by Renee Strong
“It’s going to blow cold for a minute but it should be warm very quickly.”
I planted a soft kiss on her forehead and looked at her more fully under the car’s interior light. Someone had done a number on her. I did my best not to look too shocked when I gazed at her. Calm and reassuring—that’s how she had to see me at the moment.
I double checked that the button was switched fully on on the interior light, so that it wouldn’t dim when I closed the door, and then I shut the car door. Through the window, Lexi gave me a little wave and a little smile and I returned the gesture.
I put up my index finger to her. “One minute,” I mouthed.
The second I knew I was out of earshot, I pulled Vince to one side.
“You need to get moving quickly,” I said to him in a low, sharp voice. “Go and talk to Bobby and keep your phone on. If she gives me any info I can use, I want you to be ready and waiting to jump into action immediately. Got it?”
He nodded his understanding and tossed his head from side to side to knock some of the rain out of his hair.
“What do you want me to tell Bobby?”
“You tell him that blood is going to pour for this. We’re going to waste everyone who even looked at the guys who did this. This is fucking war.”
Vince’s features shadowed.
“Are you sure that’s wise, boss? Or necessary?”
I got real close to him.
“Look at her face, Vince,” I pointed to the car window. Lexi was staring out at the doctor and the nurse. “Just fucking look at it. Someone hurt that girl to get to me. You tell Bobby that I will not let you stand, do you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you, boss,” Vince said. He reached into his pocket to grab his phone. “I’ll get Doc Romano to give me a ride and I’ll call Bobby on the way.”
I nodded.
“When the doc writes the script, will you fill it and bring it to me? I’m going to be in the weekend house.”
“Sure thing, Dom.”
I motioned to the scooter still on the road, its wing mirrors shattered, their glass strewn underneath. “Toss that in his trunk.”
He tilted his chin up once in agreement and twisted himself in the direction of the scooter. Then, he stopped suddenly and reached out with his free hand to grab my arm under the elbow. “We’ll have our justice for this, Dom. I swear it.” He let my arm go. “I’ll call you when I’m in front of Bobby.”
I put out my hand to shake his and he took it.
“You’re good people, Vince,” I said. “I owe you for tonight.”
He shrugged and gave a mumbled, “Don’t mention it,” then turned and walked to Doc’s car.
Chapter 9
Lexi
Under Dominic’s jacket and in the warmth of the car, I began to feel a little sleepy—more the effects of the day than any medically caused drowsiness.
I kept looking at Dominic, who looked over at me intermittently and gave small soothing smiles. I wanted to talk to him, to tell him about what had happened, but I hadn’t the energy to get the words out. Instead, we settled into a comfortable silence, the hum of the engine, the patter of the last few drops of rain, and the sounds of our breathing the only sounds.
He turned the car in the other direction to my neighborhood, out toward the richer suburbs where people like me couldn’t afford to live.
Street signs and bars and restaurants and apartment blocks zipped by in a steady procession. A few people were braving the night again, now that the worst of the rain had cleared.
“I’m going to take you to my family’s weekend house,” he said. “Nobody really knows about it outside of friends.”
If I’d had more verve about me, I would have teased him, pointed out to him that most families had trouble owning one home, never mind two. Instead, I just looked forward to being somewhere comfortable and welcoming.
He reached out and put his hand on mine, the touch of his skin comforting and warm. I intertwined my fingers in his.
Despite the pain in my head and my aches, I started to hope that maybe this date could be salvaged. Something good needed to come out of this night.
As I pulled up to the weekend house, Lexi’s eyes went wide. I clicked the electronic gates open and as the full size of it revealed itself, and she saw the giant fountain in the drive, her eyes got even wider.
I sometimes forgot how a place like this looked to most everybody. I remembered, when I was a kid, how crazy expensive it had looked to me when I first saw it.
My dad had driven us all out here in his Caddy when I was maybe eight or nine. Bobby was beside me, struck dumb for once. My mom, in the front seat, was sitting quietly, too, though for different reasons than me and Bobby.
I hadn’t started to realize then that Ma cried more than other moms did, or that while most of the other mafia wives were brash and not afraid to speak their minds, Ma was cowed quiet by my pop. She didn’t ask for anything or demand anything like some of the other women who were involved in the family. Her voice was like a squeak whenever she answered one of dad’s demanding questions.
Her voice came out in that little mouse voice again when Pop pulled up to the brand-new weekend home and asked us what we all thought.
Bobby and I were still rendered speechless by the revelation that it was ours. Mom, however, didn’t even seem to register it.
“That’s real nice, Tony,” she said barely looking at it. “A lovely house.”
I thought of my mom’s expression again as Lexi looked at the house in wonderment. How different the two reactions were.
Lexi’s cheeks were starting to get some normal color back to them. She let out a quick whistle.
“What a place,” she breathed. I took my hand out of hers and then stroked her face before I reached down to bring the car to a stop.
“I would have waited to bring you here for some special weekend,” I said to her. “Today kind of forced my hand on that a bit.”
She pulled at the handle of the door and I swung my door open quickly.
