I frown as I dump her on the bed, watching her scramble back, as if she’s expecting me to lash out and hit her. To my own surprise I have no such plans. Looking at her dirty, no doubt hurting feet, I realize my own probably took a hit too as I sprinted through the foliage. I haven’t felt it through the rush of adrenaline and I still don’t feel it.
Padding through the pile of clothes by my feet, I find my phone and tap the number to the night butler on call.
“Mr. Salvatore?” He sounds awake, alert. I take note of that. I always remember who does good work. I also never forget who fails me.
“Come to my bedroom with a bucket suitable for bathing feet. And bandages.”
“Right away, sir.”
I hang up and take stock of a mute Chloe. She’s still breathing rapidly, her eyes wide and terrified. Normally, I like terrified. Right now, it’s fucking annoying.
“Come.” I wave for her to scramble right the fuck back to me, and she does without hesitation. I have no doubt gotten somewhere with this conditioning game of Miss Becker. Grabbing her under her knees and back again, I move over to the group of armchairs and dump her in one of them. “That was fucking stupid, Chloe. We’re gonna look at those feet first. Then we’ll sleep. I’m tired. You’re not helping.”
Three rapid knocks on the door make me spin around. “Put it right outside and disappear,” I growl. Waiting a few seconds, I then pull the door open and snatch up the orange plastic bucket that also contains an assortment of medical supplies. The door at the far end of the hallway closes and I listen for it to lock before I head back inside and stride to the bathroom to fill the bucket with warm water and some soap. Grabbing a towel, I head back out to Chloe who sits frozen in the same position. Her eyes dart between me and the bucket and she looks as if she thinks I’m about to waterboard her. It irritates me more than it should.
“Just put your fucking feet in the water. Clean up. I don’t want you soiling my sheets.” I have an instinct to bandage her feet when she is done, but instead I toss the rolls of bandages on her lap, annoyed with myself for even thinking it. What the fuck’s wrong with me? I should have had her crawl back on her hands and knees instead, not carrying her like some fucking knight. I’m no hero. I’m the monster. I slay heroes. “Bandage that shit after and stop with your antics. It’s getting old.”
Her glare is dark and filled with emotion, then she pulls the bucket closer and busies herself with her tasks. I stand a moment longer, wondering what the hell I’ve gotten myself into, then I turn and head for the shower. I’ve got significant amounts of grass and some mud to wash off.
When I get back out, I look around the room, a bit wary, but she has thrown her dirty clothes on the floor and curled up in bed beneath the comforter, turned toward me, one hand tucked under her cheek. Her eyes are dark as they meet mine. The despair has returned to her gaze, that old one which has been gone for quite a while. Not that I’ve seen her happy, but she’s seemed somewhat calm and content lately which admittedly has been pretty nice. We had a few good moments this morning. A few. Then she got mouthy, and maybe I was a bit hard on her. I’ll give her another chance tomorrow.
Neither of us speaks. As I pull the comforter over me, snuggling in, I revel in the heat from her skin. Is this what having a companion could be like? My mind spins. I’ve rarely felt this level of exhaustion. It’s a bone deep ache that makes me feel as if I’ll literally fall apart. My last thought is an image of her dirty and bloodied feet. For some reason that disturbs me in a way the marks I’ve made on her back and ass never have. Maybe I should tie her up, but I don’t have the fucking energy.
When I come to, I’ve slung an arm around Chloe and pulled her to me. She lies stiff, her breathing ragged. My first instinct is to pull away. Somehow I feel like I don’t have the right, that I should leave her alone today, but then I slide my hand upward, cupping her full breast, warm and soft. Her nipple peaks against my palm and I pinch it, making her gasp and arch. As always, her body betrays her. Her response to my touch is amazing and it makes me rock hard in a fraction of a second. Sliding my hand down along her belly, pushing it between her legs, I find her pussy slick. I circle her clit as I put my mouth to her ear.
