Chapter 34
Massimo calling me a slut infuriated me.
I’d grown up listening to my grandmother’s mafia goons laughing and bragging when they thought I couldn’t hear.
I was an eavesdropper. I liked to hide around corners or sit on the stairs, out of sight.
That was the only way I ever heard the truth from a man: when he thought I wasn’t listening.
Around my grandmother, it was, Yes, Signora. Of course, Signora. Absolutely, Signora.
But when they were alone amongst themselves?
You should’ve seen the girl I fucked over the weekend – Madonn, what tits… here, I got her to send me some nude pics, take a look.
She started going off on me, so I smacked her around a little. THAT oughta teach her.
Fuckin’ bitch – I should drop her ass, but they’re ALL fuckin’ crazy.
Yeah, my old lady has no idea I got two other chicks on the side… NONE of ‘em do…
I learned at a very young age that men were real pieces of shit.
And cowards, too.
They talked a good game when it was only other guys listening –
But whenever their female boss was around – who wouldn’t hesitate to have them shot in the head for a big enough fuck-up – they turned into fawning little ass-kissers.
Other than the cooks and the servants, there weren’t any other women in the household.
Lots of fuckin’ mafiosos, though.
Lots of opportunity to hear a bunch of sexist, misogynistic garbage.
Nona knew it was a bad idea for me to be around her dipshit lackeys, so she put me into Catholic boarding school for girls. Twenty-four hours a day, Monday through Friday. From age 10 to 18, I only came home on weekends.
I was literally raised in a convent by a bunch of nuns.
I wasn’t religious – Nona didn’t go to mass and told me I didn’t have to, either – so I basically just tolerated the nuns and recited whatever they made me memorize.
But man did I misbehave. I don’t think any other girl in school got their knuckles rapped as much as I did.
And there were absolutely no boys…
Even though I was 1000% boy crazy.
I got picked up by some middle-aged asshole in a suit on Friday afternoon…
Escorted back to the palazzo where I spent the entire weekend in lockdown…
And then taken back to the convent bright and early Monday morning.
The only boys I saw were as we rode through the canals on a boat –
And the television shows I watched online.
And did I watch me some shows online.
Only Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max, though. Nona wasn’t exactly up on how the internet worked, but she knew enough to get her consigliere Silvio to block any porn sites. (I think he had to do it, anyway, because otherwise all the mafia goons would watch porn on their phones over wifi.)
However, neither Nona nor Silvio thought to bar me from watching Netflix or any of the other streaming services.
So I had a field day.
Euphoria… Elite… Bridgerton… some Spanish show I don’t remember the title of, but it was basically a bunch of hot twentysomething roommates fucking…
And the movies: 50 Shades of Grey and the sequels… 365 Days… The Next 365 Days… 365 Days This Day…
(You can tell I liked the 365 Days movies.)
One thing I noticed, though:
They were all about showing tits and ass, but very little dick.
Certainly no hard dicks.
And I realized that all those shows were the equivalent of my grandmother’s mafia thugs:
Talking about the women they fucked, and showing the women they fucked, and lots of times mistreating the women they fucked…
All from a male viewer’s perspective.
(Mostly. Bridgerton was pretty cool.)
But despite all that, I was still dying to start having sex.
So when I finally got to leave the convent and enroll in university, I entered my ‘open for business’ era.
Yes, I slept with a lot of guys.
(Well, what I could accomplish while having to be back home at the palazzo by 2 AM on Friday and Saturday nights. Weeknights were even worse.)
And no, most of the guys weren’t very good in bed.
None of them were that satisfying. I only came twice, and that was because I took matters into my own hands, if you know what I’m sayin’.Content rights belong to NôvelDrama.Org.
Most of them just sucked. Three minutes and it was over.
A couple of times it was, like, 60 seconds or less.
And I’m only counting the ones who weren’t too drunk to get it up. There were another dozen of those.
Four or five were pretty good. Those were the ones who got invited back.
But even those guys I didn’t keep around very long. I fucked ‘em a few times and threw ‘em away.
Once I got bored, they were gone.
Or…
…once I started to feel something for them.
Were they pieces of shit outside the bedroom?
Well – they were men, right?
But I didn’t find out. Not conclusively. I didn’t let them hang around long enough to show me they were like the assholes who worked for my grandmother. That was one thing I wasn’t about to chance.
I’d heard too much shit sitting on the stairwell at nine years old to ever trust a man farther than I could throw him.
So the vast majority of the guys I went home with were one-night stands. A few I hooked up with a couple more times…
But I never had a boyfriend.
I definitely never fell in love.
Besides, my vibrator was a hell of a lot more satisfying. And consistent, too.
I mean, having sex was fun. Don’t get me wrong.
The best part was the flirting… and the build-up… and the anticipation…
But the ‘main event’ was usually anticlimactic, to say the least.
But if I wasn’t really into the sex, then why do it?
I think it was because I was locked up in the convent and Nona’s palazzo my entire life. Couldn’t do anything, couldn’t go anywhere, definitely couldn’t see any boys.
I mean, I was raised in a literal convent, for God’s sake.
So when I was finally free at 18, I went wild.
Because I could.
Because everybody told me You can’t –
So I was like, Fuck you. Hold my beer.
But the thing that infuriated me the most was knowing how I’d be judged if people knew what I was doing.
A guy sleeps with 20 women by the time he’s 21, he’s a fuckin’ stud.
A woman does it, and she’s a slut, a whore, a – whatever horrible name you want to call her.
It was like the system was designed by all those fucking mafia assholes I listened to from the stairwell when I was nine.
They could do whatever they wanted… lie, cheat, insult women, abuse them…
And nobody would ever call them on their bullshit. Not even my grandmother.
And they would badmouth the women they were sleeping with.
The women who gave their bodies to these men –
In some cases, who gave their hearts to them –
Those mafia douchebags would just shit all over them behind their backs and laugh about it.
To be honest, I kind of hated men.
And it’s a special kind of hell to be attracted to something you hate.
Even worse, to be attracted to something that could kill you.
So when Massimo called me a slut…
I wanted to kill him.
In that second, he was like every other mafioso scumbag I’d overheard in the stairwell.
I’d started to think Massimo might be different –
But he wasn’t.
He was judge-y –
So quick to label me –
And a coward.
I knew he wanted me.
He just wouldn’t act on it because he was scared shitless of Nona – just like all the rest.
But he sure as hell felt comfortable telling me what he thought of me.
He’d judge me all day long.
Put me down with insults…
Just like all the fuckin’ mafiosos did with every woman in their lives.
Fuckin’ asshole.
It was a good reminder that no matter how hot Massimo was…
And no matter how much he said he wanted to keep me safe…
He was still the enemy.
Never forget that.