Still, he looked pensive. Whatever reason he'd had for killing Greco—because of betrayal, or because the general was there and Greco was just conveniently close by— he was having second thoughts now, and I couldn’t have that. There was no reason for him to rethink it.
"Luke, I don’t regret what you did, whatever your reasons for doing it. At the end of the day Greco killed innocent people, and maybe the time with my mother wasn't the only time something like that happened. It was the only time he confessed to you, but there could have been others."
Luke nodded slowly. "I know that, and I agree with you. I don’t really regret it. But Elda, I grew up in a healthy family, strange as many would find it, for a hitman. My parents were great, so were my siblings; I was the only one unsatisfied, more interested in chasing dreams, or I would never have left home. I guess I don’t like thinking that you never had that."
"I was still raised by two very nice people that always protected me and had my best interests at heart. And I have two sets of grandparents now, so it's not like I'm going to be lonely. Besides. Now, I have you."
I froze, then bit my lip after I said it. I didn’t mean to let that out, I didn’t even know if it was true. He was coming with me for the moment, but how long would he really stick around? I had a house close enough to all my family, one I had bought with some of the money I had earned, but this would be the first time I was moving there to live. Would he go with me, or would he leave after a short rest, find somewhere else to go?
We'd talked about being together, but we hadn't talked much about our future, what we would even do afterward. If he would continue in his line of work, or look for something else? It hadn't been the priority when we were dealing with getting safely out of the country, working so neither of us fell under suspicion. But now that we were on our way to my home, I realized we should have thought about it a little more.
As if he saw me worrying, he leaned across the seat to touch my face with his other hand, curving the palm around my cheek, getting my attention.
"I'll be with you for as long as you need me. You still have a family, but I don’t have anyone except you now. We can rely on each other, okay?"
I nodded slowly, feeling my lips curve into a soft smile.
"Thank you," I murmured quietly, turning away to look out the window so he wouldn’t see the sheen of tears in my eyes.
We sat in silence, and I didn’t even notice when I drifted off.
Chapter 26
Luke
I had never been to Italy before, and even with my years around the Italian mafia, I didn’t actually speak any Italian.
The language confused me. it wasn’t just the foreign words, they were moving too fast, so even the few that I knew from exposure, I couldn’t even hear to recognize. From the time when we landed, I had to rely on Elda for pretty much everything. Some signs at the airport were in English and Italian, and that was something, but it was nowhere near enough.
I had to hang back and let her do most of the talking as we made our way past security. My papers were airtight, though, and they passed. Since I would be sticking around permanently, I'd have to consider getting some local paperwork, and I'd probably need her help then, too. The idea left me a little irked. I'd never had to rely on anyone, not since I was eighteen, and that I had to nine years later felt a little odd at first.
Elda rented a car and drove us out to her house. I was a little surprised that she even had one since I'd been expecting us to hole up in some hotel while we looked for a permanent residence.
"You have a house?" I asked on the way, feeling a little jealous. I'd pretty much just moved from place to place, and back when I was still in the army, I'd just go home during my breaks.
"I own a villa, yes. It’s a beautiful place. I can't really say I've lived in it, though. I purchased it maybe a year after I quit law school. It's close enough to all my family to suit me. But, now that I don’t really have anything else, since what I've been focusing my life on for the last four years is taken care of, I guess it's safe to go back there."
We drove for maybe two hours before we got arrived.
It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It was a big, two-story house painted in white, with some dark brown wood here and there. It was a lone house on a large plot of land with no close neighbors.
I followed Elda, eyeing the grounds, as she let us into the house. I got a quick tour of the place, and it was relatively big. There was a large living room and an attached dining room, a big kitchen to the back. There were five rooms upstairs that could be turned into bedrooms, easily. Furniture and appliances were already set up. The more I walked through the rooms, tastefully decorated in dark and light contrasts, the more it was cemented for me.
I loved Elda's villa.
The second thing we did, after the tour, was head to the master bedroom to store away our bags. I was surprised at how well kept the place was.
"Who do you have look after this place for you?"
"Hmm?" she looked back from where she was stuffing things into her closet. "My grandmothers, actually. I wouldn’t trust some stranger in here while I was away. Neither of them works and they're always looking for things to keep them busy. They did all the decorating, the furniture. I'm ashamed to say I've only been here a total of seven times since I purchased the place, and I never spent a whole week any one time."
Well, she had the time to stick around, now.
I wandered to the window and glanced outside at the grounds, surprised when all I saw was a stretch of free land, and I wondered just how far the grounds extended. I'd have to ask her later, or I could take a walk around, or I could do both.
But I was still feeling off from the flight, even though I'd slept through most of it. I wasn’t thinking of sleep when I sat back on the bed, though, leaning back on my hands and keeping my eyes on Elda. As she finished whatever arrangement she was doing.
"I still have some stuff holed up in a few places, I'll have to get them back at some point."
"I'll come with you."
"You don’t have to." She turned around.
