4. Unwelcome Guest pt II
four
Unwelcome Guest pt II
“Care to tell me what the hell you were doing out this way?” Mikey asked once the car was in motion. He was used to the strong-willed woman who only acquiesced as much as was required for her job and made no bones about giving as good as she got. The tear-stained, curled in on herself version of that woman sitting in his passenger seat unsettled something in him. Made him want to bleed someone.
Brandi sighed and let her purse slip to the floorboard between her legs as she shifted in the seat, her shoulder bumping against the window. “I guess I was pretending I could escape.”
Mikey frowned. “Work?”
Something like a laugh choked in her throat. “No. Work’s the best part of my day.” She fidgeted with her phone. “And I’m not just saying that because you sign my paychecks.”
As he neared an intersection, he debated for a second detouring to one of their safehouses. A perfectly good location for a conversation, especially one that was actually a conversation, but rationally he knew it was unnecessary. Dante wouldn’t approve revealing that location to Wesley Richardson’s daughter in this situation. So he continued in the direction he’d originally planned. “Uh-huh. Escape what, then?”
She was silent for several seconds. “I know you don’t really trust me,” she finally said, “and I don’t blame you. I probably wouldn’t even have hired me if I were you. So I don’t exactly expect you to believe me, or feel all that sympathetic, when I say my relationship with my father is shit.” She dragged in a breath, still staring out the window. “Everything that goes wrong in my life is his fault. Ever since I was little.” A strangled, bitter laugh escaped her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the jerks who stole my car are working for him somehow, even. I don’t know how he’d have arranged that, but it would be about right, all things considered.”
Mikey scowled, finding himself fighting to keep his eyes on the road. “Why do you stay in the area if you want to get away from him so badly?”
“I tried moving away.” She shifted, sinking back in her seat. One arm rose to curl around her midsection. “You know my father’s an asshole. He’ll manipulate any situation to get what he wants, and when all you’ve ever known is a world where his manipulation ultimately wins, it doesn’t seem possible to run far enough. So I came back and did what he said.”
Wesley had never seemed all that capable in Mikey’s mind, but he supposed that was as much a matter of perspective as anything. “Now would be a good time to come clean if he really has asked you to spy on us.”
“Of course he has,” she said easily. “I agreed to apply for the job to appease him, though I honestly didn’t think I’d even get an interview. But just so we’re clear, I haven’t given him anything. He can yell at me and threaten me all he likes.”
Mikey cut another glance at her as he idled at a stoplight, catching a tremor in her jaw as she struggled with her emotions. He’s threatening his own daughter? Wesley was more of a bastard than Mikey had given him credit for. Family was supposed to be the thing that mattered, the thing a person treasured and defended.
Her head was still tipped to the side, her gaze still directed out the window. “I’m sorry. It’s been an unusually difficult twelve hours and I’m not feeling like myself.”
Mikey settled into traffic, noting Ryōma’s SUV behind them, and asked, “Is there a situation going on that you need help with?”
She didn’t answer right away. When she did, she didn’t say what he expected. “I’ll handle it. It’s my problem.”
Mikey ground his teeth. He disliked everything about that answer. “Brandi,” he said before he could catch himself, his gaze sliding to her again. Her eyes widened and her head snapped around to face him, finally. He stared into her brown eyes for a second or two longer than he should have before forcing his attention forward again.
“So you do know my name.”
He grunted. “Should I be taking you to the hospital?”
“What?”
He flicked her a pointed glance, not allowing it to linger. “You keep holding your ribs. You were doing it in the elevator this morning, too. Are you injured? The truth this time.”
A heavy silence settled in the cab of the car and Brandi shifted in her seat, straightening and pulling her arm away from her midsection. “No hospital,” she said. “There’s nothing they can do for a bruised rib, anyway.”
Familiar anger sparked inside him. “Your father—”
“No,” she said, almost too quickly. “Not this time. This was … someone else.”
Not this time. They had greatly underestimated the level of scum that was Wesley Richardson.
Mikey dragged in a breath, nearly missing his cue to change lanes. “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Brandi.”
“I don’t,” she repeated firmly. “I’ve never seen him before and he didn’t give me a name. He just talked like some B-grade movie villain, honestly.” She paused, shifted in her seat, and when she spoke again her words were quieter. Weaker. “You don’t … happen to employ some musclehead with a ripped earlobe, do you?”
For a second, the question enraged him. Mikey didn’t reply immediately, forcing himself to think over all of her words and consider why she might need to ask.
