evidence they wanted to ask me about or had found Michael's abandoned car. Nothing to worry about.
When Sarah and Sean entered the room, they sat down in front of me once again.
"Ansley, I'm not sure if this is a need you want to hear or not," Sarah said. "But we found Micheal's vehicle."
My eyes widened as I looked at her. "Where?"
"About an hour's drive from here, along the old Breburn road. It was in an old farmer's field."
"A field?" I asked. "What was he doing there?"
"That's the problem, Ansley. Are you familiar with that area? There are rocky cliffs not too far off from the road. A warning sign telling people to be cautious of where they walk?"
I shook my head. "No, I've never heard of it."
"Well, we think it's possible that Michael committed suicide. That spot is notorious for suicide. People jump off the cliffs and either smash into the rocks below or land in the river, where they are drowned by the current and slammed into more rocks. Given what he wrote in his journal, it makes sense."
I held the detective's gaze for a moment before blinking hard and then looking down at the table. "Are you sure it's suicide? Was there... was there a body?"
"No," she said with a shake. "He most likely jumped into the river. It's not likely that we'd find a body."
****
Two weeks later
After detectives both in Connecticut and in Virginia questioned me and a few others about Michael, as well as finding the journal in his house, the vehicle by the cliffs, and reviewing the video footage from the night Michael had attacked me - which Dorothy had submitted to the police after Ermanno clipped the evening he'd returned and edited it to appear that Michael did not come to the store again for a second time, Michael's death was deemed a suicide.
The truth was revealed, a sinister, deeply disturbed man with no regard for the well-being of his wife, committed one final act of cowardice by ending his life via a plunge off the rocky Virginia cliffs after failing to physically force his wife to return home with him.
The evening the detectives had told us that they were certain his death was self-inflicted - and had wished me a peaceful life full of healing and apologized for making me relive certain traumatic events - Ermanno and I celebrated with Eloise and Arsenio, the only two people besides Dorothy who knew the truth about Michael.
"You're a badass," Eloise said to me as she hugged me goodbye that evening.
"Both of our women are badasses," Arsenio said, wrapping his arms around Eloise and me. We giggled to each other as he squeezed his arms tightly, trapping us both.
"Leave room for me," Ermanno said, coming to the other side of Eloise and me and wrapping his arms around us as well. "No threesomes allowed, only foursomes."
"Shut the fuck up," Arsenio said, making both Eloise and I laugh at their immature banter.
We held each other as our husbands all but squeezed the life out of us. After a few moments, they both pulled away and Eloise and Arsenio said their goodbyes. It was rather late and they needed to pick Coda up from her mother's house.
"Have you ever had a threesome?" I asked once they left, waggling my eyebrows ast him.
"Yeah, a couple of times," he answered.
"A foursome?"
"Once."
"Any men involved?" I teased.
"Only Arsenio, obviously," he joked with a roll of his eyes.
"You are filthy," I chastised, walking closer to wrap my arms around him and trying to suppress the jealous feeling flaring through me at the thought of my husband with another woman, let alone multiple at once.
"But now I just want you. Twosomes for the rest of my life."
"How chivalrous of you," I said, standing on my tiptoes to press my lips to his.
I had intended to simply kiss him, but the man was insatiable. He reached his hands down, gripping both of my butt cheeks in his hands and massaging them. I moaned loudly and arched my body into him, pressing my aching breasts into his chest.
Lifting me into his arms, he walked backward to the kitchen table and laid me out across it before hiking the hem of my dark blue dress up to my pregnant stomach.
"Does it hurt to lay like that?" He asked. Recently, laying in certain positions caused aches in my back since I was 29 weeks pregnant.
"No, I'm fine," I said, pulling my knees up and spreading them, signaling to him that I wanted him.
"Fucking hell," he grumbled as he pulled my panties down my legs.
He undid his belt buckle and shuffled his pants and boxer briefs down, allowing his thick erection to break free of its restraints. My mouth practically watered at the sight of him, hard and straining for me.
He gripped my hips in his hands, aligned his cock to my entrance, and thrust inside of me. I screamed, arching my hips off the surface of the table as he rutted into me. His hand slid between our bodies and rubbed my clit deliciously, making me moan and whimper against him. I was utterly under that man's control. My body was his and his alone, and he played me like an instrument. I was perfectly tuned to him.
"Your pussy is so pretty, Fiore," He growled, bending to drop a kiss on my neck. His words made me moan again, and I wrapped my legs around his waist as best I could, though it was a bit difficult as he was leaning over me as I lay on a table, and I was pregnant. "Soaked, baby girl. All for my cock."
"Yes," I whimpered, rocking my hips to the motion of his thrusts.
"Who does this belong to?" He asked, spreading his fingers so his hand covered my center.
"You, only you," I murmured, in the delirious heights of passion.
"Good girl," he said, kissing my lips in approval.
I bucked my hips harshly as he made this wonderful swiveling motion that put the perfect amount of pressure on my g-spot. "Who does this cock belong to?" I asked, clenching my walls down against his cock and making him moan out.
"You, Fiore. My cock belongs to you."
He kissed me again, shoving his tongue into my mouth, demanding my tongue in turn. Below, he pinched my clit between his fingers and I moaned into our kiss as I came apart on his cock. He kissed me through my climax, pumping only a few more times before his body jerked and he released inside me with a low groan, his hips moving in small micro thrusts as all of his cum left his body.
He kissed me a moment longer before pulling out of me. While he walked toward the counter to grab paper towels, I relaxed against the table with my legs still spread. I was worried that as the pregnancy progressed, sex would become uncomfortable, but thankfully, that had yet to happen. Ermanno and I were as sexually active as ever. I think he might have a bit of a pregnancy kink. Perhaps it was in my head, but the bigger my belly got, the more insatiable he seemed to be.
He returned with a damp paper towel and wiped me off before doing the same to himself. Then he pulled my dress down and helped me off the table. "I'll grab the disinfectant spray," I said, walking to the cleaning supplies closet.