And if I don’t accept then will my dad be tossed overboard some small boat in the middle of the night just like garbage?
With each passing day this becomes less about dad and more about me. And considering my dad didn’t exactly fight for me when my mom wanted custody years ago…I read the court documents…and now my mom’s more than done with me, I feel a bit lost. I hate to say it but maybe I do have some daddy issues.
And Stefano, who must be somewhere around forty although finding any concrete information about him online was impossible, could be exactly what I need right now.
“Where you going, honey?” my dad asks from the couch. He’s taken today off of work to try and come up with a solution, but unfortunately he’s acting like the solution is in the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels.
“Just out for a drive.”
“Okay,” he slurs. “You need to borrow my car.”
“I have a car, dad.”
“Oh, right,” he says, standing. He stumbles over to me and hugs me, at least I think that’s what he’s doing. It’s more like he’s using me for balance since there’s not a wall nearby. “You know your dad loves ya, right?”
“I know dad,” I say, and I damn near cry realizing this is a man who’s talking like he thinks these are his last days on earth. “I know,” I say, leaving out the last part of that sentence…what I have to do.
CHAPTER 8
Stefano
“You’re not in a position to dictate terms, Miss Smith,” I say. Little does she know she is, but still, I have to keep my cool.
I’d give anything to taste this sweet young thing…to spend time with her and get inside that mind of hers…to find out what makes her so damn feisty that she has the balls to stand up to me. Hell, Rocco doesn’t even have balls as big as she does.
“My body, my terms.”
“A thousand of the debt a day will be washed away each day. That’s fifty days you need to spend here.”
“Five days. Ten thousand a day.”
“Don’t be foolish. The highest escorts don’t even pull that from our best clients.” I pause. “Ten thousand a week. That’s five weeks.”
“That’s too much. My dad will grow suspicious and I’ve got things to do.”
“Things to do?” I lean back in my chair. “Saving your father from…ruin, doesn’t count as something to do? It isn’t high on your list of priorities?”
I just leave the word ‘ruin’ up to her interpretation, because frankly I don’t know what it means myself right now. All I know is I’m going to come to some sort of terms with this girl if it’s the last thing I do today. Hell, I’m so damn sprung for her I’m tempted to agree to the five days just so I can put my tongue on her pussy before lunch. Hell, she’ll be my lunch.
“Half that. Two and a half weeks and the debt is absolved and you’ll never let him gamble with you, or any other websites that you are affiliated with or know the owners of again.”
I breathe out hard. “You drive a hard bargain,” I say. Always compliment the other negotiating party when you’re about to rip them off. Fuck I want her so bad she could have halved the five days at this point. I need to agree before I jump over my desk and plunge my dick into what’s surely the tightest, freshest pussy on the planet right now. “Deal,” I say, standing from my desk and moving toward her.
I reach out my big mitt and she looks at it like it’s something to be afraid of. “We have a deal, right?”
Her tiny little head nods and from this angle all I can think of is exactly how close it’s going to look when she’s on her knees below me, her head moving back and forth as my dick is buried deep in her throat. Fuck girl, shake my hand and make this official so we can get started before I explode in my pants.
Her tiny little hand reaches out and she places it in mine.
Fuck me. A surge of electricity leaves her fingers and shoots through my entire body. I freeze up for a second and forget to actually shake, until she moves her hand vigorously up and down.
“You’ll have one week to get your things in order. And your father will be looked after while you’re away.”
“My father looked after?”
“He’s been drinking heavily lately. We don’t need him thinking his daughter’s gone and run off, which might push him over the deep end.”
“You’ve been watching him? Watching me?”
“Me, no. Someone on my…team, yes.”
She looks like she’s about to pull her hand away and cancel the agreement.
“It’s just like any debt collection agency. You have to take steps to make sure the debtor doesn’t run or do something drastic.”
“This isn’t drastic enough?”
“We’ll see in a week.”
CHAPTER 9
Sloane
One week later
I run my hands along my skirt as Giovanni, Stefano’s driver, navigates traffic.
I was expecting Rocco to pick me up, but instead this new guy, Giovanni, arrived in a long, sleek black town car with tinted windows. Thank god my dad wasn’t home to see it.
I told my dad I was enrolling in summer school at the community college and would be staying with my friend for a few weeks while the class was in session. It was a poor excuse for why I wasn’t going to be around, but as best as I could come up with.
My dad’s pretty checked out lately anyway, so he didn’t exactly argue. I think he just wants to be left alone to wallow in his pity so he was probably happy to see me go. Story of my life.