Brandi knew her father had soured the relations between the Richardsons and De Salvos. She more than likely had some idea how powerful and dangerous the De Salvos really were. She certainly knew she hadn’t asked a nerdy business owner to come rescue her. So, she had plenty of reason to believe that she wasn’t in the best of standing with him and his family. If something had happened, if someone had shaken her up, the De Salvos were a logical suspect from that perspective.
It still pissed him off. But he did what he could to keep the anger from his voice when he said, “Not to my knowledge. Moreover, we haven’t sent anyone after you. You haven’t given us a reason.”
She blew out a breath. “I can’t decide if that’s a relief … or incredibly disconcerting.”
When she fell silent, and as the office came into sight, Mikey tapped the call button on the dash and connected with Ryōma’s car. “You’re dismissed,” he said as soon as the man answered.
After the call disconnected, Brandi whispered, “I know this is stupid, but I always thought the mafia was … I don’t know, particular I guess, about the whole ‘Italian’ thing.”
Mikey felt his eyebrows leap up his forehead. “What?”
“That guy,” she said, “the one you just called? He’s Japanese, right?”
“He is.”
“I always thought there were distinctions. You know, Italian mafia, Mexican cartel, Russian bratva, Irish mob, Japanese yakuza. That kind of thing.”
Mikey couldn’t help but chuckle as he swung into his designated parking space and cut the engine. Of all the conversations he’d considered he might have with this woman, he hadn’t once imagined this. “You’re not wrong,” he said. He released his seatbelt and twisted to face her. “Big brother doesn’t care so much about nationality—we’re American, most of us have mixed blood these days. What really matters is loyalty.” He reached across and released her seatbelt when she failed to move. “In Ryōma’s case, he was yakuza. Shit happened. He’s with us now.”
A small smile finally lifted Brandi’s lips, lighting the brown of her eyes. “You know I’m a naturally curious person.”
“You know I’m not going to tell you.” What she didn’t know was the way her more settled expression was affecting him. It simultaneously put something inside him at ease and made him want to unsettle her in a very different, highly inappropriate, way.
Brandi dropped her gaze and reached down, lifting her purse. “I won’t ask, don’t worry.” She paused, phone deposited in the bag she called a purse, and said softly, “Thank you for coming to get me, Mr. De Salvo. I really appreciate it.”
Frustration and something more difficult to identify churned in his chest and Mikey reached up, catching her jaw between thumb and forefinger. He turned her head just enough to meet her stare once more. “If whatever your situation is becomes an issue, bring it to my attention. You’re too valuable an asset to let fall apart, understand?” His finger curved along her chin as he released her, the smooth skin practically electrocuting him. “Least of all for the sake of someone who doesn’t appreciate your worth.”
Her lips parted and she sucked in an audible breath, her chest rising with the motion. “Yes, sir,” she whispered.
That time he fully understood the way his blood heated.
Mikey shoved from his car. “Let’s go.” He wasn’t going to take advantage of his employee, let alone the daughter of a man who would sooner see his entire family crumble. He shouldn’t even want to.
Brandi was sufficiently distracted for the rest of the workday. It was hard not to be, with the different way Mikey had behaved that afternoon. The sound of her name finally leaving his lips and the memory of his touch teasing her skin. She even forgot that she had, once again, not eaten lunch—until it came time to leave and she realized she was starving.
She’d used her afternoon break to call her credit card companies and report the cards stolen, as well as taking advantage of some downtime in the afternoon to file an online auto theft report. There really wasn’t much more she could do until someone got back to her. She would have to get her condo’s keys changed, but she wanted to do that anyway in light of the stalker breaking in, so she mentally moved that up her itinerary to the following afternoon. What was one more wasted lunch break?
What really grated on her was having to use one of the rideshares that had been too good to come pick her up earlier to get her home after work. Still, she couldn’t bum a ride. There was the stalker to consider. She was a bit concerned how that asshole would react when he realized she was without her car.
The oblivious Uber driver dropped her off in front of her condo and Brandi scampered inside with the aid of her spare key. Only once she was back in her home did she realize that being locked in didn’t provide that immediate sense of relief and security it had offered before. She went through the motions anyway, locking and resetting the alarm, then checking to make sure the condo itself was empty. She queued up her streaming music app, plugged in her speakers, and dug food out of her refrigerator to fill the condo with upbeat music and the aroma of tasty food.
It helped … for a couple of hours.
