6. Change is Awkward
six
Change is Awkward
Mikey had expected to be struck. Some kind of slap or other blow to the head, most likely, even though his family wasn’t generally physical with each other. He had not expected the stinging strike to come from his mother.
“Michele De Salvo! What have you done? What sort of nonsense did I just hear from your mouth? Are you really so lonely up in that mansion that you would strongarm some poor, beaten-down woman into marrying you?”
“Mother,” Dante said, stepping up behind their ranting mother and easing her backward. “He can’t answer if you don’t take a breath.” He guided her to the seat she’d practically flown from, squeezed her shoulder, and turned to Mikey. When their mother could no longer see his expression, his eyes went cold with anger. “You are going to explain it all to us, brother. In excruciating detail.”
Mikey bit back a sigh. Showing irritation would only make his punishment worse. “I already explained it. It’s not as if I blackmailed her—which wouldn’t be nearly the worst thing any of us has done, anyway.”
Romeo crossed an ankle over his knee. “We don’t do that shit to our wives , Mikey.”
“First,” Mikey said, holding up a hand as he prepared to tick off his points. “Both of you, and Cris, were lucky enough to marry for love.” He gave Romeo a pointed look. “And I do mean lucky.”
“Don’t forget I’m armed,” Romeo shot back.
Mikey ignored the empty threat. “Second, I gave Brandi an out even after the fact. It’s not a once-and-forever, ironclad deal. If she hates it, she can bail, and she’ll be better off for it than if she’d just held on to the job as it’s been for one more year.” He wasn’t an idiot. Presuming she took the out after the year was up, she’d leave the company, too. An unavoidable loss. He looked across to his mother and put an effort into gentling his tone. “Third, this is the most effective way to protect her from all the people who are actually endangering her right now. It takes away the leverage her father might have, and gives her a suit of armor against his enemies.”
“His other enemies,” Romeo said.
“We can’t ignore Wesley after this,” Dante declared.
Mikey nodded. “I don’t want to. I just also don’t want Brandi getting caught up in something she’s only ever been a victim of.”
Eleonora clicked her tongue, still dissatisfied. “We raised you better than this. Your father made it clear—”
Mikey lowered his arm. “This isn’t an arranged marriage, Mom. I’m not holding her captive. She’s voluntarily locking herself up in the manor right now because she doesn’t want to be seen covered in bruises from the man who scared her bad enough she was willing to abandon her entire life. I’m giving her an alternate choice. If she’d said no, if she’d gotten up and marched out of my office, I would have let her.”
A tense silence settled in the room. He’d known that declaring his intent to marry the daughter of a man Dante considered on the verge of a death sentence would be hard for his brothers to swallow. He’d neglected to consider that this situation might trigger his mother’s very personal opinions on impersonal, forced marriages.
Though their parents had developed a strong and enduring love, it hadn’t started out that way. Eleonora had been given to their father by a coward with little money or resources to offer aside from his two daughters, and since his eldest was of marrying age, he’d handed her over. He hadn’t asked her opinion first, hadn’t arranged for her to meet and forge any sort of bond with her future husband. She’d met her husband the day they’d married. Her father and her younger sister had disappeared barely a month after.
It had been a hard time for her. She still didn’t care to talk about those early days. But the experience had prompted her to insist that her children did not fall victim to—or take part in—what she considered to be heartless customs. Their father had agreed, though he’d always explained it with a smile fighting his lips. Mikey had figured their father didn’t quite hate those old, heartless customs as much as their mother, but he loved his wife, so he’d relented.
In Mikey’s mind, the deal he’d purposed to Brandi was different. In large part because she could leave without consequence, but also because Brandi hadn’t come to him for help in the first place. She’d come strictly to offer the respect of quitting face-to-face. She hadn’t even asked for a ride. He had put the idea out there, an alternative to fleeing and starting life with nothing but a target on her back, and let her choose. He was well aware he was merely the lesser of two evils.
Eleonora lifted her iced tea from the table beside her. “I still don’t like it. If you want to protect her, then protect her. Don’t force her into your bed.”
Mikey rubbed at his cheek absently. “I don’t have any intentions of forcing her into my bed, Mom. We’ll be married legally, we’ll present as a married couple where and when we need to, but privately I may not even see her. I’m not that kind of bastard.”
Romeo chuckled. “Look at that, you drag us all home and declare you’re getting married, and already you’re tossing out excuses for why you won’t be offering up more grandbabies.”
Mikey rolled his eyes and turned a bored glare on his brother. “You sound like an old man when you talk like that.”
