Her only hope was that he would eventually feel that she was worth it too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Your poor car,” Gloria said as she and Oz walked into the private garage behind the Drakos reserved for the Drakos family cars only. There were so many luxury cars in that space, they reminded her of her father’s garage.
“Yeah, the mechanics claim they can get the bullet holes out,” Oz said as they walked toward his banged-up Porsche, “but I’m not laying any bets on that ever happening. But I’m going to drive it to them and see what they can do.”
He continued walking to the Maserati GranTurismo parked beside his Porsche, pressed the key fob to unlock it, and then opened the driver side door. “Here you are,” he said.
Gloria was confused. “What do you mean?”
“You’re driving this car,” Oz said.
Gloria looked at him. “I’m driving it? Until when?”
“Until you decide what kind of car you want me to buy for you. Or, if you like, you can keep this one.”
Gloria wasn’t accustomed to any man showering her with a gift like that. “Oz, I can’t,” she said.
“Oh, you absolutely can. Remember what we said upstairs.”
About cars? What did they say about cars? “I don’t remember actually,” Gloria said. “What did we say?”
“You’re my lady, Gloria. My official girlfriend. And my girlfriend will not walk to work, or catch Ubers to airports.”
Gloria smiled. “There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with catching an Uber, Oz.”
“Get in,” Oz said, still holding the door open for her.
Gloria felt a sense of elation as she walked around and got into his car. “It smells brand new,” she said, and then looked at him. “How many times have you driven it?”
“I’ve taken it through its paces many times.”
Gloria looked at him.
“Okay, no times,” he admitted. “I had it delivered overnight.”
Gloria couldn’t believe it. “You had it delivered? You mean, you just bought this car?”
“Yes.”
Gloria began getting out. “I’m sure you want to be the first to drive it.”
“No, I don’t. I didn’t buy it for me.”
Gloria, standing within an inch of him, stared at him. “Who did you buy it for?”
Oz hesitated, but continued to stare at Gloria. “You,” he said.
“Me? Why would you buy a car for me?”
“Because I made up my mind about you. About us.”
“When did you make up your mind?”
“Last night.”
A frightening thought occurred to Gloria. “When last night?” she asked him. “After we made love?” Was it her body that was driving his need, or her, she wondered?
“After you saved my life,” said Oz. “And no, I didn’t feel as if I owed you a car.” Gloria smiled. “I felt as if I owed you a chance.”
Gloria didn’t expect him to say that. “A chance? A chance to do what?”
Oz had never been this bare with any woman ever before. “A chance to be a caretaker of my heart,” he said.
Gloria’s own heart fluttered.
“If you understand what I mean,” Oz added.
Gloria was nodding, and fighting back tears. “I understand,” she said.
“Then get in, try it on for size, and let me know.”
“What are you going to drive?”
She thought of him, which warmed his heart. But he could only smile. “You aren’t serious?” he asked. When she didn’t understand why he asked it, he motioned toward the myriad of luxury cars in that garage.
Gloria laughed. “I forgot,” she said, and got back in the Maserati.
Oz leaned in, and gave her a kiss. “I’ll call you later,” he said, she said okay, and then she drove off.
Oz smiled as she drove away, and stayed there staring at her until she was clean out of sight. Then he nodded at another car, a security detail on Oz’s payroll, and that car followed Gloria. But when he turned, his brother was standing right beside him and nearly scared him to death. He backed up, shocked.
“I could have kicked your ass!” he said, holding his heart.
“You could have tried,” Alex said far more calmly.
When Oz realized Alex was looking at his bullet-ridden Porsche, he exhaled. “Don’t start with me,” he said.
“Who did it?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Was it Sinatra?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“But yet,” Alex said and looked at his brother, “you fuck his daughter.”
Oz knew it was crazy. He couldn’t even try to justify it.
“You’re fucking your enemy’s daughter, Oz.”
“I don’t know Sinatra’s involved yet,” said Oz. “That hasn’t been established yet.”
“And if it becomes established?” Alex asked. “What are you going to do then, Oz? You can’t play with people’s hearts like this.”
Oz gave his brother a harsh look. “I’m not playing,” he said so convincingly that it shocked Alex. “I’m not playing,” he said again. And then he headed out of the garage.
Alex just stood there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The bullet-ridden Porsche stopped at the curb in front of the Greek restaurant Fotia, and Oz got out, buttoned his Armani suit coat, and made his way across the sidewalk and into his favorite eatery.
As soon as Oz walked in, Dody, the owner, had his arms wide open with disbelief in his eyes. “What are you doing, Odysseus?” he asked the younger man. “Driving around in that raggedy heap. That’s not you. But I tell you what. I’ll take it off your hands real cheap.”
“Because it’s you, right?” Oz asked, and some of the bar customers laughed. Dody laughed too.
Oz was about to ask if they were back there.
“Yeah, yeah, they’re back there. Why you ask every time I do not know.”
“But I didn’t ask,” Oz said with a grin, and made through a pair of curtains to a back room.
The heads of the Greek families were waiting when Oz walked into that back office, and all of them appeared mortified.