“Go shower. I’ll pick you up in thirty.”
“For what,” she whispers on an exhale as she squirms.
“Breakfast.” I pull myself away and leave her to her own devices, heading for my other bathroom.
“But—”
I don’t turn. She should know better by now than to object.
Spending fifteen minutes in the gym, I then shower and make myself ready. Carmen should come with David any minute now and leave him with the maid. I want to get there as fast as possible. He knows the girl, but she isn’t a trained caregiver. I have yet to find someone who really knows what they’re doing.
Chloe sits on the bed, demurely dressed in a white blouse and dark gray slacks. I let my gaze trail along her body until it lands on her feet.
“Can you walk?”
She nods. “Yeah.”
I wave for her to come to me and she darts up. “Do I have to restrain you?”
“No, Salvatore. You don’t,” she whispers and I believe her. She looks as drained as I feel.
Today she doesn’t stare in wonder at my house and my garden. Her gaze is empty and trained straight forward. With a slight pinch in my chest I realize I miss her excitement from yesterday. When she sees the breakfast table and David, today sitting at the table already, she freezes up. Her eyes dart to mine and they’re filled with concern. I take stock of the last twenty-four hours. Do I want a repeat of yesterday, do I benefit at all from lecturing her when she actually does have a way with my kid that I don’t have myself? A small voice inside tells me I could learn from her if I only listen.
“I don’t want any trouble,” she mouths.
The moment stretches between us. I look between her and my son, then I nod, coming to the only sane conclusion. “Neither do I. I want to see what you can do.”
She frowns, her eyes filled with doubt, but sits obediently when I pull out the chair for her and turns to my son with a little wave. “Hi, David.”
I drink my coffee in silence as I watch them interact. “Chloe,” I say, not even thinking about what I’m going to say, “would I get further with gestures?”
She nods. “He never spoke much at the center either. Except for that time when Kerry…” She snaps her mouth shut and looks horrified.
I wave at her to go on. It’s fucking old news. It happened. Shit happened. I spent half the day yesterday trying to track down Christian. I know he finished his job in Winnipeg. After that, I don’t know shit, and apparently no one else does either. Our people have started to fill up the city, arriving from all parts of the country. Our call to action didn’t go unheard. My sister Bianca in Chicago has sent some of her best men, but stays behind herself to watch her business. I’ll be in meetings the whole rest of the day. I just want a few good moments here and now before all hell breaks loose. I could really use my oldest nephew, one of my best hitmen but it’s as if he’s been swallowed by the earth.
“So it’s not only with you,” she continues. “Yes, I do think you’d get further developing a kind of sign language.”
“An actual sign language?”
“No. Not the sign language. His own. Let him take the lead. Let him teach you. He has a lot to say, but he can only express it in his own way. And… be patient with him. He…” She chews on her lip, her eyes flickering between my hands and my face, then over to David. “He doesn’t respond well to being ordered around. He closes up.”
“I want you to teach me.”
Her mouth falls open. “I… I don’t know if I—”
“It wasn’t a question, Chloe.”
Her lips tighten, then she nods. “Sure. I’ll do what I can.”
I slam my palms together. “Great! Now, tell me about Christine.”
Chloe is already pale, but her features tur
n ashen.
“That wasn’t a question either.”
“Oh, God,” she moans and buries her head in her hands.
“Have you been a naughty girl?”
She looks up with a wince on her face. “I tried to kill that part of myself.”
“Tell me everything. I’ve had a really hard time finding info on you from before you came to San Francisco except for the very basics.”
“It’s because I erased everything.” She averts her gaze and busies herself with holding up a jar of jam before David. He nods and she starts spreading it over his chunk of bread.
“You did what now?”
“I deleted my files.”
My mouth almost falls open. We do that shit all the time, but that’s not something the regular dude on the street knows how to do. “How the fuck did that happen? Tell me everything.”