“Who gets married just to stay lonely?” Romeo countered.
Mikey narrowed his eyes. “Who says I’m—”
“Enough.”
Mikey snapped his mouth shut and sat straight, shifting his focus to Dante. In his peripheral, he saw their mother set down her tea.
Dante eyed him coolly. “If Brandi signs that agreement, she will be family. We will treat her as such. But she will be expected at family engagements whenever possible, and her loyalty to the family will also be expected.”
Mikey nodded. “I’ll make sure she heard that part before she signs.”
“And you’re sure this is what you want?”
“I have no doubts.” He’d never been able to imagine himself in love, anyway. Brandi was a smart, beautiful, and strong-willed woman who could potentially be a great benefit to their family. If she stayed.
Brandi jerked awake at an unexpected sound, her body immediately protesting the sudden movement. She choked on a cry from the pain but managed to swing her feet around to the floor. Mikey’s sofa was too comfortable for how little sleep she’d gotten the night before, and even if she was supposed to at least be available for email consultation, she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes open. It didn’t help that they were half-swollen shut, anyway.
“Are you all right, Ms. Richardson?”
The voice startled her so bad she let out a short-lived shriek as her head whipped toward the doorway, her heart like a jackhammer in her chest. It took her several seconds to recognize the female from the team who’d come to help her the day before. Brandi lifted a hand to her chest, sucking in steadying breaths. “Sorry,” she gasped, embarrassment flooding her. “You startled me.”
The woman’s expression softened and she inclined her head. “I apologize, ma’am.” Her brown eyes, a lighter shade than Brandi’s own, flicked over Brandi’s form briefly. “You didn’t answer when I knocked, and it sounded like you were in pain, so I let myself in.”
Brandi self-consciously tugged on a sleeve, realizing the knocking must have been what roused her. “I fell asleep. I didn’t hear you.” She cleared her throat. “Did you, um, need something?” She had told Mikey she didn’t need a guard, and he’d only mentioned a chef coming in later in the afternoon. She hadn’t expected anyone coming to check on her.
The woman inclined her head, turned, and disappeared out the door for a single second before reappearing with a reusable bag in hand. “Mr. De Salvo asked me to bring this to you.” She held it out patiently.
Brandi took the bag and obligingly dug inside. Another knot untangled from somewhere deep inside and a smile tugged at her lips. It was a new cellphone, as well as a new Bluetooth earpiece in addition to the standard accessories. She hadn’t signed anything yet. This felt more like a gift, a promise of freedom or reason to trust. She blamed her tiredness and poor physical state for the tears that briefly burned behind her eyes as she pulled the phone from the box.
Of course, it was already set up and several numbers were programmed in. Numbers for Mikey, his brothers Romeo and Dante, his cousin Cristiano, all three of their wives, and two numbers for his mother, Eleonora, in addition to a handful of others. She recognized Berto’s name, and the name of the Japanese man she’d met the day before, but there were a few others that were unfamiliar. She suspected it was not an oversight that her father’s number was absent, too.
“Forgive me for asking,” the woman who remained standing in the center of the room said almost hesitantly, “but are you all right, Ms. Richardson? Is there anything I can do for you?”
Brandi clutched the phone a little tighter and looked up. “I know I’m a mess right now,” she said, because there was no sense in trying to deny the obvious, “but I’ll be okay. Mikey’s taking care of me.” She blinked as her own words echoed in her ears. It just … rolled off my tongue. Was she even supposed to use his name? She had agreed to marry him, he couldn’t possibly expect her to keep addressing him as Mr. De Salvo.
The other woman stared at her for a split-second before composing herself. “Should I stick around until Mr. De Salvo comes home?”
Brandi smiled. “That won’t be necessary. I’m not going out unless this place catches fire.” She paused. “Thank you for offering….”
“Alessa,” the woman said. “Alessa Adimari.” She bent at the shoulders. “I’m sure I’ll see you later, then. Take care, ma’am.” And with that, Alessa let herself out.
Brandi released a breath as the door clicked shut almost silently. She looked down at her new phone, stroked her thumb over the smooth surface, and opened the messaging app. The least she could do was express her gratitude. The phone chimed with a response not even a minute later, reminding her also that she would need to take a little time to personalize more than the aesthetics.
Mikey: You’re welcome. How are you feeling? We have a doctor on-call I can bring by the house if you need one.
Of course they did. She quickly assured him that would be unnecessary, promised that what she really needed was rest and nutrients, and reached for her laptop. Now that she was awake, she should see about doing the job she was still being paid to do. A detail which may or may not become controversial in the coming days.
