Mafia Romance

by Aleatha Romig, Skye Warren, Annika Martin, Natasha Knight, Kaye Blue, Michelle St. James, Renee Rose, Parker S. Huntington, Alexis Abbott, Willow Winters

  “No, please. It’s not your fault.” Her hazel eyes look so sad I have to sit again. And I recognize something in her words, that longing. Loneliness. “I had to leave when my dad lost his court case. And he was hospitalized. Long story short I used my college fund to help us keep the house as long as we could.”

  I look away, remembering that story in the local news. Everyone had been talking about it. The famous businessman and politician, known for his works of charity, convicted of embezzlement. And despite that he had escaped jail time. The benefits of being rich.

  “You’ve heard the rest of the story,” she says, reading my expression.

  “Not really,” I say quickly. “People talk, but I don’t believe them.”

  “In this case they were probably telling the truth. I approached Damon Scott about a loan. Which he wouldn’t give me since I had no way to pay it back. Gabriel was there. He suggested that I auction my virginity.”

  A memory uncoils inside me, stealing my breath.

  You know he doesn’t have a way to pay you back. How dare you loan him money?

  Would you have preferred I told him no? He would have gone straight to my father, who would have charged him higher interest than I did.

  I had been so furious then, so sure of my rightness. And now? I didn’t know the answer. There was no solution to my father’s addiction. There was no proof against heartache.

  “So that’s how I ended up here,” she says, gesturing to the library, the mansion itself.

  I’ve seen her and Gabriel together, the way he looks at her, as if she owns him. He isn’t forcing her to do anything. At least, not anymore. “Do you ever think you’ll leave?”

  Her expression turns faraway. “I’m not sure. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy here. It’s beautiful and luxurious and safe. But sometimes I miss school so much it hurts.” She glances down at the book in her lap. “Books aren’t the same. They’re nice, though.”

  I reach across the chess board and take her hand.

  She looks up at me, her eyes wide with surprise. It might be the first time I’ve touched her. The first time I’ve touched anyone, since the attack.

  Footsteps startle me, and I turn to see Gabriel stride into the library. He makes a straight line toward Avery, a living and breathing shortest-path algorithm.

  He bends down, one hand behind her neck to keep her close. A kiss on her cheek. A whisper in her ear that makes her blush. Only then does he straighten and give me a kind, “Hello, Penny.”

  I’m a little disappointed Damon isn’t with him. Maybe a lot disappointed. “Hi.”

  “What are you two doing?” he asks.

  “Talking about Damon,” Avery says, before I can respond. “And how he auctioned me off.”

  It shouldn’t surprise me that she’s keeping secrets—even if those secrets are only what’s in her heart. She doesn’t want him to know that she longs for school. Because he would be angry? Or because she would feel disloyal?

  I’m hardly one to judge. I don’t share what’s in my heart very much. I barely know what’s there, most of the time. For me that’s the top-most shelf, full of dust, requiring the use of a special ladder just to reach it.

  Gabriel gives a small smile, completely unrepentant. “He gave me a lot of grief for that.”

  “Did he?” I ask, uncertain why Damon would mind. It made sense that he wouldn’t want to give Avery money if he knew she would never be able to repay. But how could he mind the auction? I have no doubt that he profited from it.

  “He can be a little protective of women. He’s been that way for as long as I’ve known him.” Something about Gabriel’s golden eyes invites me in, as if he’s imparting an important secret.

  “But he owns a strip club.”

  “More than one,” Gabriel says with a nod. “And for a girl in a desperate situation, there’s no place safer or more lucrative for her to be. You should have seen how selective he was about the guest list for the auction.”

  “Really?” Avery says, sounding surprised.

  Dark flecks of gold glint in Gabriel’s eyes. “I don’t think he knew whether to be relieved or worried when I won. He warned me that if I hurt you, I’d have to answer to him.”

  “Well,” Avery says, her voice arch. “Then there are a few things I’ll have to tell him about.”

