An Alliance Bonus Scene

by S.J. Tilly

“What do you mean you have to leave?” Val scowls at my freshly packed luggage next to the suitcase she just returned with.

“It’s just for one night, Shorty.”

When I step toward her, she crosses her arms.

She’s trying to be pissed. Or, well, she is pissed. She’s just trying her hardest to look stern.

But wearing a pink wrap dress, she only looks cute.

And her tits look fucking glorious. They always look glorious, but the more the baby grows, the more she grows... everywhere.

When I grin at her, Val lets out an adorable little growl. “This isn’t funny, Dominic.”

“Never said it was. But it’s not my fault you’re so fucking cute when you’re mad.”

She narrows her eyes. “But why couldn’t you have gone while I was at King and Savannah’s?”

It’s a reasonable question. She’s been in Minnesota for the last three nights, while I stayed here because I was busy working.

King and Nero knew what I was doing, but my Valentine has no idea.

So it’s time for me to show her.

“Come.” I hold my hand out.

My wife purses her lips, then heaves out a breath as she unfolds her arms and places her hand in mine.

With my free hand, I pick up my bag, then lead her out of our bedroom.

Together, we walk down the hall. Past the guest room my mother uses. Past the empty room that used to be Val’s office.

I catch her eyes lingering on the open door, on the color samples painted on the back wall, and I squeeze her fingers.

“I want the green,” Val whispers beside me.

I squeeze her fingers again. “Then we’ll do the green.”

She reaches across with her free hand and grips my forearm.

I stop walking, set my bag down, and pull her into me.

Val wraps her arms around my waist, hugging me tightly. “Sorry.”

I kiss her hair. “Hush, Mama. You have nothing to apologize for.”

I kiss her hair again.

We decided that we’d convert the office up here into the baby’s room. We wanted it on the same level as our bedroom. And since my mom made it clear she would be sleeping over often once baby Gonzalez arrived, we figured it would be good to keep her room the same. Hence converting Val’s office.

I secretly removed all the recording devices that had been in there—deciding that would be a detail I take to my grave. Then we stripped the room of everything and put seven paint options on the wall.

That was weeks ago.

Val hasn’t been able to decide on a color. Going back and forth between gender neutral colors, wanting to wait until we know if the baby is a boy or girl… then breaking down into tears because she’s terrified she’ll make the wrong choice.

I kiss her again.

My poor Val. She had such a shit childhood. And now she can’t shake the fear that she’ll be a bad mother.

I understand that brains work in mysterious ways. But it’s the dumbest fear I’ve ever fucking heard.

Val is going to be a fantastic mother.

She’s going to be the absolute best.

Because that’s what she is. The best.

“Green is perfect.” I stroke my hand up her back. “And if you don’t like it next month, we can paint it again.”

She sniffs. “Okay.”

“We can change the color every month between now and your delivery,” I tell her calmly as I swallow down my own fear.

I’ll never tell her how terrified I am of her giving birth. I did my research. Which is precisely why I’ve hired the best team of delivery doctors in the country. Why I moved two of the doctors into this very building. Another detail I never intend to tell my wife.

Val exhales. “I like the green.”

“It’s a good color.”

I wait for her to pull away first, then I take her hand back in mine, grab my bag, and start walking again.

When we reach the bottom of the stairs, I turn away from the great room, away from the front door, and lead her down the other hall.

“Where are we going?” Val asks with a touch of humor in her voice.

I drop my bag to the floor but keep walking. And I don’t answer.

We walk past the gym, the guest rooms, the bathrooms… then I pause.

The door at the end of the hall, the one leading to my office, is open. But the door before us is closed.

This was my cigar room.

A relic from a different life.

A room I occasionally sat in, never smoked in, and didn’t need.

A room that’s nothing like it was before.

Val tips her head back to look up at me. “What’s in there?”

She knows I wouldn’t bring her to this stuffy room for no reason. And her cleverness is just another thing I love about her.

“In there”—I tip my head toward the room —“is the reason I couldn’t come to Minnesota with you.”

Her brows raise. “Oh?”

I nod. “Open the door, Valentine.”

Still holding my hand, she uses her other one to turn the handle.

Val glances up at me once more, then she pushes the door open.

And gasps.

I squeeze her fingers, then release her hand so I can place my palm on the small of her back, gently urging her inside.

She steps forward. “What is this?” Her question is a whisper.

“It’s whatever you want it to be,” I whisper back.