As we pull up to a stoplight there’s part of me that wants to flee, to just push this car door open right now and run. I’m already second-guessing my decision and just wish this two and a half weeks were already over, despite how much I want to experience Stefano and what he has to offer.
Giovanni slowly pulls from the light and into the shopping mall parking lot where he places a quick call from the bushy perimeter.
Great, this is where he’s going to whack me and dump me in the bushes.
But that’s not the case at all. Instead an absolutely stunning woman in high heels comes over to the car with a big smile on her face.
Giovanni rolls down the window, they exchange two kisses, and she hands him a bag with a big Armani logo on it.
And then she’s gone, easily navigating the uneven pavement of the parking lot in those sky-high stilettos.
“Mr. Scaletta requests you put this on,” he says, handing the bag back through the open interior window to me in the back seat. The tinted window goes up and I realize he’s giving me privacy to change right now. The idea that there might be cameras in here fills me and I don’t really want to change, only to roll my eyes at myself. I’m afraid to change in the car, yet I’ve given myself to Stefano for two and a half weeks? That makes no sense.
I open the bag, my mind both on what’s inside and his last name. Scaletta. It sounds sexy and intriguing coming off my lips. But what’s even sexier is the little black dress with the Armani tag inside the bag.
And the matching shoes that I find when I stick my hand in even deeper.
I slide into the clothes, feeling the fabric hug my skin and I wish I would have cut down on the Ben & Jerry’s these past few days when I was a bit stressed out at how this was all going to work out.
“Are you dressed,” comes over some sort of intercom and I flinch, bringing my hands to my chest, feeling the soft fabric with my fingers.
“Yes,” I say, and the window descends.
“Mr. Scaletta apologizes, but he said you’re going to be thrown into the fire immediately.”
Thrown into the fire? I don’t like the sound of that at all. If this is some sort of swinger’s club or orgy then I’m out. That’s not part of our agreement. I may be giving him my body, but to him and only him…and he can’t be disrespectful about it or hurt me.
More importantly I’m not giving him my mind. This experience is going to change and affect me forever. That’s enough of the mental side of m
e he’s going to get.
“What does that mean?” I say softly, trying to bite my tongue and give Giovanni a chance to answer before I jump down his throat.
“That means he has a charity event and you’ll be escorting him.”
“What charity event?”
“An art auction.”
My humble background has no response for that so I just go with a simple, “Oh.”
“We’re almost there,” Giovanni says. And a few minutes later when he pulls up right in front of some incredible looking building, he rushes around to get my door and there stands Stefano with about a hundred paparazzi right behind him flashing their cameras, I know I’m more than almost there. I’ve arrived.
But in what way, and is it good or bad?
CHAPTER 10
Stefano
I hate all these cameras on her. Not because I don’t want everyone to know she’s here with me, and only me. Far from that.
I don’t want those other pricks looking at my woman…and that’s exactly what she is.
Yeah, maybe I ‘bought’ her for two and a half weeks, but that’s not how I look at it. I look at it like this is my chance to show her what my world is all about, to welcome her in, to possess her and see how she responds. To give her a chance.
Fuck it. Who am I kidding? This is my chance to take this little flower, watch her blossom, and then prove to her she’ll only ever grow to her full heights in my garden, meaning under my roof and my tutelage.
Her dad may be a fuck up, but she sure isn’t. The way she looks in that dress though. My dick jerks in my suit pants as I reach out my hand to help her from the car.
Giovanni wisely backs away. “I’ve got her now,” I snarl. I’m glad he brought her here yet angry at myself I couldn’t be the one to pick her up personally. When business calls you have to answer, and I had to get some cop tickets to this damn art auction even though there’s no way he could afford anything in here, at least on his salary.
I spotted the guy twenty-five large so he can buy something for the station, or the chief, or whatever. All I know is the guy has an uncle that’s way higher up than he is, and he keeps any heat off my back when it comes to the online world. Those are the connections I need more than the local guys. The feds are what I really need stuffed in my back pocket, and I’ve got dozens of them there already.
Her nervous little shaky hand extends from the town car and I reach for it, feeling that same lightning bolt from her touch as the last time.
“Step back,” Giovanni says to the paparazzi. They’ve never seen me in public with a woman. There’s a first time for everything just like there was a first time for negotiating with a woman, for letting a debt slide, for everything she’s already made me do.
I watch as her chest hitches in that dress I picked out for her, a black number that will go perfectly for what’s in my other hand.
