The Billionaire and The Virgin

by Bella Love-Wins

  The woman made something close to a squeal. The gate opened and the driver took the car through.

  “The housekeeper,” Angelo explained to me and Sophia. “She’s been with us since I was little.”

  “Ah.”

  There were a lot of things different about Angelo’s world. Sometimes I could forget he was from a rich Mafia family, but then he said something vague about ‘over sea assets’ or mentioned his family’s full time housekeeper (for just one of their homes, at that) and I remembered just where he was from.

  “Wow,” Sophia breathed.

  The car slowed slightly as the driveway took us up a slight incline then in a circle and around a water fountain.

  The house… Well, mansion, actually, in front of us stood monolithic against the sky, giving the Salvatore home in Atlantic Beach a real run for its money. Around the tall, brown shuttered windows, its walls boasted a light cream color. With its brown roof and wrought iron banisters at the balconies it mimicked many of the houses I saw on my trip to Italy. There was even a front patio with a surrounding wall extending out from the house.

  The car stopped at the walkway to the front door. We piled out, Angelo and the driver grabbing our suitcases from the trunk.

  I took hold of the one rolling bag I brought and stared at the house. Though beautiful, the sight of it filled me with dread.

  “Ready?” Angelo asked. Not waiting for a response, he whisked by me. Sophia followed, dragging her full Louis Vuitton travel set behind her.

  He pushed open the gate halfway up the walkway. Taking a breath, I mustered up enough courage to follow.

  Before he had a chance to touch the front door it flew open. A pretty haired woman in her fifties or sixties smiled up at him.

  “My sweet boy!” she cooed.

  Angelo bent to kiss both her checks. “Mariel, how are you?”

  “So good,” she gushed, her eyes flicking over his shoulder. “You have two girlfriends, huh?”

  My cheeks heated up. Angelo and Sophia just laughed.

  “I’m just joking honey,” Mariel told me, stepping forward to pat my shoulder.

  She was nice, but her apology put me on the spot even more. “It’s all right,” I mumbled.

  “Holy Moly,” she declared, taking two of Sophia’s bags. “Let’s get you inside. Angelo, your mother and father are in the great room.”

  “Thanks Mariel.”

  Sophia strode across the threshold, already confident in her new surroundings. I went a little slower. As I passed Angelo he put his hand against the small of my back. The touch helped me breathe easier, helped me realize there truly wasn’t anything to be worried about.

  The foyer, wide and airy, went up to the second floor. A winding staircase matched the iron gates outside. Four large, arched doorways went off from the spot we stood, giving away little sneak peaks of the rest of the house.

  Mariel smiled at me. “Just leave your suitcase here. I will put everything away.”

  I released my tight grip and followed Angelo and Soph through one of the doorways and down a wide hall. More doors opened into various rooms. A library. Something that looked like a mini movie theater. At the end of the hall several steps took us down into what had to be the great room.

  With one wall covered in windows overlooking the side yard, comfortably arranged furniture took up the rest of the space. Fire crackled in a large fireplace, stockings lining up its mantel.

  “Here they are!” boomed a familiar voice. Angelo's father rose from one of the armchairs and came forward to kiss all three of us.

  “How are you Mr. Salvatore?” I asked as he released me.

  He cocked his head and playfully narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have to call me that. You know that.”

  “Okay,” I said, just to appease him.

  “This place rocks, Pops,” Sophia chirped, using the name Angelo did for his father.

  Mr. Salvatore chuckled and pinched her cheek. “You girls look so beautiful. Even with all that bad city air. How can that be?”

  “Good Italian genes, I guess,” she replied.

  I nodded, wishing I had just an ounce of Sophia’s charisma.

  When Angelo wrapped his arm around me I felt infinitely better. His touch had a way of working magic no matter what the circumstances.

  “Angelo!”

