by Xander Hades
It took a while to realize. It was soft, a whisper, he might not have heard. But laying my head on his chest, it all came back to me, the boy the girl, stolen moments. I said it because I used to say it, but I always meant it. I meant it this time too.
He didn’t react.
He probably didn’t hear it. I hope he didn’t hear it.
I let go. I didn’t have to pretend to let go reluctantly, I really didn’t want to let go at all, but that part of my mind was screaming at me in a pure panic. I mumbled something about getting dressed and looked for my panties. Found them behind the couch. And by the wall. And over by the chair. I picked up a tiny rag that I had been wearing just a short time ago and looked at Michael. He had the grace to blush.
“I couldn’t wait.” He shrugged.
I can handle commando. It’s not my choice, but in a skirt, it can be fun on occasion and sometimes in a tight dress, you don’t want the hems of panties to ruin the line of the skirt. But in shorts? No. Shorts, especially cutoffs, have a tendency to ride up and it gets wildly uncomfortable.
I looked at the wad of cloth in my hand and sighed. Michael already had his pants back on and was looking for his shirt. There was nothing for it. So far we’d been lucky no one else was obviously home, whatever servants were around were also keeping their distance. Streaking up to my bedroom didn’t sound as exciting as it might have years ago. But then one truly couldn’t streak could they, with a cast on their ankle. So I pulled the shorts up and resigned myself for a little chafing. I got the bra back on, at least that had survived though Michael was still looking for his shirt. A vague memory tickled at my brain and I looked up. I touched his arm and pointed to the ceiling. His shirt was draped over the light fixture. He had to climb on a chair to pull it down.
I got one shoe back on and looked at the airbag on my ankle. I considered taking it off, just saying the hell with it, but as soon as I paid attention to it, it started to throb. Who needed shoes. I cast them both on the floor under the coffee table.
“Thanks for inviting me out today,” Michael said without a trace of sarcasm as he sat down to tie his boots. “It was fun.”
“’Fun’?” I held up the scrap of underwear I hadn’t let go of. He finished with his laces and walked over me. He pulled the cloth from me and tossed it negligently on the floor.
“Fun.” He repeated and put his hands on my ribs, just below the waist. I’d forgotten how big his hands were and the years of sculpting had made them strong and agile. I felt like he could crush me in his grip. I also felt… small and safe.
I never felt small. Or I never allowed myself to.
“I had fun today.” He repeated the words significantly and I was left trying to puzzle out what exactly he meant by that. Was that all it was? Fun? A way to while away a boring evening, something to do? We could have played Monopoly, it would have been ‘fun’ and lasted a whole lot longer.
“I might never change my mind about riding horses.” He said, smiling down at me. “But there were parts of the day that were enjoyable. Here, you and I. That part was incredible.”
Oh. That. The ride was fun. The sex was incredible. Now I was blushing.
“Yeah,” I admitted, carefully, realizing that he was doing this to let me off the hook. To let me know he’d heard and wasn’t going to hold me to it. He wasn’t going to take the words seriously.
Maybe he should have.
“It was. Did you…” Did you feel the same? Is that why you’re pretending? Did you…ever…love me back…? “Did you feel different this time? Like…”
“Like we had something more intimate, more intense?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.
I nodded. So it wasn’t just me. He’d felt it too.
His arms came around me, and that word we were both ignoring wrapped around us, leaving us in a warm cocoon where the world outside no longer existed. OK, maybe this whole thing was some kind of drop in adrenaline after having been shot at. Or maybe a reaction, sort of a make-up thing because we’d been fighting for so long. But no, we’d had fighters, we’d even started sex with a fight before and never felt this…intimate. This close.
So was it the bullets?
And if so, where would we be tomorrow?
I lay my hand on his chest and spoke to him, not meeting his gaze. “What did you mean by not asking me to give up my dream?” The words came out hard, unsure, almost as quiet as that dreaded L-word had. Maybe he wouldn’t hear that either.
Maybe I’d been just that quiet to give him that out, to let him not answer the question if he didn’t want to. Maybe he’d regretted saying that already, the way I’d been regretting that blasted word ever since it had passed my lips.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe I was going to go crazy waiting for him to answer.
Then I looked up.
I had expected to see Michael, the Michael of old. Somewhere in all of this, I’d kind of lost track that he was no longer the boy I used to know. This man… this was someone new, someone powerful and self-assured. I held his gaze, but it wasn’t easy.
“I don’t need to break you,” he said, slowly, like he was choosing each word carefully. “You don’t need to break me. We need to figure how we fit together.”
I caught my breath.
Could we? Fit together I mean? Could we somehow…move as one?
I felt the soreness between my legs, that came from hard lovemaking. The way my body felt heavy and sated right now. I remembered the intimacy. The way we’d…fit…there.
Maybe then…maybe then it was possible to fit in other ways?
I took a cautious breath. “I’m listening.”
Only whatever he was going to say was lost as the door exploded inward. I jumped and would have fallen had Michael not caught me. That’s how Daddy found us when he came charging into the room, me wrapped in Michael’s arms as he turned, already drawing his gun.
