by Hazel Parker
I paused, waiting for Marco to fill in details about how perhaps he was harassed, threatened, or stalked. But nothing came.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Maybe I am overthinking this. Perhaps my exhaustion from the flight and my time with Layla has clouded my judgment for the worse.
“Now, with that said, I did some research on the guy later, and it turns out he’s been in jail a couple of times on drug possession charges,” Marco added, giving a little bit of validity to my fears. “So in some respects, I feel justified in avoiding working with them.”
“Well, I just encountered them here in Las Vegas, and the whole thing reeked of suspicious activity,” I said. “They…”
I decided less was more for now. I would tell Marco the whole story later, but for right now, I needed to make sure I at least got some distance before I said more.
“They just came across in a manner that struck me as evasive and unusual. I wanted to call and see if you had had any similar experiences.”
“Indeed, my friend, indeed,” Marco said. “Listen, my daughter is calling me to play, but you stay safe, OK? And you call me if there are any business needs that you need help with.”
“Absolutely. Ciao.”
I hung up shortly after. I tossed the phone on the bed and stared out at the Bellagio and Caesars. I told myself I was here on vacation, and all I had to do was tell Gio that I was taking a step back and content to take a more passive approach to business. That was true, and it seemed like the least offensive way to say no.
The door creaked open, and I saw Layla standing against the door frame, her wine still in her hand.
“Italian, huh?” she said with a smirk. “How many languages do you speak, exactly?”
“Eight.”
“Eight, you say so casually,” she said with a laugh. “I forget how dumb Americans are when it comes to speaking foreign tongues.”
“French, English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and some Mandarin,” I said with a shrug. “One must know how to engage clients in their native tongue in order to get the best results.”
“I knew you were sexy for a reason,” Layla said, walking over to me, giving me a kiss, and falling under my arm as we stared at the Las Vegas Strip. “But actually, one thing I was thinking about today. I don’t know much of your business background that well.”
“Oh?”
“I mean, think about it. We are clearly very attracted to each other. But in terms of how well we know each other? We don’t, not that well. I know you’re in the wine industry somehow, otherwise we wouldn’t have ever met, but beyond that?”
It was a fair point. Our attraction was so great that it had taken me to Las Vegas, but it was fair to say that we didn’t actually know that much about each other.
“Truth be told, I’m mostly just an investor,” I said. “Granted, I try to get hands-on with my investments, well, at least until the last couple of years, but I am not a sommelier or an expert as you are. You have a real understanding and dedication to your craft that I cannot hope to match.”
“Well, I’m not that great an expert,” Layla said. “But how did you get the money to invest? You’re clearly very wealthy. Where did it all come from?”
I sighed. That question wasn’t as simple as a rags-to-riches business story, nor was it as easy as just inheriting a business. It entailed a lot of heartache and pain.
But if we were going to build this into something viable, I supposed I had to start sharing my heartache and pain. Keeping it hidden only served to make me do stupid shit like leave Layla in the middle of a great weekend.
“Well, I actually got it from my parents,” I said. “I was an only child, and my parents were quite wealthy. My dad owned an exporting business that did very well, made him wealthy beyond all means. But unfortunately, when I was seventeen, my parents were killed in a helicopter accident.”
“Oh, Pierre—”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “That hurt, but truth be told, I was never that close to my parents. They worked long hours, both of them, and when I was near them, their relationship was never that warm or close. Those who know them say I got my stoic demeanor from my father, but I don’t like that explanation. I prefer to think of it as me having just learned to not reveal much.”
Which says a lot about you, Layla, that I’m saying all of this now.
“So at that point, I was supposed to go to college, but suddenly, I had this freedom. I did not need education; if education was merely a means to a job, well, who needed a job when I had the kind of inheritance that I had had? So I instead chose to travel the world. Such an experience was a thrill, but it was not long before the traveling grew old. I needed something more meaningful, something less indulgent and hedonistic. I began to seek opportunities to invest this inheritance, and so I started branching out into different fields. It did not take long before I settled on what my father had done, shipping, and what I enjoyed, wine and spirits.”
I chuckled. If my father had known that was where his money had gone, he would have smiled. He loved a good glass of wine, though I could only recall one occasion where he and I had shared one.
“It was also where I met my wife. We first met in England, actually, and we just wound up traveling together. Two years after that, we had a child named Tony, and two years after that, we had a child named Boris.”
I could scarcely believe how easily that confession had come to Layla. And yet it barely registered as anything other than a factual statement.
“Life was good. And then…”
I didn’t need to say anything more. The whole “it’s just a recollection” had faded. Pain filled my face and my heart.
Layla put her glass down and wrapped both arms around me. It was just what I needed. The story and the afternoon had exhausted me. I needed nothing but the comfort of this woman that I...well, loved was perhaps too strong a word right now, but cared about greatly.
And perhaps in one sense, love was not too strong a word.