  We all looked around. Mrs. Salvatore hurried through the doorway. With her white turtle neck, tight jeans, and high heel boots, she gave any supermodel a run for her money. It was impossible to tell just how old she was, what with her face nearly free of wrinkles. I’d been with her out in public before and watched as men as young as eighteen stopped what they were doing to ogle as she passed by.

  “Mom,” Angelo grinned.

  She gave him a quick hug and then wrapped both me and Sophia up at the same time. Sandwiched between the two of them, a little bit of tension left me.

  I didn’t know why I’d been nervous. Mr. and Mrs. Salvatore were amazing.

  Just as she released us, a stampede of feet echoed in the hall. Into the great room came Dominic, Franko, and Tre.

  “What up?” Franko shouted.

  The three of them surrounded us, fist bumping Angelo and side hugging me and Soph in that way guys sometimes do when they’re trying to be friendly with a girl but not get too touchy-feely.

  “How was your flight?” Dominic asked.

  Franko jumped in before anyone could answer. “Man, we’ve been waiting for you forever. We’re gonna play football. You game?”

  “Yeah,” answered Angelo. “Just let me...”

  Soph stepped forward. “Do we have enough people?”

  Tre and Franko answered at the same time, their voices a garbled blur. Behind me Mr. Salvatore said something, and just like that nearly everyone was talking at once, at least three conversations going on in the space of less than two square yards.

  But, surprisingly, it felt good. Not overwhelming at all.

  Actually, it felt amazing.

  I’ve been worrying for nothing, I realized. Nothing at all.

  Angelo

  With all the chattering and shoulder slapping, I managed to catch sight of Paige. Was all of this sudden attention too much for her? Following the conversation in the jet, I assumed she might be feeling stretched thin.

  The smile on her face said otherwise.

  My mother took Paige’s hands in hers and stepped back to survey her. “Your hair is getting long!”

  “Yeah,” Paige agreed. “I’m thinking about cutting it.”

  “It will be beautiful either way.” She looked over at Sophia. “How about I steal you two away for a little bit and show you around?”

  “Sounds good,” Sophia agreed.

  My mother winked over at me before putting her hands on the twins’ shoulders and directing them towards the hallway.

  “So?” Franko pressed. “Are we going to play?”

  “Let’s wait until Lia gets here,” Tre answered.

  Franko made a face. “She can’t even hold a ball.”

  “Put her on Tre’s team,” Dominic said. “He’s practically pro. It’ll even things out a bit.”

  Tre shrugged. “She just needs practice.”

  “I just need a drink,” Pops put in. “And Angelo just got here. Give him some space. Let’s go to the bar.”

  We followed him to the billiards room, Franko and Tre jostling and joking the whole way. I tuned most of it out, but still managed to catch the terms blue balls and bro.

  In the billiards room Dominic went to the bar to pour our father and himself some whiskey. I declined the offer for a drink and settled down into the leather love seat.

  “The girls look good,” Pops commented, taking his whiskey. “But how are they really?”

  I thought about how to answer him. A lot had happened in the last year. The arranged marriage that almost went down. Paige’s repressed memory of her parents’ deaths. The Italy properties Moretti left to the twins after Sophia offed
him.

  “Sophia is great,” I answered. “She was made for this old-world business.”

  Pops sipped his whiskey. “And Paige?”

  I wasn’t ready to say anything personal in front of Franko and Tre, who were at the far end of the room, glued to something on Tre’s phone screen. Probably porn with the volume turned down to mute.

  “Paige is different,” I whispered. “She’s had different experiences. She and Sophia are like night and day.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “She saw some things she shouldn’t have.”

  He nodded in understanding. “Did she get help?”

  “Yes, years ago.”

  Pops shook his head. “Leave it alone.”

  I stared at him, surprised. “Seriously?”

  “You can suggest counseling, but you know my feelings about that. It’s a waste of time. All that gushing on a couch with some idiot who has a bunch of degrees, and no fucking life experience? Half the time, they can’t tell their heads from his assholes, and they want to give someone else advice?”