I wasn’t asking, I was pretty much telling her I was going along. Considering the info, I now had about the groups she was associating herself with, even though she'd survived that world just fine, I was going to worry every time she stepped out the door.
Greco somehow got a message to her in Italy, through one of her local clients. I wouldn’t put it past the man to have local connections, and when news of his passing hit international news, there might me some problems. Hell, they probably already knew by now, ahead of the public.
I didn’t say any of that as Elda turned around and caught sight of me on the bed, watching her. She paused for a beat, and then her mouth curved into a smile.
"Was there something you wanted, Luke?"
I grinned, pushing myself off the bed and stalking over to her. I loved how she said my name, her accent curling around the syllables. The accent was thicker, too, more than I'd ever heard it, and I wondered if Elda could hide it and let it out at whim.
She laughed as I advanced on her. "Fine. We both need a shower anyway."
I stopped in my tracks as she pulled off her top then proceeded to strip. All I could do was watch until, when she had nothing on but a teasing smile, she turned and walked through a different door than the one we came in. I snapped out of my daydream, threw off my clothes and followed her. I barely remembered to bring a condom. I didn’t get to look at the inside of the master bathroom, my eyes were all for her.
She was already in the shower, hands up, pushing her hair back, lifting her breasts and bringing my attentions to her peaked nipples. It had only been a few hours since we were intimate, but I practically attacked her like a drowning man, attacking her lips as I wrapped my arms around her to hug her body against mine. Our naked chests touched, and she moaned and moved her body against mine when her hard nipples rubbed against my chest.
I stepped carefully forward, a
nd she stepped back, as I pushed her toward the wall, braced her body against the tiles as I raised one leg to wrap around my waist. I cursed as my wet fingers fumbled with the condom, then her hands in my hair were tugging my mouth to hers, and she slid her tongue into my mouth as I thrust in to the hilt.
We moved under the warm spray, our moves languid and unhurried, the water making our bodies slide against each other. When we orgasmed, there was no screaming, or scratching or biting, but I thought it was the best sex we'd had so far. After a quick wash, we had another quick round on the bed, where I laid back and she rode me to our mutual completion. Until we ended up, again, lying exhausted in each other's arms.
"So, what are we going to do now?"
I squeezed my arm around her. "About what?"
"Our future together."
I was lying on my back, one arm around her and the other under my head, and she had her head on my shoulder. We were getting too used to each other so quickly, it sometimes escaped my mind. It made me forget just how short a time we'd known each other, around two months but we'd barely spent more than a day together in all that time.
Her question made me realize. This was all new to both of us. We had both been in jobs where we weren’t allowed to have relationships. For the sake of our own safety, so we wouldn’t be preoccupied while people were running around going after us. Even if I'd thought of it at any point, I'd have to keep what I did a secret, bear the consequences of it coming out. I never wanted that kind of stress, and I imagined she wouldn’t either.
And yet, being together seemed so natural for us, I couldn’t imagine another way to be. It felt like we had been like this for a long while and were just settling into it.
We had a future where we could be us, and it thrilled me.
Chapter 27
Elda
"I looked out the window and saw the grounds," Luke said out of the blue.
I frowned, wondering what this had with what we were talking about. "Well, yes. The closest house is miles from here, it's why I loved this spot so much when I found it. It’s the best place when you want to have some anonymity."
If I was being completely honest with myself, when I bought the house, I hadn't imagined a time where I wouldn’t still be looking to take Greco's life, working for crime syndicates. It wasn’t all I thought, but it had been my reality when I first bought it. But I'd realized quickly I couldn’t rest there before he was gone, it was too far away from the action of the city.
"Is it your land, or…"
"It came with the house, actually, so yes. I don’t know the exact area, but I could equate it to something larger than a couple of city blocks. It wasn’t exactly cheap, and I worked my ass off for months, actually had to put my mission on the back burner so I could save up the money and pay it all off as soon as I could."
He hummed. "Did you plan to do anything with it?"
I bit my lip, hesitating slightly. "Well, I did have an idea one day, that I would build houses and rent them to holidaymakers. I'd have to separate what I want to be part of the house, and then divide the rest of the grounds into plots for each house. It would be the perfect spot for tourists because we're near the sea."
"Really?" he sounded partly surprised, partly amazed.
"Yes. The plot leads all the way up to a beach in the back. I bought the place for quite a hefty amount from the previous owner. The contract was fulfilled, all the money paid before he passed on. He didn’t want his money-grabbing family to have it, although I don’t know whatever happened to the money, and it wasn’t my business so I didn't really ask."
It had been a pure stroke of luck that I even stumbled onto the place. There was an ad on TV and it got me interested. I'd started taking gigs, small ones that included me working for some goons, luring people for whatever they wanted them for, still going through fight training. It was a year before I could master fighting on my own and start looking for assignments, then moving up to making kills and not just fighting.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" I startled out of my memories as Luke's sudden words.
