His: Tony: The Sabatini Family by Fiona Murphy (sneezy the snowman read aloud TXT) 📕

want anyone, you included, to doubt you’re mine. To doubt this is forever. Do you understand me? Until I draw my last breath.”

I nod, “Sempre.” Forever, I whisper against his lips.

Long after Tony falls asleep, I lay awake listening to him breathing. I don’t want to leave. The last three months have been the best months of my entire life. It's enough for me to live on. This was a crazy dream. This wasn’t really love. It was the forced connection of two damaged people coming together out of an insane moment of life or death. In a few months, this will die, and he’ll be grateful I left. If we managed to make it to married, he’d never let me go, not ever. I can’t let him do that to himself. He deserves better than me.

13

Tony

My alarm wakes me up. I reach for Christy. Her side of the bed is cold. I go still. I don’t hear her in the bathroom. A chill comes over me. No.

I’m up and in the bathroom, nothing. I push open the door to the walk in closet. Closing my eyes, I open them again. It’s gone. The one lone box she kept is gone. Most of her clothes are here, but enough aren’t. She’s gone.

It’s there in the marrow of my bones. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. I’ll have to drag her back by her hair. If she were smart, she would have left not long after I fell asleep. I grab my phone and check the history of the alarm. Midnight. She’s now six hours ahead of me.

I dress on autopilot and go down to my office. Even though I know it’s useless, I can’t not do it. I call in every favor I’m owed. She had to get out of the city some way. How did she do it?

***

Tony

It’s been four days and I’m no closer to finding Christy than I was when I woke up the morning she left. She had liquidated her retirement plan before she came to see me, probably for her run after she killed me. As I was tearing the city apart for her she was walking out of a bank with almost sixty thousand dollars in a cashier’s check. Enough money to start over while still hiding.

If I haven’t picked up her trail by now, I’m not going to. I haven’t slept. It doesn’t matter it’s three in the morning, I go to the only lead I have—Lisa.

I hadn’t because I was sure she probably didn’t know. Christy wouldn’t have gone to her twice. As close as I am to losing it, I didn’t want to take out my anger on Lisa, but I have to be sure.

Lisa answers the door within minutes. “I’m sorry, Tony. I heard she was gone. I swear to you, I don’t know where she is. If I knew, I would tell you. It’s probably why she didn’t tell me.”

Falling onto her couch, I shake my head. “She never talked about somewhere she wanted to go? What about her brother?”

“No, and her brother and her aren’t close. All I know is he’s in California. I don’t even know what city. I’m sorry, Tony. I’m so sorry.” Her hand goes to my chest.

I look away from her, unable to take the tears in her eyes. I’m floating on the edge of sleep when I feel her hand on my cock. “No.” I push her away.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Her hand is back.

I’m not hard. I don’t want her. I want Christy. Christy, who left and isn’t coming back. Christy, who whispered the word forever and was gone like a thief in the night, taking my fucking soul with her.

Her wet mouth is on me. I’m still not hard, still don’t want this. “I can make you feel good. I just want to make you feel good,” she whispers as her mouth moves on me.

Fuck, she’s not even doing it right. Christy’s mouth felt so much better—no, don’t even fucking think of her. She left and she’s not coming back. Whatever it was, I was a fool to believe in it. My hand goes into the fake blonde hair and I move her on my cock. Needing the release, needing to feel something after being numb for the last four days.

Only when I come pleasure runs through me for all of a few seconds. As soon as it’s gone, I hate myself. I hate Lisa for fooling me into thinking I could feel something. Fuck, that’s not fair to her, not fair at all. I blink once, twice, and drift into sleep.

When I wake up, it’s to find Lisa lowering herself onto me. I push her off. What the fuck?

“I’m sorry, Tony. I just wanted to make you feel good.” I stumble away from her.

I make it into the empty apartment I keep in the building. I fall into bed and wake up to a warm body beside me. For five seconds, I wonder if it was all a bad dream. It’s Eve, Joseph let her in. Closing my eyes, I lose myself in her. I’m a bastard. I have never been as punishing as I am with her. I don’t know who I’m trying to hurt, her for not being Christy, or Christy for not being here.

The scotch I have in the place runs out after the first day. Eve leaves crying two days after I wake up next to her. I put out a call for someone else and a new woman comes. I send her away the next day. Then a new one, and then another, until they blur together. None of them give me the release I really need. All of them leaving me aching for Christy, and I hate her, them, and myself.

***

Tony

“Pop.” Dominic is above me. He smacks my cheek. “Come on, Pop. Enough of this. It’s been two fucking weeks. You can’t keep this shit up.”

“Go away,” I groan as I reach for