“Why didn’t you phone us?” Andreas decried as soon as Oz walked in. “Why did we have to find out what happened on our own?”
“Why should what happened last night concern you?” Oz asked.
“Mick the Tick launched a retaliatory strike against our leader and you don’t think it concerns us?” asked Andreas. “We have families, too, Odysseus! Sinatra could have just as easily came for the rest of us too.”
“If it was Sinatra,” Oz said.
They all looked at him. “Why wouldn’t it be Sinatra?” asked Holt Denasis. “Do you know something we don’t know? What are you not telling us, Odysseus?”
“I don’t know anything for certain yet. And neither do any of you. We will not settle on one person when it could be somebody entirely different.”
But they all continued to stare at him. “Why are you doing this?” Petrakis asked.
Oz frowned. “Doing what?”
“Why are you attempting to take us off of Sinatra’s scent?”
“Because we’re basing his involvement on slim-to-none information. We need more than maybes. We need more than more-likely-than-not. You don’t go to war with a man like that unless you are one-hundred-percent certain that he’s the culprit.”
“So, what are you telling us, Odysseus?” asked Andreas. “To not retaliate? To do nothing?”
“We retaliated already. We took out two men who would have been his men if he is the leader of that mob. And, if it was him, his men already tried to take me out.”
“You and his own daughter,” said Petrakis.
Oz looked at him.
“You spent the night with the daughter of our enemy,” Andreas said. “Did you not?”
“That’s none of your affair.”
They couldn’t believe it. “We
are tied together now, Odysseus!” Andreas declared. “If that man would risk the life of his own daughter, think what he will do to our daughters and wives and sons? And to us? What are you doing?”
“I am leading the families out of this mess we’re in. That’s what I’m doing! And making rash decisions is not what we will do.”
“But why are you sleeping with his daughter?” asked Denasis.
“She has nothing to do with this. They’re barely on speaking terms is what I could gather from it. Leave her out of this. Every one of you have worked for me before. Have I ever let you down?”
None of them wanted to answer that.
“Have I?” Oz yelled.
“You have not,” Andreas admitted.
“No, you haven’t,” admitted Petrakis too.
Oz exhaled. “Then do as I tell you to do. We wait,” he said.
Andreas frowned. “But what are we waiting for?” he asked.
“Negotiations. If it’s Sinatra, he will not tit-for-tat over and over again. Something will break.”
“Yes,” said Denasis. “He could just kill us all!”
“Are you loopy?” asked Oz. “If that man wanted to kill us all, we’d already be dead! Don’t you understand how very badly we need the leader of the Ghost Mafia to not be Mick the Tick? You might have stepped on a landmine when you started grabbing west coast land. That was bad enough. You stepped on a nuclear bomb when Mick Sinatra is claiming to have owned the land you grabbed. Pray it’s not him. You go back to your homes in Jersey, and we wait and we pray. That’s what we do,” Oz said, and then left the room.
The heads of the families all looked dissatisfied. Because they all knew better.
“You think he suspects us?” asked Denasis.
“No,” responded Petrakis. “He doesn’t suspect a thing.”
“But I am worried,” said Denasis. “We took out Madinis to rope him in. He came in. But at what price to us if he suspects we were grabbing land we knew was already owned.”
“But we didn’t know Sinatra owned it!”
“I know. But I’m still worried. We paid them good money to take him out, and look what it got us. He walks around as if nothing never happened. As if we needn’t do anything but wait and see. Wait and see?”
“And pray. He says to pray. Don’t forget that!”
“What is our next move, Andreas?”
“The same move as before,” said Andreas. “Odysseus has got to be eliminated. That’s the only way we stand a chance.”
“But what if we are wrong, and Mick Sinatra is not the head of the Ghost Mafia?”
“We have to assume we’re right,” said Andreas. “For our families’ sake, we have to believe the evidence before us. And Odysseus must sacrifice for our families’ sake, just like many of our people sacrificed for him and his family when we were in Greece. Oz must die with Sinatra thinking he dragged us into a war of his own making.”
“And then?”
“And then,” said Andreas, “we must hope Sinatra has mercy on us, and spare our lives. That is the only chance we have.”
“Or we can get off the sidelines and fight back,” Petrakis said. “Maybe Sinatra isn’t as mighty as everybody thinks he is.”
They all looked at Petrakis. “Then you go to war with him,” said Andreas, “and tell us about it later.” Andreas frowned. “Don’t be a fool, Petrakis,” he admonished his colleague.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Shirley!” Pearl hurried over to the manager of Lucinda’s Diner.
Shirley, who was wiping down a table near the hall leading to the back of the diner, looked up. “What?”
“Look,” said Pearl as she pointed toward the big window. Oz was getting out of his Porsche and heading into the diner. “Look at all of those bullet holes. I told you he got shot at. The police hushing it up because he’s a Drakos. But they said Miss Gloria was involved too.”
But Shirley was shaking her head. “I don’t believe that. Oz, yes. But Gloria? She’s a ritzy type. I don’t believe she was involved for a second.”
After speaking to various workers, including a black worker that he hadn’t seen there before, Oz began heading toward the hallway, where Shirley and Pearl stood.