Until it came time to shower and crawl into bed. She never had gone out and gotten herself that stun gun, not that an electric weapon in the steamy bathroom would be a brilliant idea. All she could do was put her phone nearby, slightly hidden by a carefully placed towel, and hope. She showered quickly, unable to enjoy it the way she wanted, and chose to slip on a pair of shorts over her panties after drying off. The bedroom was quiet, and a final check of the condo revealed no new visitors.
Brandi plugged her phone in beside the bed, bundled herself beneath the covers, and did her best to relax for sleep. She told herself her stalker had said he wouldn’t be back until the next night. But how much could she trust such a man’s word?
Has Mikey ever barged in on a woman in the middle of the night?
Her heart beat a little faster, imagining the directions that scenario could go. He wasn’t as visually terrifying, objectively, as the intruder she’d had the night before. But he had a masterful glare. He was a figurehead of a mafia family that she suspected had reach beyond the New Jersey border, though she’d never been able to find concrete evidence of that theory. Regardless, he had to have some kind of danger to him. Was his danger strictly digital? Could he wipe her off the face of the internet? Probably he could, but was he likely to raise a hand—or a weapon? That she had no answer to.
The bigger issue was that her mental visual quickly took a detour. Instead of picturing Michele De Salvo the tough mafia invader, her mind conjured up something somehow more dangerous. An unsolicited, inappropriate visit from a man with dark connections and questionable purpose, crawling into her bed and touching more than just her chin. Those fingers pressing around her neck, his blue eyes glowing in the dark of the room as he lowered his head.
Brandi swallowed hard and pulled her blankets tighter over her. Dammit. This was no time be losing herself in pleasurable fantasies.
Still, she wondered what he might be like … would he choke her, eat her out, pull her hair? Was he a quick, self-pleasure focused, utter disappointment type of partner? There were so many things she was curious about, but the look that had heated his eyes in the seconds before he’d climbed from the car that day had at least assured her of one thing. He wasn’t without desire altogether.
Fuck. She needed to get herself under control and get to sleep. She wasn’t sure how long she’d even been just lying there, lost in lusty thoughts about her employer, but her body was hot and she would much have preferred to dig BOB out of the bottom drawer. Brandi let her eyes pop open and rolled her head to the side, blinking at her phone display.
Almost two-thirty in the morning.
Maybe, if she could be fast—
A brief, whisper of a ping sounded from down the hall. If she had been asleep, she would surely have slept right through it. Had surely slept through it the night before. But she was not asleep this time, and the recognition that her alarm had just been disabled—again—jolted her wide awake and upright. Her heart crashed in her ears like war drums. For a precious moment, she froze.
It was too dark to see anything beyond the crack in her doorway, and she realized she should have shut it completely. Should have dragged a barstool from the kitchen island into the bedroom and jammed it shut. The thought hadn’t occurred to her, and it was too late now.
Brandi pushed herself up against the headboard and finally thought to grab for her phone, fully charged and within reach. Her fingers closed around the device when a voice from her future nightmares assaulted her ears.
“Toss that on the floor, sweet Brandi.”
Mouth going dry, her gaze flicked up, seeing a looming shadow of thicker darkness that was harder to identify than the rest of her room. She really needed a nightlight, too. One for every conceivable space in the condo. Not that a light would help her now. Unable to speak, Brandi moved carefully, making it as visible as she could manage that she was unplugging her phone from the wall and not tapping the screen in any way. It lit up when the plug was removed, of course, and she wished like hell she could just scream for it to call out. Knowing she couldn’t, she gave it a gentle toss and watched it bounce off the side of the bed to land face-down on the hardwood floor.
Her unwelcome guest made a thoughtful sound. “Shame about your phone.” He stepped forward and she lost sight of it beneath his boot seconds before a jarring, distinctive snapping sound filled the space.
Brandi sucked in a breath. “I did what you asked!”
He tsk-tsk ed and the bed dipped with his weight. “You ditched me today, and now I need to know exactly how bad you’ve been, sweet Brandi.”
Brandi pulled her legs as tight as she could manage, ignoring how uncomfortable it was. “Not as bad as I should have been. You can’t possibly think there’s a woman in the world who likes being stalked, let alone for something that doesn’t have shit to do with her.”
“Hm.” He stood and ripped the comforter from the bed in a single sweeping movement.
Brandi screamed, as much because she was startled as because she was genuinely petrified.
He latched onto her legs by the ankles and dragged her down the mattress, then shifted himself in order to kneel on her thighs and pin her flailing arms over her head. The position had him hovering over her in a way she very much despised, and she could smell his breath when he spoke. “No more screaming, or I’ll have to stuff that big mouth with something else. And I don’t have a gag in my pocket.”