  I smiled. Maybe Pops wasn’t the right person to have this discussion with.

  Dominic took a seat nearby, listening but not saying anything.

  “She’s resistant to change,” I explained. “She won’t let go of that apartment she’s in with Sophia. She keeps all her stuff there, even though she barely spends any time in the place.”

  “This seems to upset you.”

  I leaned back into the cool leather. “I guess so.”

  “But why?”

  Dominic spoke. “Because he wants her to be his.”

  I glared at my brother, but couldn’t deny it. Paige was already mine. She was the first woman I’d wanted to even spend more than a few hours with. I wasn’t about to let her slip away.

  “So?” Dominic asked, peering at me.

  “What?”

  “When are you going to do something about it?”

  “You’re going to have to stop speaking in riddles. I don’t get what you’re saying.”

  Dominic sipped his drink. “Women aren’t that more complicated than men, Angelo. Not once you figure out their basic wants and needs. Paige is waiting for you to step up.”

  “I have to say, that still sounds like a riddle to me.”

  Pops cleared his throat. “What Dominic is saying is that women like it when men make a decision and go for it. Paige isn’t going to move herself into your penthouse. She needs something big from you, something that will show her how serious you are.”

  I tapped my fingers against the chair and looked away from them. The conversation had turned from one about the twins’ emotional health to my inability to show Paige I was serious about her.

  “I love her,” I said firmly. “I tell her all the time.”

  Dominic chuckled. “Aw, that’s so damn cute.”

  I furiously rubbed my palms together, trying to keep my calm. “What are you suggesting I do?”

  “Fuck, you have to ask?”

  That one stopped me. Clearly, I did.

  “Lock her down,” Dominic added.

  “Christ, you son of a—”

  “Angelo,” Pops cut us off. “He’s right. What were you planning to do with Paige?”

  “You two need to stop talking about her like she’s a piece of property.”

  “You’d better get her on lockdown before someone else does, little brother,” Dominic said with a chuckle.

  I shot him a glare.

  “Congrats, kid,” he added, raising his glass in a toast.

  Paige

  Mrs. Salvatore leaned forward against the counter, her soft hair sweeping across her cheek. “What did you do?”

  Sophia shrugged and bit into a carrot stick. “I kept playing. It seemed like the best thing to do, you know? What’s another bare ass”

  Sophia’s Fridays at work, whether they happened at one of her DJ gigs or at her second job, were way more interesting than mine. You could hardly call my computer crashing or the break room running out of coffee exciting.

  Reading my mind, Mrs. Salvatore turned her brown eyes on mine. “And how is your job, Paige? Are you enjoying working for Victor?”

  I sat up a little straighter on the stool. “Yes. Very much.”

  “Paige likes to stay busy,” Sophia offered.

  I murmured an agreement. “It’s good to have a regular job after temping for so long. It helps stop me from going crazy.”

  Mrs. Salvatore gave the counter a quick rap with her nails. “I understand that all too well. I think I’ve come close to redecorating this house three times in the last year.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I told her. “Amazing.”

  “Yeah,” Sophia agreed, her eyes roving towards the window. Past the back patio with a fire pit, a covered pool sat waiting for summer, and beyond that a hot tub. There was even a tiny building that housed an outdoor kitchen, its two open sides shuttered for the winter.

  I sighed to think of summer in that back yard. Between the pool, the blender, and the ample sunning space, there seemed to be no reason to ever leave the spot.

  “Do you have a boyfriend, Sophia?” Mrs. Salvatore asked.

  “Nu-uh. I can’t handle that right now. My career is pretty all encompassing at this point. Plus Paige and Angelo’s relationship has me covered. Just hearing about it all the time is enough, you know?”

  I stuck out my tongue at her and she blew a kiss my way.

  Female voices came from a room nearby. I turned around in my stool just in time to see Mariel and a tall, brown haired girl emerge in the doorway.