“I don’t know where to start.” She puts the spoon in the jar and hands David the bread. “Here you go,” she says, her voice soft, soothing.
“Start from the beginning. You grew up in a middle-class family in the suburbs. What the fuck turned the little blonde, pig-tailed girl with braces into a slick forger of identities, and apparently a hacker.”
“Oh, I’m not a hacker. I had help.”
“Who?”
“It was supposed to keep my brothers out of jail. This old dude needed a front, a cute girl by his side. He couldn’t show his face anymore in the business, so he taught me to run his errands and manage his contacts. People underestimate a girl. I got in where no one else could, struck deals they barely knew they were signing while they were busy staring at my tits. Most of the time I ripped them off and they never noticed. Meanwhile I had him teach me everything he knew.”
“How’d you find him? How did the two of you meet up? How old were you?”
“I was going on eighteen. He… caught me with my hand in the cookie jar.”
David twitches and taps the table. We both look at him as he gestures at his mouth.
“You want cookies?” I ask and my son nods. He fucking nods! “I’ll get you cookies after breakfast. Okay?” He keeps nodding and looks at his plate again, going back to pushing around the bread. I stare at him in wonder, then I turn back to Chloe. “Elaborate. Please.”
Her eyes dart between me and David, her teeth digging into her lower lip. Wincing, she takes a deep breath. “He caught me trying to steal from him. I thought he had cash. He did, but… it was all fake.”
“Fake? What was his business?”
“New identities, obviously, money, any document you could think of, diplomas, grades. Anything as long as you could pay.”
“He forged money? Dollar bills?”
She nods.
“Was he good?”
Chloe nods again.
Well fuck me sideways. “And you know how to do all this?” She cocks her head and half-shrugs. I raise my eyebrows. “Are you even an accountant?”
“Fuck yes!” She cringes and shrinks back, glancing at David who opens his mouth as if to speak, then snaps it closed again. Chloe blushes profusely. “Sorry. Yeah, I studied. But… I might have made up my high school diploma.”
I bark out a laugh that makes both David and Chloe jump. “Fuck me. I’m liking this.”
The blush on Chloe’s cheeks deepens and her eyes glitter briefly, then she averts her gaze.
“What made you quit? Have you quit? Or do you still keep this up?”
“I… may have hurt him a little…” She chews on her bottom lip and makes a face.
“Did he come on to you?”
Chloe scoffs. “Not everything is about sex. He was like a hundred fucking years old. He had promised to get my brothers out of the pile of crap they were in, but he never kept up his part of the deal.”
“You killed him?”
She cocks her head and her gaze becomes distant, as if she’s reliving it. “I punched him. He fell. But he was alive when I left him. A few days later he had a heart attack. I don’t know if it was on me, but I didn’t stick around to find out.”
“So Christine turned into Chloe and Atlanta was history?”
She shrugs.
“You’re quite the surprise, Miss Becker.”
“I left that life behind.”
“You couldn’t save your brothers, though. What’d they do time for? Guns, drugs? They are bad boys. You’re quite the broken family, aren’t you? And with a sister that went missing. Murdered parents. Rough start.”
She winces and shakes her head. “Getting into the court system, the police files… that was way over my level.” Narrowing her eyes, she regards me. “But apparently not yours?”
I grin and throw out my hands. “My organization is vast. There’s nothing we can’t do.”
“You’re mob.”
“We’re just businessmen.”
“Some business.”
“You’d know. That old man must have had connections with organized crime. You don’t run a business like that without protection.”
“That’s… for the most part that’s why I didn’t stick around. They came looking for me. I wasn’t home, but I knew as soon as I saw the state of my aunt’s place. I disappeared that same day.”
“And now you’re here.”
“Out of the ashes into the fire,” she says with a scoff.
“It doesn’t have to be bad, Chloe. In a way you’re safe here. Safe from Christine. No one will ever come looking. The past has a bad habit of catching up with you. In my house, yours won’t.”