“It’s OK,” she said. “Thank you for sharing your story with me.”
“Thank you for listening.”
We shared a quick kiss.
“What now?” she said.
I chuckled.
“Right now, I need a nap. But then we can get dinner, perhaps maybe some gambling?”
Layla laughed and patted my chest.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you don’t gamble,” she said. “But sure. There’s a steakhouse in the casino called STK.”
“All I need to hear.”
After a day like today, I preferred to keep it simple. Give me a steak, give me Layla, and give me nothing else.
Chapter 17: Layla
When I woke up, I really didn’t have a huge craving to go to STK.
That was not to say I was not hungry; my stomach literally growled almost as soon as my eyes fluttered from the afternoon nap, and going from the bed to the couch required calories that my body did not have handy. But the thought of getting dressed up, looking pretty, and eating at a fancy restaurant after a long weekend of doing that in France just seemed exhausting.
I knew of a place called Secret Pizza in Cosmopolitan that served arguably the greatest pizza I’d ever had. I had never seen Pierre eat pizza, but I also did not know a single human being who did not like it. I jokingly thought I’d be more offended if he said he didn’t like the dish than if he ran off on me again.
But when he emerged from the bedroom and stood in the doorway, his hair sloppy but hot, his shirt half-buttoned from when he had stood up, and his facial hair looking like it was an afternoon away from desperately needing a shave, I knew that I had to show Pierre the best America had to offer. There would come a time for sit-down pizza, sloppy sweatpants and sweaters, and days spent sleeping in, but those were not days spent in Las Vegas.
“I could jump you right now,” I said, eying him up and down.
“I could take you right now,” he said, his voice a tad groggy from the nap.
“Well, unfortunately, we’re going to have to hold on to ourselves a little bit,” I said. “Our reservations for STK are in about twenty minutes, and both of us need to get dressed.”
“And?” Pierre said with a shrug. “You say that as if a Las Vegas restaurant would be at full capacity on a Monday. Even a place surely as great as STK would allow for some small delay, if you will.”
I couldn’t believe I was thinking about saying no, but between the fog of the nap and my hunger, I just didn’t have it.
“Maybe after…”
My voice trailed off as Pierre came over to me, sat beside me, grabbed me by the hips, and pulled me in for a kiss.
Well, so much for that.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, we both laid naked on the couch. I was now exhausted for a very different reason, but it was the best kind of exhaustion. It was an earned exhaustion, the kind in which one didn’t have to rally for anything they did not want to.
“So,” Pierre said. “Shower and food?”
I laughed and slapped him on the arm.
“First, I’m too tired for sex, and now I’m too tired for food!” I said. “You drive me crazy, Pierre.”
“But it’s the best kind of crazy, right?”
Damnit, he’s so right. He drives me the best kind of crazy.
Maybe a little too crazy.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go shower.”
This might have been the first shower we’d ever had together in which neither of us did anything sexual. Of course, it helped that we’d just had great couch sex after a long nap, but we also didn’t want to delay our reservation too badly. Pierre got hard, but he got out of the shower before either of us gave into temptation for a dinner-canceling round two. Just means dessert is going to be the sweetest thing ever.
I put on jeans and a nice white top, while Pierre grabbed from his seemingly endless supply of white Oxford shirts and black slacks and put them on. His look almost never changed, but it fit him so well and looked so crisp and clean that I didn’t really care. If there was no reason to change, why should he?
“Shall we?” I said, beckoning for Pierre’s hand.
He took it and walked me to the elevator. On the ride down, we just cuddled in silence. We were fighting fatigue as best we could, but we valued those little moments where we could just close our eyes and breathe.
And then the doors opened, the “ding-ding-ding-ding-ding” sound of the slot machines reached our ears, and Pierre’s eyes went wide.
“I need to visit the gambling floor at some point.”
“No way,” I said with a laugh. “It’s my goal in life to make sure you are not gambling while you’re here.”
Pierre rolled his eyes and squeezed my hand.
“Surely, you jest.”
Actually…
I knew I had no control over what Pierre actually did, but I had seen my brothers go to the gambling tables and not return for hours on end. Sometimes they came back with some extra money, but most of the time, they came back sulking and pissed off at having lost a few hundred, maybe even a couple thousand, dollars. I didn’t want to see Pierre taken away by anything.
And maybe that was it right there.
Maybe it wasn’t me fearing Pierre would get into a foul mood from gambling. There was a better-than-decent chance he had just as much, if not more, money than my family did. It was just the idea that something else could suck him away from me, leaving me alone once more.
You swore you’d compartmentalize. You swore you wouldn’t think about these things.
But seeing those...questionable men and hearing his reaction afterward had made me more sensitive, more fearful of the possibility that Pierre would leave me again. It was infuriating when it was hellish; what would it be if it was tragic?
“We’re here, no?”
I broke out of my mind and looked up at STK.