"What?"
"It's your dream, right? Why wait? We could build those homes and make the dreams a reality. I mean, we both have free time on our hands now. And the idea sounds pretty interesting."
"Really?" I asked, and I could hear the hopeful tone in my voice.
"Yeah. I've never considered it, to be honest, but I'd love to help. We can start as soon as possible."
I looked up at him, but his eyes were closed and he was grinning to himself. The expression was goofy, but I was grateful he couldn’t see whatever was on my face.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. It would take some planning, but if all you do is dream and never take action, nothing would ever be done."
Luke, I already knew but felt like I had yet to find out, was a man of action.
After we talked about my idea, we lazed around a bit more before we fell asleep. I woke up, several hours later to find he wasn’t in bed with me. I ended up searching for him, and I finally found him in the living room, on his phone. When I joined him, I realized he was Googling about building.
"We're gonna build a list," he explained, sounding distracted, eyes and fingers never leaving the phone. "Architects, the construction workers, the supplies. We'll have to work up a budget, too. It's better we start soon, right?"
I just sat, dazed, and listened to him as he built up a mental list.
He pushed me on it, even pulled up searches online, using an online translator to be able to read the website information from different local companies, vetting each for himself. His enthusiasm was catching, and soon he pulled me into working out the considerations with him.
He had funds stored in some secret account, and though I still had enough of my own, he offered to let me borrow some of it. We could always take a loan at some bank, but he thought it better to avoid the risk. With nine years’ total of working as mob assassins between us, we had both accumulated enough that it really wasn’t necessary, anyway.
He came up with the idea of building up half the plot first, and then focus on the second half after that.
"Why, though? Wouldn’t it be better if we just did the whole thing in one go?"
"Well, yeah, but if we do it like this, you can add some differences to the houses. And it would make sense to see how well the first half works, so we can minimize on doing a lot of stuff the wrong way. Say, like, we make a mistake somewhere, and we'll know not to repeat it again."
It was sound advice. As we worked out the plans, it was added in. But we wouldn’t wait for the first half to be done, once the foundation was down and some houses were going up, we'd start the second half, so the houses didn't finish so far apart. It was my condition for going ahead, and he agreed to it.
"I don’t know much about building, but I want to go around, looking at the grounds. I'd like to have a map of the area drawn if there's a way we can get that?"
I couldn’t help myself getting fired up right alongside him.
Chapter 28
Luke
It was difficult.
Oh, Elda was having the time of her life, but I couldn’t get past the language barrier. I wasn’t good at learning languages, and picking up Italian wouldn’t be quite so simple. Some words I could get, but I didn’t hear them when people talked too fast. Elda even tried to work with me at night, but I didn’t seem to get better.
I was starting to think the only way I was going to learn Italian was to sit in a class, and I dreaded it. Elda promised I didn’t have to, though. Not that I would, regardless. Not when I could self-teach myself on the internet, no matter how long it would take.
There were a few people that spoke English, not all quite fluently, but I could understand. Still, I wouldn’t let that deter me. I was good at doing anything I put my mind to. And I didn’t need to speak a language to know how to do hard labor.
Because of the language barrier, Elda ended up doi
ng a lot of the negotiations. She also talked to the men brought to work on the houses about my hanging around. I could take care of myself if they wanted to mess with me anyway, but I was glad she told them I wanted to help where I could, so I didn’t have someone get in my way. When I wanted to do something, it was a simple thing to lend a helping hand.
I started to watch and observe them building the houses so I could understand exactly how to work. And I participated in laying the bricks and the hard labor of putting the villas together. It was grueling work, not the kind I was used to, but I took it as a learning experience. It was better than sitting idle all day when most everyone else had something to do. Even Elda was busy a lot of the time, dealing with the paperwork and the business side of things.
Besides, I loved when, after a long day of hard work, I'd wander to the back porch where Elda waited, sitting under an umbrella on the back patio with a pitcher of something waiting for me; water, or juice, but usually lemonade with ice in it, and after working under the heat for hours, I appreciated it.
I'd laughed the first time she did it, sitting back under the shade in a loose dress and dark glasses. When she saw me come up, she got up and poured me a glass of lemonade. She smiled as I reached for it, and said something unexpected.
"Reward for the handyman."
I had the drink, we had an intense make-out session, and I went back to helping the workers. The second day, I dragged her inside for a quickie on the kitchen island. I took her from behind as she leaned over the counter, it was fast, dirty, and rough, and we both loved it.
It turned into a game of sorts, I would come back, and she would be out wearing the most provocative thing she could and still be decent in case anyone else saw her. Once she'd been out without a bra, wearing a simple white dress that was practically see through up close. Or she would be without any underwear entirely, and it drove me crazy. I'd be tempted to take her outside, under the heat where everyone would see, but instead dragged her into the house. We pretty much christened every room and most of the flat surfaces in the house because of that little game.
Dirty Indiscretions: A Dark Mafia Romance Page 11