  The smile flirting with her lips says she’s only teasing. Though I suspect if I were to dig, Gabriel has done one or two things that hurt her. He clenches a fist in her hair, pulling her back to whisper something else in her ear. She’s scarlet by the time he led her upstairs, giving me a short, “We’ll see you tomorrow. Mrs. B is in the kitchen if you need anything.”

  “Go to bed early,” Avery says, her voice trailing into the room as she’s led away. “I know you’re feeling better, but your body is still recovering.”

  I put my hand over my mouth to hide my smile, but it’s there, blinding and unstoppable. They’re so sweet together. Almost enough to break through the ice around me, even without Damon Scott around. Almost.

  * * *

  I read a well-worn copy of Quantitative Risk Analysis late into the night, past dog-ears and highlighted lines. Gabriel knows this book well. Only a few times do I stop and leave notes in the margins, adding to what his sprawling script has written.

  Once I correct him, laying out my argument in a few lines, wondering if he’ll ever find this. They’re a different kind of breadcrumb. My kind.

  By the time I get to the chapter on volatility in valuation, it’s midnight.

  My eyelids slip lower and lower with every slow blink. I can’t think anymore tonight.

  Can’t use the numbers to keep away the loneliness.

  I reach over and flip off the lamp, dousing the room in shadows. I keep the bathroom light on all night, a holdover from the first days after the attack. From longer than that, if I’m honest. The light that slid between my plastic blinds was a comfort. And the heavy drapes in this house, the tinting on the rooms, the luxury of darkness that rich people seem to crave sometimes feels like a muzzle.

  Sleep laps its gentle waves against me. There are no strong currents on the surface. It’s deceptive, how softly it lulls me. How many times will I believe and hope and pray to find peace there? To drift on the lazy river of my mind.

  No matter how softly it begins I’m always dragged under.

  The dream comes in a tidal wave, wrapping my body in terror.

  In my dream I’m back in the mental hospital. In my dream, I never left. The walls are coated with something black and pungent, the floor slick. Pain slices my scalp as he drags me by my hair.

  He strides with cool familiarity through the hallways, like he’s been here a million times. Like he lives here. My body may as well be on fire, that’s how much the pain and fear scorch me, that’s how much I scream. In the molten center is the certainty that Damon Scott went through this.

  Not something similar. This exactly. In this horrible place.

  He knows these walls. These floors.

  He knows the cracked placard that says Recreation Room in front of us.

  There are a million funhouse horrors that a recreation room might hold. They flash through my brain like a demented slideshow, promising that this will be worse than what came before—worse than the stabbing pain in my body and the shame in my heart. And even so, I could not have predicted this.

  I could not have foretold about the pool.

  It’s large and rectangular, like the kind at my YMCA. Only instead of pale white concrete it’s made from tile, green and thin and cracked in a thousand places. Nothing that could be operational today. And it’s not operational, strictly speaking. There isn’t water. There couldn’t be water, not with the thick cracks in the concrete. As if the whole foundation has shifted over the decades, nature reclaiming what was hers.

  I want to slide into the cracks, even though they’re a couple inches wide. I want to disappear into the center of the earth. He told me I’
d want to die, and he’s right, he’s right, he’s right.

  He tosses me into the pit. My knees make a loud crack with the fall. I know there’s pain, but it doesn’t register. Not with anticipation clawing at my throat, knowing what will come next. The pool may be empty, but there’s something a little damp down here. A little slippery. I stagger, trying to stand, struggling to find that sliver of hope that says I’ll make it out alive.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, soft enough I almost don’t hear. “This will help you, too.”

  In the corner the thick roots of a tree have broken through the tile in the far end, leaving a wide chasm. That split narrows to a thick crack near the bottom. A little more and water wouldn’t hold.

  The monster above me turns a knob.

  A steel pipe juts out of the wall. It pours water into the pool, leaving a small puddle at my feet. My heart beats a slow rhythm, like it can’t believe this. Like it knows better than to panic.

