Page 25 of The Don's Prisoner

“Victoria. Are you alright?”

There was silence for a moment. An uncomfortable silence that had me on edge.

“Victoria?”

“Hi, yes, sorry, I’m… well, I’m really flustered at the moment,” she admitted, and I could almost hear how much that admittance cost her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well… I hate to bother you, but I tried Vito, and I can’t reach him… and I know Guy and Caroline are both sleeping. It's kind of late. Did I wake you?”

“No, Victoria, you didn’t wake me,” I smirked and Lucky chuckled softly. He headed for the door to clean up the mess, and I sat down in the chair that Daniel had previously occupied, holstering my weapon again. “What did you need to tell me? I am all ears for you, baby.”

She hesitated, possibly debating whether or not to tell me off for calling her “baby,” but good for her if she was able to refrain from it.

“I’m stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire. Now, I know perfectly well how to change a tire, my dad taught me, but when I got new tires a few weeks ago, I think they used a machine to put them on, and the lug nuts are too tight. I just don’t have the strength to get them off.”

It took every ounce of resilience I had not to make a joke about her having the strength to get me off. It was not the time, nor the place. I hated the thought of her stranded on the side of the road.

“Where are you?”

“Somewhere along the side of the highway going south? I-95 South near… umm… just after the on-ramp at the top, where I-95 starts. I was coming back from Boston. I had a wedding expo I was asked to show some dresses at and… well, I guess I ran over a nail or something,” she explained hastily. It was nice to hear a normal problem for once. A problem I could actually solve.

Come to think of it, I didn’t think I had ever had a woman call me with a problem. Normally, I didn't get close enough to the women I slept with for them to call me with any issue other than needing sex. I was the king of booty calls, but real-life problems? The only women who called me with those were my mother and my sister, both of whom only called when they couldn’t get ahold of my dad first. Not that I blamed them, but it was nice to be there for someone and possibly be able to help.

“Okay, I’m actually not that far from you. I’ll head your way in a few minutes. What I want you to do is get in the car and lock the doors. Do not get out until I get there,” I told her and looked at Lucky. I pointed towards the parking lot, and he nodded, giving me the thumbs up. He would take care of everything as planned. I was mostly just managing the operation anyway.

I wasn’t even supposed to have killed that kid, but sometimes things happened. Mostly I did it because I figured I would have been kinder to him than Lucky. I only killed to get the job done, but Lucky? He actually enjoyed it.

I nodded to Lucky, gave him a returned thumbs up, and headed for my car.

“Are you in the car yet?” I asked Victoria, still on the line with her. I heard a thud on the other end, like a car door closing.

“Yes, I’m in the car.” She paused. “Thank you, Gio. Seriously, this means so much to me. I hate being stranded on the side of a highway. Every time a vehicle passes, the car shakes and it’s just so unnerving.”

“I understand. Why don’t you stay on the line with me until I get there?” I suggested and walked outside to my car. I unlocked it and got in, buckling my seatbelt and throwing it into drive. The car’s Bluetooth speakers automatically picked up the call, and suddenly Victoria’s voice was resonating through my car. It was a cool feature that kept me from having to play around with the settings on my phone and such.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she insisted, “I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will be,” I assured her as I pulled out of the lot of the warehouse and onto the main road, heading towards the interstate. “Just this way I’ll know for sure. Why don’t you tell me about the expo while I drive? I know last week you said it was coming up, so you didn’t have a lot of free time. How did it go?”

It had been about two weeks since our lunch date, and since then, we had both become very busy. We texted daily to keep each other aware of what we were doing, for the most part, but we hadn’t actually seen each other. When I had things to do for my father, I always just told her I had “work” and hoped she understood I couldn’t tell her more about it. Luckily, she either understood, or she just took it at face value and didn’t care to press for details.

But no matter how busy we were, I always made sure to text her goodnight. I set reminders on my phone to text right before she went to bed, so I would be the last thing she thought about before falling asleep, letting me worm myself into her brain. It was nice having someone to talk to and wish a good night to. I never thought I would feel like that about a relationship. I had always thought relationships were like being on house arrest. You had to report everything wanted to do to your warden and let them decide if it was okay to do it or not. I had never thought relationships could be positive things.

Or maybe they weren’t. Maybe it was just Victoria that made the difference.

Now, I wasn’t going to delude myself into thinking that she was talking to me because she liked me. Chances are she saw it as a chore or something she needed to do in order for her and her brother to survive. I did threaten them after all. So, she might not actually feel anything for me. But the fact that she had called me when she needed help was huge.

“Oh, it went fine,” she responded. “It was a long day, but it drummed up a lot of new business. I had a couple of my regular models meet me there, and I dressed them in a few of my favorite designs. They were a real hit, and just from the show alone, I have thirty new fittings booked, which is huge,” she related as I raced to get to her location. Finally, I reached the exit to get on the highway, and I took it a little faster than I probably should have. But lucky for me, the Lambo was built so close to the ground that I didn’t have to worry about it tipping over. If I had been driving an SUV like hers, that would have been a different story.

“That’s fantastic. I’m glad it went so well,” I told her, and I was. I could hear the happiness and the satisfaction in her voice, and it lit something up inside me very akin to pride. It was an odd sensation to have for someone else.

“Yeah, me too,” she answered, “I was so nervous because one of the girls from the boutique was supposed to have come with me to help, seeing as I no longer have an intern, but she never showed up. So I had to do everything myself, which made it a very, very long day,” she sighed. “And then I got the flat.”

“Isn’t that how it normally goes? My nonna always says that bad things come in threes,” I told her.

“Great. So something else is going to happen? Can’t wait for that. Pile it on, why don’t you,” she muttered and I chuckled.

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