Page 12 of Runaway in the Mafia
What was I to do now? He wouldn’t tell anyone because his secrets would be out then. My word against his.
Could I run for the rest of my life or hide within theCosa Nostra?
The bus dropped me off, and I stood forlorn. I should never have grown up. Shouldn’t have gone past twenty-three. But I’d kept breathing, and here I was in this mess. I was moving, but my feet felt heavy. Like a block of concrete cuffed to my legs. I couldn’t bring myself to face the world. As I rounded thecorner to Ada’s home, I fought to let the worry, the stress, the disappointment, and the anger shed away from me. With each step I took, I forced a lightness into my heart. I was determined to be the glass-half-full person. I didn’t care for the ten negatives if I could latch onto one that gave me a spark of hope. I had to think of my job. The one I got on my own. Not using my father’s influence or my husband’s. My ex-husband’s, if everything went according to my plan, the one I wasn’t the architect of. Because the thing was, I wasn’t sure anymore what the best outcome was.
CHAPTER SIX
VITALE
It wasn’t me. It was her.
Jazz in the background and a rolled-up cigar in my hand. A puff that did nothing to quell the addiction crawling in my veins. I hated this fucking place. And her. For the doubts she’d planted underneath my skin. She’d sneaked into my thoughts somewhere between rocking up to me in her towel-clad body and her sassy words keeping her surname a refuge. She’d laid a layer of confusion in my mind. With her presence. Her scent. Her words.
It had been easy enough not to step into Carlo’s shoes because temptation had never crossed my path. Temptation, not opportunity. That could grace my lap on any day if I gave a fuck. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew Carlo wasn’t many things, but a good-looking fucker was one thing he was. Together with Mamma, they bestowed their children with good genes. The first woman had come for me when I was fifteen, and it hadn’t stopped ever since. The thing about it was you could see them a mile off. The glitter in their eyes, the pout on ruby red lips, the jiggle of aplunging neckline. If there was one thing I couldn’t bear, it was the fakeness of it all. All it did was make me pull away. If I wanted plastic, I’d inject myself with Botox.
I only ever fucked a woman I paid. One in a brothel. A fancy marble-clad and gold-plated one, but still very much a brothel. If money spoke enough to spread the legs of a woman, it was a brothel. No matter if I held anArdbeg Tenin my hand and my mouth cradled aMayancigar while she took my cock in her mouth. The fact was, the woman on her knees had answered to a paper. Whether it was for a euro or a few thousand was beyond the point. They had my respect because they didn’t pretend to care. Nothing but a good fuck and a goodbye.
I never put myself in the path of temptation simply because there was none to be had. My control was rock solid. A necessity to keep the insanity I’d inherited inside. I could count on one hand the number of times I put myself in a room with a woman alone if I didn’t want to be there. I’d certainly never caught a woman out of a shower wrapped in white cotton.
In that lay the problem. I hadn’t seen it coming, so I’d been caught off guard. That was the only explanation for my wits exiting my mind. I’d feared for a few fucking days that she could be my temptation. The one to snap my control. But there was nothing special about this woman. So I’d met her in a towel. Take the towel away… my fist clenched in the silk lining of my pocket… she’d just be a normal girl. A runaway one at that. I’d see this for myself when I saw her.
That was why I was back in this shithole. Standing across the window in the library, eyes pinned to the front path, because, well, she wasn’t home. I couldn’t be subtle enough to get the location out of Mamma, without getting her hackles up, and Lia had conveniently disappeared into her room. Which left me alone. Frustrated. Bursting with questions to ask her. After I confirmed she was nothing, I couldn’t walk past.
It was two fucking hours later and there was no brown Memphis to prove my point.
A speck of yellow finally sparked my view, and unwittingly, a groan rumbled up my throat. She was coated in yellow from top to toe, and for some reason, it shone on her skin like leafed gold. I couldn’t figure out if it was two pieces or one, but what I could see was the firm shape of her ass in a tight skirt that made my imagination run wild. If the effect hadn’t been obvious from my view behind the window, the eyes of my men at the gate dropping to the ground and rolling up her ass for sure did.
She was unaware of it or it was a fucking show. She walked a heavy walk with her shoulders slumped and eyes pinned to the ground. It was almost as if… she couldn’t bear to look the world in the eye. Curiosity itched my mind just as something else I couldn’t fathom tickled into my chest.Was she… sad?
Half-way up the driveway, she came to a sudden stop, as if my thoughts had carried into her ears. I sidestepped to the wall next to the window. She made me act a thief in my own house. A heartbeat’s pause, and she picked herself up. Literally. The closer she came to the front door, the higher her head came up. The straighter her spine. I could almost imagine the pep talk she was undoubtedly giving herself.
She was almost at the door when another movement distracted me. A man in a brown uniform strolled past the gates, package in hand, because my men’s eyes were pasted on a firm piece of ass.
Idioti!
Annoyance thumped at my temples as I pulled my gaze from the firm piece of said ass. Dropping my half-smoked cigar on to the ashtray on my desk, I strolled to the front door. The distance wasn’t that far from my office. A matter of passing a few rooms and a living room. But it was enough, apparently, for this woman to find herself in a cosy conversation with the courier. Luckily,the guy didn’t speak a word of English. And then I heard her try out her Italian.
“Mi dispiace, non parlo italiano.”
Christ!And I thought her British accent had been sexy.
I rounded the corner to find him all chummy, spilling rapid Italian and stepping too close to her. It was irritation that rattled through me. Nothing else.
“Rocco,” I barked at one of my men, startling them both as their gazes snapped to mine. “If you’d not been distracted by a woman’s ass, you might have seen a man get past you.” Rocco, approaching me from the gates, turned a deep shade of red. He wasn’t the only one who’d turned hot at my words. I could have told him off in Italian and saved her the embarrassment. I didn’t.
The courier backtracked away from me as if I had a gun in my hand. With my deadly glare, he assumed there was no difference in it. He was right. “Next time you come here, you hand the package over at the gates, capisti?” The boy, who couldn’t be more than twenty, nodded, vigorously stumbling over his own feet as he scuttled away.
I was aware of a scowl biting into my face. When I turned to confront it, she was already squeezing past me. I couldn’t resist my next move. Shouldn’t have done it. I knew it. But there wasn’t much thought behind it before I stepped back and hit my palm onto the wall, blocking her entry to the house with my body. She skidded to a stop an inch away from me.
Wham.
There went my next breath.
That fucking scent again.
The air between us hummed with awareness. Almost tangible and heavy. The two steps she took back were hurried. Unnatural. She was scared but tried not to show it. Stood straight as a ruler, looking dead ahead of her. Only her pulse rocketing like a wild thing on her collarbone right above theheart she wore gave her away. It was so tempting that my muscles strained on my arm. It took an inhuman effort not to close that gap and put my lips to it.
“Where’ve you been?” I wanted it to sound like a question, but it came out as an accusation.