  Like this can’t possibly be real.

  When I was little I fought the current. I kicked and paddled, struggling to get to the surface. Now I stand very still as the water rises to my ankles, knowing it won’t possibly help.

  There aren’t sharp rocks at the bottom. Only a dark vegetation grown over tile.

  Water rises, dark in the ancient Recreation Room, almost as black as the bottom. The mermaid tank was beautiful, mostly because the water was clear. And I knew the river was different because it was dark. Like this.

  And then Jonathan Scott reaches for a lever. There’s something metal and thin leaning against the wall above me. My mind can’t process what it is. My mind doesn’t want to process what it is, even as he lowers the grate over the top of the pool.

  Some dark part of me recognizes it as some primitive safety device.

  That dark part of me laughs.

  The water level will rise. The grate will keep me under water. “Please no,” I whisper, unable to stop myself. There’s no way it will work, no way I can stop myself from trying.

  He looks almost sad. “Don’t panic. You’ll only lose your head.”

  My nails press so hard into my palms they draw blood. There will be crescent shaped wounds in my hands, but I won’t be alive to see them. “Don’t do this to me,” I say, my voice shaking. “I’ll do anything. Anything.”

  “You’ll do everything, lovely peach.”

  What does he want from me? What does he want from Damon? The water tickles my knees, weirdly harmless as it rises. Deadly once it’s done. “I’ll make the money back. Work in the clubs. For sex. Anything. Don’t do this to me. Please.”

  “Do you know, when I first got here, they still did lobotomies. How barbaric is that?”

  “This is barbaric,” I scream at him. “Let me out. Oh my God, let me out of here.”

  Lobotomies. Is that what happened to him? Is that why he’s insane?

  He smiles a little, like he can read my thoughts. “They did many cruel things, but not this. This was beautiful. I fought it at first. That’s the weakness inside us. It’s a gift to make you stronger.”

  This is how Damon learned to hold his breath so long. This is what he ran away from. This very pool with its green tile and black water. And this is why I deserve what’s happening. Because I sent him here. He came back to this for me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Trigonometry,” says a voice in the darkness.

  For one bittersweet moment I flash into the past, a little girl lost, afraid and alone. With only a wild boy to save me. He had seemed like not enough at first. And then he’d been all I wanted.

  I sit up in bed, my gaze finding a silhouette in the corner.

  There’s no wild boy left in him. Even in shadow he’s made of long planes and crisp corners. He reclines in a chair, his long leg kicked out, one hand dangling down holding a glass. His other hand holds a book open, a stark sliver of light across the white page.

  You came back, I want to shout.

  Except that might make him leave. Maybe he actually is still wild underneath all that expensive linen and wool. I have to tread carefully so I don’t spook him.

  And so that I don’t make him pounce.

  “That’s what you were doing at six years old. I guess it’s no surprise you’re doing—” He pauses, glancing back at the hard cover. “Financial Engineering. What the fuck is that?”

  “I thought you were in business with Gabriel,” I say, surprised my voice is so even.

  To find him in my room like this is a dream. I’m not sure whether it’s a good dream or a bad one, but I never expected it to happen. Not once. Definitely not twice in my life.

  He gives a low laugh. “He’s the one who handles the investments. My side of the business is a little more… well, let’s just say hands-on.”

  “Avery told me about your strip clubs.” I infuse the words with all the disdain I feel. And hide all of the horribly misplaced jealousy. There’s no reason to mind that he’s seen naked women.

  No point in thinking a girl like me would ever have claim on a man like this.

  “It’s mostly addition in strip clubs,” he says, sounding playful. “Very large numbers, though. I’m sure you can imagine.”

  “I’m sure I can’t imagine.” Not only because it requires being naked in front of strange men. Because we’ve never had large numbers of money.

  It’s only been small numbers. Only subtraction.