“Why am I here, Salvatore? Please be honest with me. You can fuck—” Her eyes dart to David, but he’s still pushing around his bread on his plate, making patterns, and seems oblivious to our conversation. “Any woman you want, you just have to snap your fingers. Why do you keep me?”
“I’m bored,” I say. And it is the truth. I’ve fucked whores my whole life. I long for something classier, someone by my side, someone I can show off and who’ll stick with me. I can’t tell her that, though. It’s a silly dream and makes me look fucking whipped.
“So am I.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Are you now? Were you bored yesterday?”
Her gaze darkens. “I was terrified. And hurt.”
“But you weren’t bored.”
She groans. “You’re a big stinking—” Snapping her mouth shut, her eyes still relay the rest of the message.
‘Pile of shit’.
I know.
“So, Chloe Becker, what would make you less bored?” I lean back in my chair and rest my hands on my lap, interlacing my fingers, as I study her. I take in her long, blonde hair, her big blue eyes, straight nose, and those very kissable lips, realizing I’ve, in fact, never been even close to kissing them. I can’t remember when I last kissed a woman at all. Maybe Elena? Twenty-some years ago.
“Let me get back to my life?”
“Not happening.”
She deflates. “What’ll you do when you grow tired of me?”
“Well, don’t let it happen. Keep me entertained.”
“By…” She glances over at David. “By giving in?”
“Among other things.”
“What other things?”
“Figure it out.”
She shakes her head and rubs her hand over her forehead. “I don’t get you.”
I don’t know how to answer that. Especially not when I suddenly have the urge to actually have someone ‘getting’ me. I stand so abruptly that she jumps. David looks up and I put my hand to my heart, rubbing it across my chest, gesturing for him to relax. I don’t know what I do, or how I do it, but he miraculously goes back to his invisible patterns.
“Breakfast is over. Let’s go.” I tap a message to the maid who appears within seconds to keep an eye on David for me.
“Find me some cookies, Girl. Pronto. I’ll be back shortly.” I turn to David. “Will you go with the girl and get your cookies?” He nods and hops off the chair. I look at the girl again. “Do not feed him.
I will.”
“Yes, sir,” she says breathlessly. “Come, David.”
I follow them with my gaze until they leave the room.
Chloe trails next to me back to my wing of the house and gives me a long look before I close the door, locking her inside.
She’s no one special, just an unfortunate person who happened upon me when I suddenly had the urge to improvise and explore, and yet I wonder, walking back to the dining room, if it isn’t I who have conditioned myself on her instead of the other way around. I put a finger to my lips, stroking them briefly, thinking of hers, before I let my hand fall.
I fucking liked talking to her.
I don’t like the feeling. I don’t know it, and I don’t know what to do with it.
Chapter 18
Luciano
My house is full of people. San Francisco is a brewing war zone. There’s been an influx of drugs and weapons that aren’t ours, a couple of dead pimps, and a bunch of scared whores. People we don’t know have been seen at the gambling clubs and there’s been not-so-friendly propositions made to several of our subcontractors. I’ve sat in meetings with Eric and Ivan by my side. My second youngest nephew Matteo is on his way down to play as well. He’s more of a tech guy than muscle, but we have good use for his lawyer degree. His younger brother Luca is too fucking young. I was already a seasoned killer at his age, but he’s lived a charmed life, and hasn’t hardened. I don’t want his amateur ass anywhere close to my office. Their older brother Nathan hasn’t worked on the dirtier side of things since a few years back when he met his fiery spitfire of a woman, Sydney, and they had a kid. I respect his wishes. He’s done right by me the whole time, maintaining our legal businesses, mainly real estate. I have no real use for him here if he won’t fight. There will be mayhem, I have no doubt about it.
And still no word from Christian. I’m getting concerned. He might be gone for long periods of time, but I can always reach him.
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