Thank God I was dressed.
Chapter 15
Deanna
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?” Daddy’s bellow would have set all the horses in the stable to screaming had we still been out there. I thanked my lucky stars that he hadn’t caught up with us there, or everything would have gone very differently. As it was I could hear a clatter out in the hallway as his men came to attention. Daddy slammed the door and the room fell blissfully silent.
Only I wasn’t entirely sure what to answer. Imagine if he’d come in five minutes sooner…as it was I could see that scrap of underwear in plain sight in the middle of the floor, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. My lips went dry as I desperately tried to come up with an answer.
“DEANNA! ANSWER ME!”
“Deanna is safe, Uncle Dom.” Michael said, his voice calm. Bored even. “She twisted her ankle and broke her cell phone, that’s all.”
“That’s all? That’s all? I was told she was shot at!”
“They hit the horse.”
“What horse? What horse?”
“We don’t actually know its name…”
“Alexandra.” I said and felt the blood rising to my cheeks. I saw the surprised look Michael gave me and mumbled, “I asked.”
“Alright…” Daddy growled, “start at the beginning.”
“The horse she was riding,” Michael said, “Alexandria, she was shot in the rear and spooked, she took off with Deanna, Deanna fell.”
Daddy looked at Michael for a long moment. He reached into his jacket pocket and made a show of taking out a cigar and cutting off the end with a pocket knife. When it was lit to his satisfaction, he took a long puff and exhaled slowly.
“Michael,” he said slowly and in clipped syllables. “The only reason I am not shaking the fillings out of your teeth is that I can see she’s alright. But That was NOT the beginning of the story, and you actually told me LESS THAN I ALREADY KNEW WHICH WAS NOTHING AT ALL!”
The room wasn’t sound-proof and I could only imagine how many goons in the hallway were pressed up against
the door listening. When Daddy got going, he got loud – really loud. Also, there was a vein in his head that stood out and started to throb.
“Daddy,” I broke off of Michael to take Daddy by the hand. “Come sit down, remember your blood pressure.”
“MY BLOOD PRESSURE WILL BE HIGH IF I AM STANDING AND SCREAMING OR SITTING AND SCREAMING!” He took a breath and nodded once. “Alright, you tell me what’s going on then.” Daddy sat and turned to me as I hobbled around to face him, casually stepping on that piece of fabric and trying to hide it under my cast.
“We were going riding…” Michael began, his voice carefully innocent. I almost laughed except Daddy exploded all over again.
“NOT YOU! YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE. You, Deanna, what?”
I swallowed hard. “I tried to send someone to take care of Fingers.” A lot of expressions crossed Daddy’s face. Horror. Disappointment. I cringed a little inside. No, I cringed a lot. “I know, I know, but I thought… I thought I was ready.”
“Who did you send?” Daddy asked around a tight hold of the cigar. In a minute he was going to have that end bitten off.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, answering Michael’s question belatedly. “I asked one of your men to fix it for me.”
“Marcus?”
I felt like shit. No, I hadn’t known his name either. It was true. I never really thought of them as people, just… pieces on a chess board, useful creations to place where you needed them. It was nothing vicious or mean, it just hadn’t occurred to me that they were people. It sounded even worse when I thought of it that way. I wondered if he’d had a family. I wondered if he had children that were missing him. I swallowed hard, blinking rapidly and willing myself not to cry.
“Is he the one with the gray at the temples and little upturned nose?”
Daddy looked at Michael. Something passed between them, something between men who need validation that women are the crazy ones and not them. Women do it too. We all think each other is crazy and we’re the normal one.
“I’ll have my men’s noses measured for little upturns,” He groused at me, probably already doing a mental headcount. “Continue.”
“Well, he set it up, like I asked but it didn’t work out very well.”
“What does that mean?”
“The messenger was killed.” Michael said flatly. Daddy looked at him and then turned to me.
“I don’t suppose you know the name of the dead man, do you?”
I shook my head. He was just… one of Daddy’s men. You and your opponent throw men at each other and the one with manpower left over wins.
I felt a little sick.
“Go on.” Daddy said, but the joint union of disapproval and disappointment was radiating off of him in waves so strong it almost had a taste. I couldn’t go on.
“Fingers sent his own messenger,” Michael said finally. “Not to take her out, to take a shot across her bow.”
“And hit a horse’s ass.” Daddy said. “Instead of hitting a horse’s ass.” That last shot was directed at me. He was right.
“Deanna came through though, Uncle Dom. She was very strong and brave throughout.”
“Was she?” Daddy said, pulling the cigar from his mouth and studying the lit end. “Well, that makes everything hunky and dory, don’t it?” He turned to me and the vein began to pulse again. “Did you know that I was in the middle of talking to Fingers? That we were in negotiations all day?” His voice was calm. Even. Like he was catching me up on his day over the dinner table. I shook my head.