  “Simple math,” he continues. “No trigonometry required. No calculus.”

  “Calculus is simple,” I can’t resist saying, even though I know it’s a red flag.

  And he’s the bull, charging forward with a charming smile and sharp teeth. “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean it’s easy, baby genius.”

  Something ignites inside me when he says that. It makes me argue against him, if only so he’ll argue back. “Calculus is just about continuity. About a line going on and on, never stopping. Never breaking.”

  There was a beauty to that flow, to the infinite approach.

  He runs a thick square-tipped finger down the page, as if soaking up the information. And maybe he is. Because when he speaks he seems to know what it says. “Except it isn’t real, is it? It’s an ideal. A pipe dream. A perfect vision of the world that pretends jagged edges and broken pieces don’t exist.”

  “Maybe some of us need that perfect vision.” I can’t pretend we’re still talking about math.

  “And maybe some of us know too much to be that naïve,” he says softly.

  I think I hate him in that moment. “You think I don’t know about broken things? After what your father did? After he broke me?”

  “You’re not broken,” Damon says sharply.

  A startled laugh bursts from me. “I’m not the only one naïve, if you believe that.”

  “You are,” he says, sounding fierce. “Still innocent. Still a baby.”

  “I’m not a baby.”

  There’s something brewing inside me. Maybe anger. Definitely excitement. I can’t really place the feeling, except that every time he calls me a baby I want to hit him. But I also want him to keep doing it.

  He sounds almost regretful. “Fifteen years old. That’s a baby.”

  There’s a wall between us, built out of fear and doubt and an age difference that will never really go away. I’m getting older, but so is he. That wall should have been enough to keep me from being interested. Instead it feels like I’ve been leaning against that wall for years.

  And sometimes it feels like he’s right on the other side.

  “Today’s my birthday,” I say, swallowing after the words are out.

  It feels like a risk, sharing something like that. Even though it’s ordinary information. This time last year I had been at the burger place with Brennan. We started dating in middle school, even though it mostly consisted of holding hands in the hallways.

  This year I’m in a modern-day castle, half guest of honor, half prisoner.

  He snaps
the book shut. “What?”

  “My birthday,” I say, trying to sound old and unaffected like it doesn’t mean anything.

  A curse word hovers in the darkness. “Did you have cake? Candles? Presents?”

  A shrug. “I didn’t have those things at home. Why would I have them here?”

  “Avery would have done something—”

  “I didn’t tell her.”

  “Why not?”

  Because I didn’t want her to worry about me. And because I’m the one worried about her. She’s clearly going through something, but she’s hiding it from Gabriel. The only reason I know is because I’m mostly silent in her company. Mostly watching. “Does it matter?”

  “You turned sixteen.”

  I can’t help the pleased smile that crosses my face. He shouldn’t see something as vulnerable as that, but it comes out anyway. I am pleased to be sixteen. Despite what’s happened to me, despite what Daddy’s done. It’s a bright spot, being older. It feels like maybe I’m a woman.

  Except when Damon stands up and crosses the room. Then I feel small and unsure again.

  “You deserve a celebration,” he says, his voice biting. “A party with your friends.”

  “What friends?” I say, unable to name a single person other than the one in this room.

  “You have friends. From school. From the diner. And you have that boyfriend. What’s his name? Bennet?”

  The air seems thick, making my chest rise and fall with each breath. “Brennan.”

  “That’s right. Would he have given you a birthday kiss?”

  And just like that the suggestion blooms between us, that Damon could kiss me. That he could do it right now. We’re only three feet away. So little space between us. So impossible to cross.

  “Yes,” I say, more breath than sound.

  Brennan would have kissed me on my birthday. It would have made me feel safe. I know without trying that Damon’s kiss wouldn’t make me feel that way.

  Damon sits on the edge of the bed, in the same way Daddy did. When I would have a screaming nightmare after Mama left. When he would comfort me.

  There’s nothing comforting about this.