“Turn around,” I say to her as I carefully sweep her hair to the side and fasten a sapphire necklace around her neck.
Her hands come up, touching it.
“Oh yeah, it’s real all right,” I say, reading her body language. “This is all real.” I pause. “Let’s go.”
“Okay,” her voice quakes and her first step is a wobbly one.
I grab her forearm and take her arm in mine as I let her balance against the side of me. That heaving chest of hers is now pressed against my arm and fuck do I ever want to grab the back of that dress, jerk it off and then do the same with her panties…except with my teeth.
I can only imagine what kind of little panties she’s got on. Probably some simple cotton thing from Target or something. Damn, her innocence thrills me. The idea that she’s in a five G dress with clearance rack panties on underneath is the ultimate in high-low lifestyle.
“Over here, Mr. Scaletta,” the paps shout, but I don’t pay them any mind. My eyes are locked on her. I’m obsessed already and I haven’t even been inside her yet.
“Who’s the mystery woman?” another questions. I just snarl in his direction and he backs off behind the roped off red carpet.
“Who’s the lucky lady?” yet another tries. I’m not giving them an ounce of information about her. She’s mine, someone entirely different than the climbers and scumbags I have to associate with in this world.
I’m sure they’re online already trying to gather ‘facts’ about her. Let them. They won’t find anything. I already checked.
She doesn’t even use social media, or at least she doesn’t post her picture. Imagine that…a young woman who’s not trying to show off, except to post pictures of the latest books she read and her personal opinions of them. And they say kids these days are falling behind in school.
She can’t even get enough, reading on her free time. That’s the kind of woman I need by my side. One who both explores her imagination and has a thirst for knowledge at the same time. You have to be sharp and creative in my world. And she’s gonna do just fine…once I show her the way.
And that starts tonight.
CHAPTER 11
Sloane
We’re seated in the front row and I’m holding what looks like a simple fan for fanning yourself, which of course is used for bidding. Stefano tells me to bid on anything I want, but if I buy something overpriced or something that doesn’t fit in his home that I’ll get a spanking when we get home.
I try and play off how excited it makes me, yet surely he can tell. He has to be a master of reading body language, right? Sniffing out lies and knowing who’s snitching and things like that are a matter of life and death in his world.
The auctioneer reads off something about an incredible ‘recovered’ sculpture from Donatello and I can’t help but giggle.
“What’s so funny?” he asks, his lips almost grazing my ear as he leans over to speak to me. I can feel the heat from his breath, his skin, and I swear his jacket as his body must be on fire. It’s not hot in here, per say, but the lights that are shining on us are definitely not cold either.
“One of my best friends…her name is Vinessa Dontalli, she’s extremely creative, fun, and beautiful and that made me laugh when I heard the name.”
“Well then I guess we should buy this.”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
“Starting at one hundred thousand,” the auctioneer says. “One hundred thousand can I get one hundred thousand do I hear one hundred thousand,” he mumbles and I feel Stefano’s hand grip my wrist and he raises my elbow, which in turn raises my hand.
“Is that one hundred thousand we have in the front row,” the auctioneer says, causing Stefano to nod and narrow his glance at him. “If the lovely lady will please raise her paddle all the way up we’ll make sure to know when she’s bidding.”
Stefano’s teeth come out and the auctioneer quickly breaks eye contact, looking away.
“One ten,” comes from the back and the auctioneer points.
“That prick will not beat us. No one will, especially not him.”
“Two fifty,” Stefano says, raising my hand again.
It’s the first time all night I’ve seen someone just double the bidding on their own like that, but the auctioneer seems to take it in stride…after watching his Adam’s apple move up and down his throat as he swallows hard, and not from a lack of water as he’s been drinking like a fish all night.
Not two minutes later the auctioneer can’t find any other bids and Stefano takes my hand and leads me to a back room.
“What happens now?” I ask as we stand in a poorly lit area behind the stage.
“Well,” he begins, running the backs of his fingertips across my collarbone, brushing my hair to the side as he moves impossibly close to me. “They’ll prepare our purchase and deliver it.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“It kind of looked like that famous sculpture of David The Thinker.”
“I was thinking of something myself,” Stefano says, his voice somehow finding an even lo
wer octave.
My heart jackknifes in my chest.
“Uh huh?” I whimper.
“That it’s time for me to take possession of something else.”
“You bought something else?” I ask, knowing the answer but trying to bide time.
“I couldn’t buy it because it’s priceless.”
“Priceless?” I swallow.
Dad's Italian Mafia Friend (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 109) Page 4