She went through the three waiting emails before her mind wandered again.
When Mikey came back, he’d be bringing with him a contract for her to sign stating that she agreed to marry him for no less than one year. It was maybe the strangest contractual arrangement she had ever imagined for herself, but if she were being honest, it wasn’t the most unpleasant. Certainly her father had threatened her with worse.
The piece of paper didn’t automatically save her from anything, though. She would have to tell her father eventually. Definitely better to hold off on that until it’s done. Her father was liable to lock her up and ship her off to some dirty underground auction if she told him before the marriage was official. At least if it was done first, he’d hesitate. Her father was a bastard, and obsessive about money, but he wasn’t a complete fool. Only complete fools fucked with the De Salvos.
The bigger problem, as she saw it, was her stalker. That man was dangerous. He had no qualms with doing terrible things for no reason. She didn’t know if he even had an employer, or if that was just a convenient cover story.
Brandi frowned and adjusted on the loveseat, pulling her laptop carefully over her lap so that it balanced without resting on the wound from where she’d been dragged across the shards of her last phone. Mikey wanted information on the man who’d hurt her, and frankly so did she. There was no reason she had to wait until her new fiancé came home to get started.
She had no surveillance footage of him, of course. If he showed himself on camera, he did it somewhere she didn’t know to look. Unfortunately for him, he’d fucked with a woman with a brain.
Brandi clicked around until she had opened her own image generating software. It was great for sketching outlines of things that needed printing, not designed to paint the next Mona Lisa. Still, she could tweak the base program a little until it was capable of rendering facial sketches as easily as structural. She played with that first, testing it every few changes with the same simple prompts until she was satisfied with the output.
Then she went to work putting in as much technical detail as she could remember. She treated it like she imagined she would if she were explaining to a police sketch artist, except she was her own artist. She moved the ears into position, then the nose and eyes, and input prompts to add the characteristics. The result was imperfect, to be sure, but close enough to be accurate by the time she was done that it sent a chill up her spine.
Once she had the face outlined, with the ripped earlobe and permanently dislocated nose properly figured in, she moved on to proportioning the shoulders. It was harder to get that right thanks to his unnatural muscle mass. She might have failed if she didn’t have herself for a point of reference.
Her headache had returned and Mikey was walking through the door by the time she was completely done, but she had a shoulders-up outline style render of her stalker ready to go. She also had a respectable estimate of his height and overall size, calculated in large part by the system. It was a strange combination of self-assuring to have accomplished this much on her own and disconcerting to have to see even this sort of image of him again so soon.
“Whatever you’re doing, you clearly need to stop,” Mikey said.
Brandi lifted her computer and sat upright, ignoring her renewed surge of emotions to pat the spot beside her. “Come look.”
Mikey dropped a folder on the desk and strode over, lowering to the loveseat beside her. Only then did Brandi realize how small the sofa was, and it was far too late to change her mind. “What is it?” he asked, sounding entirely unaware or unbothered by the way his shoulder brushed against hers.
Brandi drew a breath and slid her laptop over, indicating the screen. “I tweaked my blueprint program and put this together. It’s not perfect, but it gives you a good idea of what he looks like.”
“So this is the fucker who put his hands on you.” It wasn’t a question, and he said the words in a tone so dark she almost didn’t recognize Mikey’s voice at all.
Brandi let herself look away. “Yeah.”
The unmistakable sound of clicking preceded the soft sound of him closing her laptop, and then Mikey curled his arm around the back of her shoulders. With surprising gentleness, he cupped his hand over her outer bicep and pulled her into his side. His grip was strong and yet their actual points of contact were few, and none of them crushing.
Her breath faltered.
“We’ll find him, and whoever’s connected to him,” Mikey said. “They won’t lay another finger on you.”
Brandi let him take more of her weight without thinking about it. “It’s too bad I’m engaged. I would marry you for that.”
He huffed out something that might have been an unexpected laugh. “Speaking of…” He gave her a faint squeeze before standing, carried her laptop to the desk and set it down in favor of lifting the folder and a pen. “Look it over, make sure you still agree. In the meantime, any particular requests for dinner?”
She nearly fumbled the folder at the strikingly domestic question. “Ah, no?” She was finally hungry. “Something filling. I’m starving, now that I think about it.”
His eyes crinkled and he nodded. “I’ll give you a minute to read through that.”