“Wait,” I said urgently as I climbed out of the car. “You’re too weak to walk anywhere for a while.” I slammed my door shut and ran around to her side.
I pulled her door open and leaned over to click the seatbelt off her. She gazed up at me with her long-lashed, big, beautiful eyes and I gave her another kiss softly on the lips.
I was so relieved she was alive. I hadn’t given myself time to think of that fact until I got her somewhere safe. Now that we were at the house, I could let my relief sink in. I would have never forgiven myself if she had been killed. That and the thought of never finding out what had happened to her were the two thoughts that had been going round my mind on a constant loop all evening.
“Put your arm around my neck,” I said quietly to her, “and hold on tight.”
My coat slipped down from her as her hand reached around my neck to my shoulder and as I pressed her to me as I picked her up, I could feel how wet she still was.
I put one arm around her shoulders and the other under her two legs. As I scooped her body to me, I saw for the first time how pretty her dress must have been when she’d put it on. And because of me, it had been thoroughly destroyed.
“Let’s get you out of this wet thing,” I said to her as I walked her to the door. Despite her fragile state, she gave me an impish grin.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” I said with a laugh. “That’s not what I was talking about.”
She gave a mock sad face but didn’t protest anymore. She put her head back against my chest and nestled in. I savored the feeling of her close to me for as long as it took me to reach the door. After tonight, it definitely couldn’t happen again. I couldn’t have her anywhere near me after tonight.
I ignored the pit that opened up in my stomach at that thought and put the key in the lock.
Dominic peeled off my clothes with such aching tenderness that I shivered a little under his touch.
He unbuttoned m
y dress slowly and let it drop to the ground. Then, he sat me on a plump, expensively upholstered armchair in the spacious bedroom we were in. Reaching over me, he undid my good bra—the one I’d worn especially for our date—and pulled it off me. Then, he knelt in front of me and pulled down my lacy panties.
Even though every bit of me hurt, I couldn’t wait for what came next, which is why I was surprised when he told me to stay where I was. He stepped into an adjacent room and came back with a velvety soft dressing gown.
He took my left hand and eased it into the sleeve, then took the right one to do the other arm.
“The heat’s timed to come on so the room should get warmer.” He tied the dressing gown at the front. “Do you think you’ll be okay for a few minutes?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, so confused as to why he wasn’t putting me on that bed and repeating his performance from the night before. I knew I was filthy and my hair was a tangled mess from the rain, but all I wanted to do was to make love to him.
I turned my face up to him and he kissed me gently.
“You stay here and keep getting warm and I’ll come back soon.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep the confusion and hurt out of my voice. After everything I had been through tonight, I was feeling weak-willed and needy. I hated it. I never relied on anyone and yet, all I wanted at the moment to make me feel better was to feel his lips on mine, his naked skin on mine.
I watched as he walked back to the adjacent room, appreciating the curve of his ass and the sight of his strong, broad shoulders.
I wanted to follow him but I didn’t trust that my legs would take me there. So, I waited for him to come back.
As I waited, I looked around the room. I had never been in a room that nice. It looked like it belonged in a fancy resort hotel room. I had cleaned rooms in a five-star hotel uptown a few months ago, when Mom’s care was really hitting my finances hard, and even those weren’t this nice.
The bed was surely a super-king, unlike my tiny little double. The duvet covers were a blue-gray silk and there were heavy, mahogany side tables beside it. In one corner was a giant mahogany armoire and a writing desk a few feet from that.
In the corner of the room was a guitar. Was that Dominic’s? I wondered. I made a mental note to ask him about it later.
The carpet was a thick, beige pile; the drapes were heavy and expensive-looking.
I had the urge to climb under the bed’s comforter, to slip off the dressing gown and to wait for Dom, but even that much movement seemed a tall order at the moment.
I started a bit as some music began playing—low, mellow rock. Where was it coming from? I looked around the room. There must be some speakers in the wall.
Dominic stepped into the room. He’d stripped off his own wet clothes and was in a dressing gown of his own.
“Okay, it’s ready,” he said.
“What’s ready?” I asked.
In reply, he walked over, picked me up, and carried me to the room he’d just exited.
Lexi let out a little sigh of contentment as I eased her into the warm, full bath. The en suite was a huge one—to be fair to Dad, he had put together a nice pile of bricks here—with a claw foot bath in the center of the floor.
“Just relax,” I said to her as I knelt down beside her.
I don’t think she’d seen her face yet. I was glad of that and had made sure to shield her from the mirrors as I carried her in.
Besides the huge injuries to her skin—the red and purple coloring around her eye and her swollen and split lip—her make-up had run down her face, two long tracks of mascara running down under her chin.
I dipped a washcloth in the bathwater I’d mixed with bath milk and softly pressed it to her face, letting the water run over her.
She winced slightly and I pulled the cloth back.
“No, keep going,” she said. I dipped the cloth back into the water again and worked even more gently this time to clean the makeup and dirt from her skin.