Her feet are silent on the thick floral rug that covers nearly the entire floor.

I follow her into the room, feeling a bit nervous. “If there’s anything you don’t like, we can change it.”

Val turns her head, left to right, then back again, not answering.

She takes another step deeper into the room, then tips her head back to look at the newly painted navy blue ceiling. At the strings of lights crisscrossing above us. At the chandelier hanging in the center of it all.

She lifts her hand, silently pointing to the wall of artwork. A collage of colorful paintings in gold frames.

She covers her mouth when she turns to the wall of built-in bookshelves, already filled with novels but with space to add more.

She steps forward and drags her hand across the top of the emerald velvet couch.

I finally let my hand drop from her back when she moves to circle behind the seating area, to the desk—already equipped with a monitor, lamps, notebooks, and the framed photo of us from our wedding.

She walks behind the desk, her fingers touching the bright yellow chair.

Her eyes move around the room as she makes her way back to me.

I tap the remote on the end table beside me, and one of the large frames on the walls shimmers as the would-be painting reveals itself to be a TV screen.

Val blinks, then, stopping before me, lifts her gaze to meet mine. “Why?”

The side of my mouth pulls up into a soft smile. “Why would I do this for you?” I lift my hand, stroking her cheek with my thumb before palming the side of her neck. “This is nothing. The smallest of anything. Hardly a moment compared to what you give me, Valentine. You’ve already changed my life. You’re my world.” I bring my other hand up to rest on her stomach. “And you’re about to give me even more. More than I ever could have hoped for.” I slide my hand over to the bow tied at her side. “Our home is about to become overrun with baby. And I know you.” I pull the end of the strip of fabric, unraveling the knot. “I know you’re going to put everything you are into being a mother. But you’re going to need a space that’s just yours.” The tie slips free, and her dress drapes open. I slide my hand down her neck and pull the dress off her shoulders until it slides down her arms and drops to the floor. “And this room is just for you.” I let my eyes drag down over her form. Over her matching white bra and panties. “After this.” I reach around behind her and unclip her bra. “After I leave you with the memory of coming on my face, I won’t set foot in this room again.” I lick my lips as her tits bare themselves to me. Then I lift my gaze back to hers. “Not unless you beg me.”

Her lips are parted. And her chest is rising and falling with quick breaths.

I bend, keeping eye contact as I lift one of her tits and feed it to myself. Sucking her nipple into my mouth while I rub the other one between my fingers.

A puff of air leaves her, like she meant to say something, but no sound comes out.

I smile against her flesh.

Then I lower to my knees.

Hooking my fingers in the waistband of her panties, I keep watching the expression on her face as I pull them down, away from her core.

Val steps out of the scrap of material, and I slide it into my pocket.

“Foot up, Angel.”

She stares down at me. “What?”

I tap her ankle, then I pat the velvet ottoman beside us. The one that matches the couch. “Put your foot up here. Open yourself for me.”

Val reaches down and braces her hands on my shoulders. Then she lifts her leg, placing her foot where I told her.

“Fuuuu—” I cut off my own groan when I lean in and seal my lips against her slit.

Valentine moans above me, her fingers digging into my shoulders, gripping at my suit jacket.

I flatten my tongue against her pussy and lick.

I lick and I lick.

I taste her.

I consume her.

I push my tongue as deep into her entrance as I can get.

I fuck her with my mouth.

And she doesn’t stop moaning.

She doesn’t stop tugging at my jacket.

She doesn’t hold still.

My fingers dig into her hips.

My hands slide around to her ass.

My grip pulls her tighter against my mouth.

I reach between her legs.

I push my finger into her drenched hole.

I suck her clit between my lips.

And with my name bouncing off the walls, Val’s pussy clenches around my finger, and she does exactly what I told her to. She comes on my face.

**

“Nice of you to show up.” Nero gives me a bland look as I climb into the cockpit beside him.

I shrug. Nero’s hardly one to judge, considering he’s just as obsessed with his wife as I am with mine.

And I’m not going to apologize for running late. Especially when it was because Val jumped right to the begging, and I complied by making her come a second time. On my cock.

He side-eyes me as he gets up from his seat.

“I latched the door.” I roll my eyes.

“Can never be too careful,” Nero, man of mayhem, replies as he double-checks my work.

**

“Fucking Florida.” Nero grimaces as we descend the stairs into the airport hangar.

“Fucking Florida.” I agree, as the heat and humidity assail us.

One of our men is waiting for us next to an all-black sedan.

