“Oooh.”
Why does every vibration of his voice feel like foreplay? Why?
Did he somehow hope he’d be the one to drive me home tonight? Or did it just remind him of me?
Is that wishful thinking?
The door to the back opens again and Tavi comes in with Elise. “Store’s closed, everyone’s gone but us. I want everyone to stay together, make sure—”
An explosion sounds so loudly, I hit the floor before I know what’s happening. I don’t even have time to scream. Santo’s heavy, muscled body’s atop me, pinning me in place. “Don’t move,” he barks. “Stay there.” Then louder. “What the fuck?”
There’s nothing in here, no sign of an explosion. It was outside, then.
I hear rapid footsteps. Mario’s run to see what it was, the explosion right outside this door. I can’t see anything with Santo on top of me.
“Let me up,” I manage to get out even though my lungs are constricted from being squashed. My heart’s beating like mad. I want to know what happened. I don’t want to be pinned beneath his weight as we wait to hear the news.
“Stay right fucking there,” he snaps.
I try to roll him off me, but he is, not surprisingly, completely immovable.
“Santo,” I growl, gritting my teeth together. “Let me fucking up.”
“No,” Tavi says, overruling everyone because of course. “You stay there.”
Fucking ganging up on me.
Mario returns. “Jesus,” he swears under his breath. “Who parked a red car in the back lot?”
“Motherfucker,” Santo mutters. “Jesus, motherfuckin’ douchebags.”
No. No. My heart aches at the knowledge that someone destroyed Santo’s pride and joy. Tears, actual tears, prick my eyes.
I better get a good swing in myself at whoever did this to him. They don’t usually let the women in our family get their hands dirty, but this one… this is personal.
Mario curses. “Hope you had good insurance.” He curses under his breath in a stream of rapid Italian. “You guys get the fuck out of here. No one wants me and Dario, we don’t mean shit to anyone.”
Dario chuckles coldly, as if this is something to be proud of. The sound makes a shiver of fear slide down my spine. “Yeah, agreed,” Dario says. “We’ll hold things down, the rest of you go back to The Castle. We’ve got things covered here. We’ll run footage, make sure we’re clean.”
They make a plan while, I should note, I’m still under Santo, my cheek pressed unceremoniously against the cold concrete floor.
“Santo,” I begin again with a sigh. “Let. Me. Up!”
“I. Said. No.” He leans down and whispers in my ear, “And if we were alone, I’d whip your pretty ass raw for not doing what you’re told. Shut it.”
Oh, how romantic. Maybe I don’t care his pretty car’s blown to smithereens.
I buck at his huge body fruitlessly.
“Tryin’ to get me hard?” he whispers in my ear, a low rumble of warning I crave with every fiber of my being. I’d die before I’d admit that. “Go ahead,” he whispers in my ear, while chaos still reigns around us and no one notices. “Fight me. You know how I like it when you fight me.” I tremble in frustration. I try to draw in another breath, when finally Tavi speaks up.
“Caravan of armored cars outside this door will take us home. Lawyer will meet us in the Great Hall in an hour. Every one of you, weapons drawn as we exit.”
Finally, finally, Santo’s heft moves off me and I can lift my cheek off the disgusting concrete floor. I make a face and smooth my fingers over my face. I’ll have to use the cleansing charcoal face mask after that disgustingness.
Santo takes me roughly by the elbow and brushes me off. I’m sure he wants this to look fastidious and unsexy as fuck, but every touch of his fingers on me makes my skin prickle with awareness.
And then I remember. And I can’t be angry with him anymore.
“Santo, your car,” I say, my legs still tingling when the blood flows through them freely again. My voice cracks. “Your beautiful car.”
Scowling, his face unreadable, he shrugs and glances at the door. “Only a damn car. I’ve got others.”
If I close my eyes, I can still see him, the angry young boy with a chip on his shoulder to beat all chips. He melded into our family life like he belonged here… because he did.
Because he does.
But nothing was his own. He shared parents with us, he shared a home with us, and he knew from the minute my parents adopted him that everything he had was given to him.
Not his cars, though. Never his cars.
The first one he bought after years of scraping money together, even though my father would’ve gifted him one off a lot. But no. He had to pay for it himself.
He hadn’t even legally gotten his license yet when he bought it. It sat in the garage at The Castle while he learned how to fix it, how to make it the car of his dreams. And when he finally did, when he finally made it his own, he babied that thing as if he’d given birth to it himself.