  “Hello,” the girl said simply, her eyes grazing across the three of us in one quick swoop. She had one of those faces that was impossible to put an exact age on. She could have been anywhere from eighteen to thirty.

  “Where have you been?” Mrs. Salvatore asked.

  The girl ignored her and looked pointedly at me and Sophia.

  “Lia,” Mrs. Salvatore said, “You remember Paige and Sophia?”

  Her eyes flicked up and down my body. “Yeah.”

  Lia was a woman of few words.

  “How’s it going?” Soph asked her.

  “Good,” she nodded. “It’s been a while.”

  Mariel patted Lia on the shoulder and went to the fridge. “Mr. Salvatore needs ice,” she explained to no one in particular.

  Lia squinted her eyes at Sophia. “I have a faint memory of TPing someone’s car… Were you there?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sophia replied. “Mr. Stanley’s. He was our eighth-grade math teacher.”

  “That’s right! God, he was a prick.”

  Sophia chuckled. “He was cute though.”

  “That must have been the second reason we did it. Who else was there?”

  “Amber, I think… And Brooke Melton.”

  I looked down at my hands. I had no recollection of this event. Probably not because I’d repressed the memory. Probably because I was too much of a Goody Two-Shoes at that age to even think of committing such a heinous crime.

  Or what I would have considered to be a heinous crime at the time.

  No, I probably spent the night at home reading or drawing comics in my room.

  “Where is everyone?” Lia asked her mother.

  “They took off somewhere,” she answered with a shrug. “Oh, did you cut your hair?”

  Lia briefly touched the shoulder length waves. “Yeah, like six inches. You didn’t notice?”

  “It’s not that different.”

  Lia’s lips pursed slightly.

  Sophia spoke up. “I like the bangs. They’re kind of seventies style.”

  “Thanks, Sophia,” she pointedly replied.

  Thundering footsteps beat down the hallway. Franko and Tre jogged into the kitchen, both of them going so fast they nearly bumped into the island.

  “Aw, it’s Lia!” Franko whooped in exaggeration. He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off the ground. She beat
against his shoulder.

  “Put me down! You two sound like a herd of elephants.”

  Franko complied. Lia straightened her top and brushed hair from her face.

  “How’s it going, Lia?” Tre asked, taking a small step backwards.

  “Fine,” she answered, turning away and headed for the fridge.

  “We playing football yet?” Franko asked the room.

  I exchanged a glance with Sophia. She shrugged. “I’m in.”

  “I’ll probably fall flat on my ass,” I explained. “But I’m down for giving it a go.”

  Over at the fridge, Lia snickered. I glanced over at her, but she busied herself with opening a bottle of water.

  Was I just imagining it, or did Lia seem less than thrilled to find me at her parents’ house?

  But no. That couldn’t be. She didn’t even know me. Not really.

  Sure, we’d known each other years ago, but I still didn’t remember any of that. If I’d had to guess, I probably was the third wheel whenever she and Sophia got together to hang out.

  So maybe something that happened when we were teens put her off.

  But that didn’t seem enough reason to hold a grudge into adulthood.

  My stomach twisted. I watched the easygoing trip I’d gotten to believe in for about twenty minutes head right down the drain.

  Numb, I followed the group down the hall.

  Angelo waited in the foyer, mine and his coats in his arms. The bright smile on his face drew me in and comforted me instantly. A secure and reliable blanket, one that blocked out the world, made the noise outside muffle. That’s what he was to me.

  “They’re playing football,” he explained.

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  “Are you joining?”

  “Sure.” I took my coat from his hand.

  “You might get too hot for this after a few minutes, but I thought I’d grab it anyway.”

  “Thanks,” I smiled up at him.

  Out of the corner of my eye, Lia stared. I turned to look at her but she’d already turned her back and begun walking away.

  Angelo wrapped his arm around my shoulder and lead me through the foyer and across some kind of small sitting room, then through a back door.