I take the keys from him with a nod. “Shouldn’t be more than two hours.”

Dusk greets us as I pull out of the brightly lit building.

Nero hums as he enters the address of our destination into the GPS, and I ignore him as I follow the directions.

Twenty minutes later, I’m backing into a parking space in front of the two-story assisted living facility.

Silently, like I’ve been a member of The Alliance for years, we exit the vehicle and walk side by side to the front door.

It’s after visiting hours. But no one is sitting at the front desk that’s visible through the glass doors of the main entrance. Meaning no one sees Nero pick the lock.

We step inside.

“What’s the room number?” Nero doesn’t bother lowering his voice, and not for the first time, I wonder how he’s been so successful at sneaky shit since he’s always so damn loud.

I sigh. “One eighteen.”

Checking the wall plaque, I turn right, following the arrow telling me this is the hall with rooms 110 to 120.

I breathe through my mouth, forcing the smell of this place out of my nose.

One perk of being rich as fuck? I’ll never have to live in a place like this. I can just hire private nurses to live with us. Or I can jump off the fucking balcony. Either way.

But as my shoes connect with the floor below me, I remember why I’m here.

I think of that night when Val told me everything.

When she laid out the details of her past.

When she told me about her mom.

When she cried in my arms…

And my rage builds.

“Find a wheelchair.” My words come out gritted as I stop in front of the door I want.

Nero hums, then disappears from my side.

I think about nineteen-year-old Valentine down here, alone in this state.

I seethe as I think about this man bullying her out of her money.

The money her dead father left for her. Because he might have been a coward, but he still cared about his daughter. He still wanted her taken care of.

But the man in here is trash.

I use my own set of tools to pick the lock to room 118.

The man in here is filth.

I swing the door open.

The man standing five feet in front of me, he made a traumatized teenage girl pay the debts of her junkie mother.

Stepping over the threshold, I clench my hands into fists at my sides.

And I let him see my anger.

The man standing three feet in front of me, he took advantage of my wife.

The man one foot in front of me has a record dotted with suspiciously dropped sexual assault charges. All from women who lived in buildings where he was the landlord.

He’s hunched over a bit, hands gripping a walker, an oxygen rope secured under his nose. But he’s still tall.

Would have been imposing.

Would have been intimidating to a scared, confused Valentine.

The man staring at me, wondering if he should know me, has had years to think he’s gotten away with it.

With all of it.

But this man…

His time is up.

The door opens behind me, and Nero’s whistling floats into the room.

The man’s brows furrow. “Do I know you?”

And my control snaps.

I dart my fist out, my bare knuckles connecting with his cheek.

The door clicks shut behind me.

The man’s eyes roll back.

And he crumples to the floor.

Nero steps up beside me.

We both look down at the man.

Nero nudges his leg with the toe of his shoe.

We look at each other. Then back down at the body.

Then I look back up at Nero and the motherfucking light blue nursing scrubs he’s wearing.

I blink. “Why…” I shake my head, deciding I don’t care.

Nero nudges the man’s leg again. Harder this time.

The leg flops back into place.

“Well,” Nero huffs. “That was anti fucking-climactic.”

I work my jaw before I blow out a breath. “Well, yeah. I wasn’t expecting him to fucking die from a single punch.”

“How old is he anyway?”

“Eighty?” I lift a shoulder. “Has some terminal bullshit that put him in here.”

“And apparently made him weak as fuck.” Nero sighs, clearly disappointed at the lack of excitement.

Same, buddy. I was really looking forward to telling this fucker why I was here.

I kick the walker out of the way. “Let’s get him in the car.”

With Val’s mother’s dead landlord seated in the wheelchair, I open the door, and Nero pushes him out into the hallway.

A woman approximately a century old is shuffling down the hall in our direction.

“Evening.” I greet her, making sure to use my most charming smile.

She pauses her tiny steps as we approach.

Her eyes narrow as she looks at Nero in his too-tight cotton outfit.

Then her eyes drop to the man in the wheelchair.

The man is sitting up, but his head is hanging down and to the side.

One arm flops off the armrest.

The old woman brings her attention back up to my partner in crime. “The Devil finally come to take that man?”

Nero’s mouth pulls into a disturbing grin. “A devil named Dominic.”

The old woman nods once, then, as Nero pushes the wheelchair past her, she spits on the dead man.

Her eyes catch mine, and I wink, then I follow Nero out of the building to the trunk of my car.