Even though she felt like she could trust his word, she also recognized she owed it to herself to read over what had been put into writing, so she didn’t stop him. She’d been so shocked by his proposal that morning it was entirely possible she hadn’t processed everything he’d said. Then again, was there anything he could have said after the punchline that she would have refused? Protection was hard to turn down.
She skimmed over the two-page agreement. Most of it rang familiar. None of the major points were issues she was willing to balk over. There was no clause about mandating consummation of the marriage, and he’d taken the effort to put in writing that neither party was entitled to anything the other brought into the marriage. The most unfamiliar section was a point explaining that in the event of children and the subsequent dissolution of the marriage, the parties agreed to sit down once more and hash out financial responsibilities, custodianship, and any and all inheritances. It sounded cold on paper, but it was entirely rational.
For a lingering moment, Brandi found herself reflecting on her own mother’s disappearance. She couldn’t fathom doing that to a child. But this wasn’t specifying she would have to, nor was she anticipating a pregnancy.
Pushing to her feet, Brandi moved to the desk and scrawled her name on the bottom line. It wasn’t an official marriage certificate, but as she lifted her pen from the paper, her breath stalled in her chest. It still felt like a significant moment in her life.
“Done already?” Mikey asked from behind her.
Brandi stepped from the table, leaving the pen over the paperwork. “The part about the kids was all I didn’t remember.”
His lips twitched. “Romeo’s idea, I have to admit. Sorry to throw it at you.” He signed on the line beneath her own signature, clicked the pen, and tucked everything back into the folder. “I’ll get this with the family lawyer first thing in the morning.”
She supposed that made sense. “So, now what?”
He gestured to the door. “Now you clock out and come with me. It’s time for that tour, and you should at least meet a few of the people who help me keep this place running. If you haven’t started one yet, I’ll need a list of anything else you definitely want from your condo, too.”
Brandi ended up selecting a room for herself that was on the opposite end of the same hall as her soon-to-be husband. In her mind it felt like a reasonable compromise between maintaining certain boundaries while acknowledging their increased, semi-mandatory closeness. She turned in earlier than she might normally have, exhausted in every way despite the nap she’d caught in the office. And even so, the unfamiliar space surrounding her—comfortable though it was—made it difficult to find sleep right away.
She did eventually drag her eyes open the next morning and found a waiting text from her fiancé.
Mikey: Daria will be on-hand to make you something for breakfast when you get up. Take advantage, you’ll heal faster. If you’re up for it, I’d like for you to be available for the consult this afternoon. Audio-only is fine. If you need anything else, call me.
She smiled, blinked some crust out of her eyes, and took a moment to take stock of herself. She still felt swollen and sore, to be sure. Her thigh ached, too. She tossed aside the comforter and was immediately greeted by the sight of vibrant red having seeped into the back of the bandage. So she probably needed to wash that out and cover it with something fresh. She lifted her phone again to at least respond before she slipped into the shower. Just woke up. I think the pain is less overall, but I bled through the bandage on my leg again, so I have to deal with that before I can head down for food. I should be good for a consult, though.
She pushed herself up, paused to check the bed to make sure she hadn’t bled through so badly that she’d ruined the bedding on her first night, then padded to the closet where Mikey had emptied a majority of her suitcase. She nearly didn’t recognize the sound of the ringing coming from her new phone as she dug out a change of clothes, and she ended up having to call Mikey back by the time she made it back to the nightstand.
He answered immediately. “What the hell do you mean you bled through your bandage? You never told me about that.”
Brandi felt herself flush. “Oh. Must’ve slipped my mind.” She couldn’t understand why he sounded upset.
“Did he fucking stab you, too?”
“Not really.”
“Not really ?”
“He threw me on top of my broken phone and I got a little dragged around. A big piece went into my thigh. I washed it out after he left and put some butterfly stitches on it, but I must have torn them in my sleep.” Hearing her words out loud almost sounded worse than what the wound had looked like, objectively.
Mikey cursed. “This is what I needed to know when I asked if you needed a doctor.”
“No self-respecting doctor would have stitched me up by then.”
Mikey grunted. “Is there anything else I should know?”
Brandi mulled the question over. “No?”
“I’m sending someone up with a medical kit.”
“I have to shower!”
“Then text me when you’re out.” He disconnected before she could argue.
Frustrated, flustered, and desperately needing the bathroom, Brandi dropped the phone and made her way to the attached bathroom. The other reason she’d chosen this specific bedroom was because it was the only other one on that level, on that wing, with an ensuite. If she was going to be the lady of the house, she was at least going to get her own private suite.