“This is it,” I said, even though I didn’t even scout out the venue.
The first thing I noticed about the place was that it was not your typical steakhouse, with quiet, ambient music and mood lighting. It played loud club music, not so loud that you couldn’t hear your partner, but certainly louder than what one would have expected for a place like this. Luckily, I had requested a private room, and with it being a Monday, it had taken no effort to get it, but I felt bad.
“Are all American steakhouses also nightclubs?”
And there it was.
“Not at all,” I said. “I promise most other steakhouses don’t have EDM blaring like this.”
To my surprise, though, Pierre laughed.
“I swear!” I said.
I think I’m getting too self-conscious about this.
“I know, I know, I trust you,” Pierre said, but now he seemed to be the one trying to settle down, for a look of guilt had washed over his face.
When we sat down, we both buried our faces in the menu, but I had a feeling that what had happened today had entered both of our minds. Sex and sleep had provided good excuses to bury those thoughts and focus on something more passionate and fierier, but ironically, the loud music had provided the perfect white noise for thoughts of those men to enter back into the conscious. I had learned a bit from Pierre, but there was still the question of how they knew who I was.
Maybe I was feeling a little too unsettled from that. Maybe I was still feeling a bit on edge about Pierre leaving; I thought I could handle him saying we could not work out, but if he had walked out once because of an emotionally charged situation…
“So,” I said, clearing my throat. “One thing—”
I got interrupted by the waiter showing up. Pierre, though, handled him with aplomb, telling him to get two martinis, two glasses of water, and some bread. It was a little blunt and to the point, but the waiter seemed to get the gist of our mood.
“You were going to say something,” Pierre said, but he wasn’t looking at me. “Something about today, I assume.”
He’s nervous too. The only time he wouldn’t look at me like this was when…
“Pierre, please look at me.”
He did. His eyes betrayed him. He was as afraid of everything going on as I was.
“One thing that got brought up when we all said our hellos was they seemed to know who I am,” I said. “And I don’t know who those men are personally. I have never met Gio in my life, nor even seen him. But…”
I bit my lip. I wasn’t going to share that I knew Chelsea was arranged. But otherwise…
“I have heard rumors almost since first grade that my family was involved with the mafia,” I said. “I always took insult to that and told the other kids to fuck off. But I heard it enough that in second grade, I asked my dad if it was true. He chuckled, but there was something about the way he laughed that always made me wonder if he was hiding something. He just told me that people with the last name Ferrari will always face stereotypes, but that we had no real connection.”
“And do you believe him still?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know,” I said. “My brothers...well, they’ve had some things happen in recent times that has been a little, call it coincidental. And my grandfather, Dad, and uncles all seem to be evasive on certain topics. So maybe where there’s smoke, there’s fire? But I certainly don’t know anything. And quite frankly, I try to keep it that way. The less involved I am in that nonsense, the better.”
“But it sounded like they wanted to get you involved.”
I had to bite my lip as the waiter came back with our waters and bread. The tension, even in those few seconds of waiting, was agonizing. Pierre had just verbalized one of my biggest fears—that I was about to be dragged into something I did not want to partake in but would ultimately have no say in.
“Well, so that’s the thing,” I said. “I called my brother Brett, because he...it’s not my place to say what happened
with him, but both he and my brother Nick, at different times, got some help that I think may have come from questionable characters. And Brett said to go and see him when we get back from Vegas.”
“I see,” Pierre said.
He took a moment to grab a piece of bread, butter it, split it, and chew. I knew the bread was not his focus. I couldn’t eat until we got through this.
“You’re an adult now,” he said. “What do you think? Do you think it’s true?”
Well, he always did have a way of getting to the point.
“Honestly?” I said. “I don’t think there’s some great conspiracy in place. I don’t think my grandfather was buddies with Al Capone, for example. I don’t think we’re a secret mafia that has a drug war with another family. But I do know that we have an uncle out here, Uncle Nick, whom I’m having lunch with tomorrow. You’re welcome to tag along with. He’s a bit crass and crude, but he’s funny. In any case, though, my grandfather, my father, and my Uncle Frank all swear up and down that Vegas is a hellhole, one should only go as long as one can, and so on and so forth. Mention the name Uncle Nick and you get glares. They still love him, but the only time I’ve heard my grandfather curse was when I heard him say Uncle Nick was a ‘damn fool.” So I think Uncle Nick knows some people and has some connections, but I don’t think there’s some conspiracy or underground mafia.”
When I finished speaking, I felt an enormous weight off of my shoulders. No one had ever asked a question like that before and listened with such an open mind like Pierre had. Most people had either asked and teased, or I knew they had wanted to ask but had just kept their mouth shut. Quite literally, Pierre was the first person to engage in an honest manner with me.
“I will do my best to make sure that Gio and his men do nothing to harm you or your family,” Pierre said.
God, how much I loved this man.
Loved?
OK, maybe that was a little too soon to say.