**

Back in the wheelchair, we push the landlord up the sidewalk to the front door of Sunny Side Funeral Home.

Nero makes a face at the name on the building. “Like an egg?”

“I fucking hope not.” I work on unlocking the deadbolt. “Pretty sure the insides aren’t supposed to be runny when they leave here.”

Nero makes a noise. “Maybe the sunny side up is referring to how they come in. All squishy bio shit.”

“Dude.” I scrunch my nose. “Don’t ruin eggs for me.”

We aren’t quiet as we enter the funeral home. And we flip on lights as we go.

There’s a home attached to the back of the building, and it has one resident. But we aren’t here to be sneaky.

We’re here… for something else.

Nero stops at the top of the stairs that lead down into the basement. “It’s down there?”

I nod.

“Okie doke.” He tips the wheelchair forward.

The landlord tips out of the chair and goes for a tumble down the stairs.

I feel like I should probably say something. About how tossing a dead body down a flight of stairs is… wrong. But considering I’m the one who killed the man, it feels a little hypocritical.

Plus, it would be hard to carry a corpse down stairs.

Wheelchair empty, Nero gives it a shove, and it rolls across the floor, knocking into the wall.

We follow the landlord into the basement.

Nero looks around the large room, hands on his hips. “It’s creepy down here.”

“What’s creepy is having to see the outline of your dick in those fucking pants,” I tell him, hating his scrubs more and more every minute. “Now shut up and help me get this bastard on the slider thing.”

Nero rolls out his shoulders, proving he knows how tight his uniform is, but he still helps.

The landlord is in place, flat on his back, when we finally hear steps on the stairs.

“Who’s there?” a man’s voice, not as old and frail as the dead man’s was, calls out.

“Finally,” Nero calls back. “We’ve been waiting forever. Boss said he called you an hour ago.”

“You can’t just…” The funeral director comes to a stop when he sees us.

“We can,” I say as I lunge forward and grip the front of his shirt.

He tries to pull away. But he’s no match for me.

No match for my rage, which has returned full force.

I lean in until our faces are just inches apart. “Turn it on.”

“Turn what on?”

Nero slaps his palm against the side of the large incinerator.

I release the funeral director and watch him gulp when he notices that we came with our own body.

But then he does as we ask. Just like I knew he would. Because he’s been doing this, burning evidence, for decades. Taking payments from men. Domestic abusers.

He smiled sadly in the faces of the grieving while shaking hands with the worst sort of humans.

The incinerator roars to life, the flame flaring bright.

The funeral director reaches for the lever that will roll the corpse into the machine.

“Not yet.” I stop him. “Come here.”

The man hesitates but slowly makes his way to me, stopping a few feet away, back to the movable platform holding the landlord.

He’s not tall.

Not fit.

About sixty.

An unlikely suspect.

Until you look at his eyes.

This man’s soul left his body a long time ago.

“Did you know…” Nero moves to my side so he’s not down range from me. “Funeral homes prefer to hire women because they’re less likely to fuck the bodies.”

Slowly, I turn my head to look at the man I call a friend. “Are you fucking serious?”

He shrugs as he nods.

I turn to the funeral director. “Is that fucking true?”

He darts his eyes back and forth between me and Nero. “I-I don’t fuck the bodies.”

“Not the question we asked,” Nero mumbles.

I shake off that visual. “Six years ago—”

The man holds up his hands. “I’ve never f-fucked a body.”

I grind my teeth, then raise my voice. “Six years ago, you hosted a funeral. It was here. Upstairs.”

The funeral director swallows. “I do a lot of funerals.”

“This one had one guest.” I reach up and undo the top button of my shirt. “A girl. Too young to even rent a car.” I undo the second button of my shirt. “Do you remember her name?”

He swallows again as he shakes his head.

“You forgot. Because she wasn’t important to you.” I undo another button. “But she’s important to me.” I pull the sides of my shirt open. “She’s my everything.”

I watch as his eyes lower to my neck. As they scan, left to right, reading the name tattooed across my throat.

“My Valentine. My wife.” I lower my hand to my side, slipping it under my suit jacket. “The funeral was for her mother. A woman who tormented her every day of her miserable life. And with your help, she continued to torment her even more with her death.” I pull my gun out of its holster, and the man steps back, bumping into the edge of the platform behind him. “So, now you’ll pay for your actions by getting the treatment her mom should’ve had.” I raise the gun. “A forgotten pile of ashes, with no one to mourn them.”

He lifts his hands.

I pull the trigger.