“Did you know that he was agreeing to talk to me? That we’d worked out a tentative deal? And did you know that NOW HE’S CLAIMING I SET HIM UP? DID YOU KNOW THAT HE’S LOCKED DOWN ALL THE OPERATIONS IN NEW ORLEANS AND PULLED HIS MEN IN CLOSE?”
He stomped around the room and stopped, pointing a single finger inches from my nose. “YOU MAY HAVE STARTED A WAR!” Daddy sat down again. “But as long as you were strong and brave, what the hell difference does it make? What the fuck do you want me to do, Michael? Give her a pat on the head? Give her a cookie?”
“Finger’s men don’t want to work for him.” Michael said, radiating calm. Seemingly unintimidated by Daddy’s screaming.
“How the fuck do you know that?”
“The shooter,” Michael said, shrugging a little. “Anthony Grazia. Finger’s gone nuts. His men know it, but they’re afraid they’re not going to get support from Chicago. They’re staying with him because we’re,” Michael waved between himself and me, “so messed up with Father and Tony’s deaths. Hell, he didn’t even know I was in the picture at all.”
“You questioned him already?” Daddy asked.
Michael nodded.
“Are you sure about all this? He must have broken awful fast, you sure it’s not a plant for false info?”
“We didn’t torture him.”
I winced. Definitely not the right answer.
“So he just volunteered this information out of the kindness of his heart after TRYING TO KILL MY DAUGHTER?” Daddy puffed his cigar as angry as I ever saw him. “I’ll get the truth out of the little shit, where is he?”
Michael looked at me. I looked at him. We both looked at Daddy. I hadn’t seen Michael looking anything but confident and self-possessed since he got back from college. Until now.
“I sent him home.” He said it quietly, his head up straight, standing tall, unflinching, but waiting. Like waiting for a hammer to fall.
Some doors cannot stand up to loud noises. In this house, most of the doors were fairly thick, the better to not have the wrong people overhear your conversations. I’d always suspected the rooms were reasonably soundproofed. But, for example, a jet turbine could still be heard flying overhead, maybe muffled slightly. I imagine an atomic bomb might be able to get its sound through these walls.
I think the horses all the way out in the barn picked up on Daddy’s scream. I almost heard them join in, like a choir of panic and rage.
I went momentarily deaf.
Michael simply stood there and waited for Daddy to finish.
It took a while.
Chapter 16
Michael
“You caught a man who tried to kill my little girl and you sent him away without so much as calling him a ‘bad boy’.” Dominic had wound down, but I could tell the only reason he wasn’t still screaming was because he’d hurt his throat in the hour and half of pure venom. The only reason he was still croaking out words was sheer willpower.
I’ve been called a lot of things in my lifetime. Dominic had managed to restate every single one of them and added a few dozen more I hadn’t even thought of. There were three rather creative suggestions I made a mental note to look up later, to see if I could get a definition.
I was pretty sure one of them was made up.
Nonetheless, what Dominic did not do was take his pistol out and shoot me. So that either meant he still liked me, or that he still needed my sperm to create his dynasty. I stole a glance to Deanna and tried not to smile.
“What the fuck is so funny about that?” he snarled at me.
I once found myself facing a very angry pit bull in his backyard. Long story. I stared at the dog until it got confused and sat down. If you show fear, pit bulls and people named “Dinky” will attack.
Frankly, I hadn’t been afraid when I’d startled the dog. I wasn’t afraid now. Dominic had a vein in his forehead that pulsed and danced. I watched it, wondering why I had never noticed that before.
“Think about it,” I said, making an attempt at reason now that he’d wound down some. Not that I thought he would be interested in being reasonable, but people had surprised me before. Not often. “Say I’d put a bullet in his eye, and shipped him back to Fingers… all his little friends are going to remember is what a Marcotti did to one of their own. And right now, your men are fuming about the messenger Deanna sent.
“I’ll deal with that later.” Dominic level a glare at his daughter that could have frozen water. D
eanna merely stared at him. Either she was learning from me to keep still, or she was planning something. I’d like to think the former, but that set to her lips and the way her eyes glittered dangerously didn’t bode well for anyone.
Time for a distraction. “HEY!”
Perhaps yelling at a mafia boss isn’t the smartest thing to do, but Dominic turned around, his face was more florid than when he was screaming. The look he gave me was pure death. Had I been anyone else, that would have been a literal description.
“I asked you to listen.” I stood and suddenly realized I had a good four inches on the man. I tried to remember when that happened. I don’t remember being taller than him.
He chewed the end of the cigar. I watched it rise and fall under the tight grip of his teeth. It had gone out an hour ago, when you’re screaming, you don’t have the air to inhale.
“This better be good,” he whispered.
“When the other shoe drops, his men will come to us. They started with The Outfit, Fingers has gone off the deep end, they know it. They just don’t have anyone else around them to take up the slack. I sent the man home because I’m not wasting my time sending a message to Fingers, he’s too far gone for that. I sent him home to send a message to his men. Without them, Fingers is one madman without power.”