“Hey, Oz,” Shirley said with a smile.
“She in?” Oz asked without breaking his stride.
“She’s in,” Shirley said, “but let me see if she can see you.”
Oz smiled a knowing smile and kept heading down the hall. Shirley was surprised. “No, he didn’t,” she said.
But when Oz knocked once and then opened the office door at the end of the hall, and they heard Gloria’s voice say hey, Oz as if she was thrilled to see him, both ladies were shocked. “Oh yes he did,” said Pearl.
They nearly collapsed against each other when they saw what looked like Gloria hurrying from around her desk and falling into Oz’s arms. When Oz kicked the door shut as he held Gloria in his arms, they did collapse against each other.
Inside the office, Oz was kissing Gloria with a long, passionate kiss. He placed both hands on her tight ass and began massaging her as he kissed her.
When they stopped, he continued to hold her against him, and kept his hands on her butt. He smiled. “Let’s go to Vegas,” he said.
Gloria leaned back from him. “What?”
“Let’s go to Vegas.”
“Vegas? Why?”
“Why not?”
“Let me see. Oh, that’s right. Because I have a business to run!”
But Oz was still game. “Come on, babe! We’ll have a blast.”
“No, Oz. You have a business to run too.”
“Oh, yeah,” Oz said as if he’d forgotten. “There’s that!”
Gloria laughed. Oz was always good for a laugh. And she pulled away from him and went behind her desk.
Oz watched her tight ass as she walked behind that desk. He was so enamored with it that he followed her and before she could sit down, he sat down. And pulled her onto his lap. She grinned because he moved so quickly. “Oz!” she said, hitting him across his chest. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing yet,” he said. “What I’m getting ready to do?” he asked and she heard him unzip his zipper. “I’m getting ready to do you.”
That was when Gloria felt his raw penis against her thigh. She also felt his hand slide the seat of her panties to one side, and his fingers began massaging her. She leaned back against him. “I have work to do,” she said unconvincingly.
“So do I,” said Oz. “I’m supposed to drive my Porsche to Pensacola for bodywork. That’s work, too, right?” He began kissing her neck.
“Why couldn’t the guys at the shop in Pensacola come and pick it up?” Gloria asked.
“They could have. But I like the attention I get driving it,” Oz said.
Gloria smiled and shook her head. “You’re one of a kind, Oz,” she said. “I love your honesty.”
Oz felt a pang of regret that he didn’t tell her last night about his problem with what could be her father’s organization. He hadn’t been honest at all!
But when he gloved his penis and slid it inside of Gloria, they both forgot all else and focused on one another.
Oz wrapped his arms completely around Gloria, as if he was holding her captive, as he made long-lasting love to her. It was a feeling for Oz, an elation that was matchless in his long string of women, and he was beginning, already, to crave it. He moved his hands beneath her blouse, and began massaging her breasts, as he fucked her. And the longer he was inside of her, and the more he was massaging her, the more he knew for certain that he’d hit the jackpot. He finally found a woman that didn’t just make him feel good sexually, which she did beyond any other woman he’d ever been with, but she excited him too. She made him want to love her and cherish her and take care of her. She made him want to be a better man.
Gloria felt a bond with Oz too. And it wasn’t just a sexual bond for her, either. She felt a connection to Oz, as if he w
as going to be her soulmate, and she couldn’t wait to see it unfold.
But as his gyrations increased, and as they both began to feel the burn of cumming, they both felt that terror too.
She could hurt me, Oz was thinking.
He could break my heart, Gloria was thinking.
And, for both of them, it was a terrifying thought.
That was why, when they came, they came with that kind of forcefulness that gamblers who put it all on the line had: all or nothing. They were either going to have the time of their lives, or hell on earth. They came hard.
After they came, Oz lifted Gloria, carried her into the adjacent bathroom, and cleaned them both. But when they were coming out of the bathroom, they realized they had a visitor. Shirley was standing in the office.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Gloria and Oz were both surprised to see Shirley in Glo’s office, just standing there. “What are you doing?” Gloria asked her manager.
“A lady upfront wants to know if she could rent the diner for her daughter’s wedding reception.”
Oz shook his head. He knew better than that!
“You don’t just barge in my office, Shirley,” Gloria made clear.
“I knocked first, but I guess you didn’t hear me.”
“Then don’t come in,” Gloria said, “if I don’t respond. Now I mean that. Don’t pull this stunt again.”
“It’s not a stunt. The lady’s out front right now.”
Oz rolled his eyes. “You’re a piece of work,” he said.
“What do I tell the lady?” Shirley asked.
“You tell her to schedule an appointment to meet with me, and we’ll discuss it at that time. You have my calendar.”
“But she’s right here.”
Oz frowned. “What’s with you? Didn’t she just tell you what to do?”
Shirley gave Oz a harsh look, but then she left the office.
“Do you put up with this insubordination?” Oz asked her.
“Oh, I check’em,” Gloria said as she made her way back behind her desk. “Don’t worry.”
Oz Drakos: Loving Mick the Tick's Daughter Page 13