Once her face was a little cleaner, I gave her hair a wash. I turned on the shower hose attachment and felt the water, letting it run over my fingers until it was pleasantly warm. As I shampooed, my fingers caught on knots and bits of dirt that had caked into her hair. I was as gentle as I could be, and she sighed happily as I massaged her scalp.
“Close your eyes,” I told her before I rinsed her hair clean.
She looked so vulnerable and beautiful, even with the angry marks on her face and cuts and grazes on her body, that my heart hurt a little. I had seen my mom with terrible bruises all through my childhood—though she got them from someone who was supposed to protect her—and the pain of seeing my mom like that sprang fresh into my mind.
I never wanted to see Lexi like that again as long as I lived. If that meant I never saw her again, so be it. She deserved better than to experience any sort of hurt or pain in life. Especially not as a result of being around a guy like me.
I would never—never—raise my hand to a woman in the way my dad had to my mother but it didn’t matter what I would or wouldn’t do. The reality was, if Lexi was around me or any of the shit I saw every day, she was going to be in danger. The common factor was me: I was toxic to be around.
I was glad she was too tired and drowsy to talk to me too much right now. If I had to tell her what I was thinking, I would fall to pieces. Being that exposed and raw with anyone was terrifying me. Any sort of weakness in this life was anathema. Expose a crack of exposed flesh—my deep attraction to Lexi, for example—and someone would take a shot at it. That had been proved in dramatic fashion with Lexi’s abduction.
And that happened after I had known her just a couple of days. If I gave her more time to get under my skin, I was just opening myself—and her—up more to attacks.
I turned off the shower hose, and put it back it in its cradle. Then, I took a hold of one of her hands and washed her arm from fingertips to shoulder. I got up and walked to the opposite side of the bath to do the same to the other arm. This was the arm with road rash on it. I took her hand delicately in mine and worked as nimbly as I could, little bits of gravel dropping into the water as I cleaned.
I heard her breath sharpen a little as I got to the worst of the abrasion and I gave her a quiet “sorry.”
“I’ve got to get you cleaned up so that the wounds can heal.”
She lolled her head to one side and closed her eyes. “It feels good mostly,” she said. “It stings a little on the sore spots but it’s mostly really nice.”
Her face looked more relaxed when she stopped talking, the stress of earlier dropping out of it.
When I had that arm cleaned, I walked to the end of the bath and took her left foot in my hand. It looked like she’d been a long time out of her shoes: the soles of her feet were thick with dirt. I cleaned each sole in turn and then chucked the blackened washcloth into one of the dual sinks in the bathroom.
I took a new washcloth from the drawer and returned to work on her legs. Smoothly and a little more firmly, I washed each calf, kneading the muscles to release the tension in them.
Next, I started up her thigh. When I’d got to the top of the first one, Lexi’s eyes sprang open. She grabbed my hand and pressed it to her pussy.
“Keep going,” she said breathily.
I dropped the cloth and eased my hand from her grip.
“We can’t do that, Lexi,” I said. Her face flooded with hurt so I came up with a quick lie. “Because you need to get some rest. You look exhausted.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. She did look so tired and broken down in the bath that I wanted to wrap her in a blanket and stroke her forehead until she nodded off. The full truth was that I also didn’t trust myself not to completely fall for her, and to lose my resolve to get her away from me, if we had sex again.
She seemed to buy my half-truth. She looked down at me sadly but without looking so hurt now.
If she kept looking at me, she might read the lie on my face, so I reache
d in and pulled the plug from the bath. I took my hand out and gave it a shake, and then pulled a soft, cotton bath towel from a hook.
Holding it out, I leaned her to me and lifted her out of the bath and into the cocoon of the towel.
“Time for sleep,” I told her softly.
“Okay,” she whispered in reply. Her breath was already getting heavy as I carried her back into the bedroom, her gentle exhalations warming my neck.
She seemed so fragile in my arms, a shadow of the giant personality I’d met in the bar so recently. She was still physically the same breathtaking collection of supple curves—but now, with the fight gone out of her, at least temporarily, she looked smaller. I felt even more fiercely protective of her.
Tomorrow, I would need to figure out what to do next. Tomorrow would come soon. For now, I’d let her get some much needed sleep.
Dominic whipped back the covers and put me gently down onto the mattress. The sheets underneath were expensive feeling, like everything else in the room. They were crisp and clean and wonderful on my skin. I waited for him to climb in beside me but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled the duvet over me and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Aren’t you getting in?” I asked and he shook his head. There was something in his expression that worried me. I couldn’t figure out what it was but I didn’t like it all.
“I have to make some calls,” he said.
“To find the guys who took me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “To find those guys.”
Sleep was pulling at me. I longed to let it take me but I wanted to drink in more of his handsome face before he left to make his calls.
“Serge and Jules,” I said to him and he his brow furrowed, perplexed. “The guys who took me—they were called Serge and Jules. Serge sounded Russian or maybe Eastern European.”
He stood up suddenly.
“You’re sure about all of that?” he said.
I nestled back into the pillow.
“I’m certain. And the scooter I was on—that was Jules’s.”