She nearly vomited right on the spot. Instead, she clamped her lips shut and leveled an entirely ineffective glare at him.
He chuckled. “That’s better. Now, I’ll ask questions, and you’ll give me direct answers. Nod if you understand.”
Fuck you. But she nodded, because she understood how powerless she was.
“Such a smart girl.” He adjusted his hold, wedging both her wrists into a single meaty grip and freeing up one hand to stroke his fingers down her cheek. His touch sent a cold chill down her spine. “Where is your car?”
“I don’t know.”
His amusement vanished like a tangible shift in the wind. His free hand went for her throat, but instead of properly choking her, his fingers arched up and pressed in on the back sides of her jaw in an unyielding grip. Pain burst in her head, radiating from her jawbone like a blaring alarm, and tears immediately pricked her eyes. She barely bit back a whimper at the sudden intensity.
“Don’t play games with me, sweet Brandi. What did you do with your car? Did you think you could hide from me by getting rid of it?”
She strained against his grip of her arms. “No,” she gasped. “That’s not—” Her jaw hurt so much, and he was making her talk? It felt like he was going to break the bone! “Stolen. It was stolen.”
Her intruder eased his grip on her face, stroking his fingers down her neck as if to soothe her. “Stolen?” he whispered. He sighed. “Do you see what happens when I’m not keeping an eye on you?”
You motherfucker. The carjackers didn’t even lay a hand on me! She held the words back, though the anger went a long way toward chasing off the pain that was not so slowly fading.
“Did you go to the police?” he asked before she could respond to anything else.
“No,” Brandi whispered. It still hurt to move her jaw.
“How did you get back to work?”
That was a tricky question. She wasn’t so sure it was smart to drag a De Salvo’s name into this conversation. On the other hand, part of her wondered if implying there was a closeness between her and them might be her salvation. It was a gamble.
She hated gambles. All of them.
Her delay didn’t go unnoticed, and her intruder lifted off her without warning. The next thing she knew she was being hauled off the bed and slammed into the wall. No. He’d thrown her, like a doll. Pain erupted down her entire body, her head protesting the loudest as it hadn’t yet fully recovered from the last assault. Then more pain, sharp stinging sensations, stabbed through her head as he fisted her hair and hauled her up before she’d even slumped entirely to the floor. He held her up by her hair and threw her again, to the side, sending her crashing to the floor. Her leg dragged over her shattered phone. He planted a foot on her spine before she could move. Fear skittered through her, stealing what little breath she had, and Brandi felt herself tremble.
“P-please, stop…” She hated herself for the words. She hated how weak they were, how weak she sounded to her own ears. Mostly, she hated the necessity of them.
But the boot on her back shifted off, to her other side. There was a split-second of relief before he lowered himself over her and she realized he was straddling her, and when he leaned forward to whisper in her ear, she thought she felt evidence of his arousal against her ass.
Another wave bile bubbled up her throat.
“Tell me what you’re hiding, sweet Brandi,” her intruder demanded. “Tell me, or I’ll start our games a little ahead of schedule.” He trailed his fingers down her side, imitating a tender caress.
She forced herself to swallow against the vomit and dredged up words, praying if there were consequences, they would at least be swifter than this. “My boss,” she said. “I called my boss. It was just a ride back to work. I took an Uber home. Please, don’t drag anyone else into this….” Maybe a part of her hoped he would go for someone else. Not that she wanted anyone else hurt. But if she understood the De Salvo’s strength correctly, imagining this asshole pulling this stunt on one of them was laughable.
If she had the strength to laugh.
“Your boss.” He grunted and lifted off of her. A moment later the bed creaked. “Michele De Salvo, is it?” he asked, pronouncing Mikey’s proper name the feminine English way instead of the masculine Italian way.
Brandi coughed, attempting to clear her throat. “He prefers Mikey.”
Her intruder snorted. “Sure he does.” She felt him step over her. “Well, fortunately, I believe you, sweet Brandi. But don’t forget, you really need to talk to your daddy.” His footsteps were far too quiet for his size as he started down the hall. “Get some rest now.”
Brandi held her breath until she heard the front door click, barely registering the chime that indicated the alarm had been reset. She finally blew out a hard breath, the first of her tears dripping from her eyes, and braced herself to move. Every limb of her body protested, none more than her head, and hot pain burned from her thigh.
When she was finally upright enough to look down, Brandi saw that a piece of the shattered phone had wedged into her skin and blood was rolling down her leg. And she was going to have to deal with all of this on her own, of course, because she had no means of calling out with her phone destroyed. “Fuck. Me.”