Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Izzy
My feet are on fire as Lance and I leave the church. We wave the bride and groom off and enter phase two: the reception.
Back at the car, Lance turns up the radio and hums along to the song, though he seems annoyed with himself for doing it. He flips the station a few more times until he finds a podcast about history. He doesn’t ask if I want to listen to it, but he does pick a topic he knows interests me.
“Hey, I sent you an email earlier. Did you see it?” he asks without taking his focus off the road.
I dig through my purse for my phone, find the email he sent me with two links, click on the first, and my heart stops. Is it some kinky sexy toy? Wishful thinking. Some beautiful diamond rings? Absolutely not. A video about Bigfoot? No, but that would be kinda cool. I stare at the image on my phone. This can’t be right. No way. I click on the second link, and the object is the same, but different.
“Plates?” The word chokes me, and I can’t figure out why.
“Yeah, you only have four plates. After we eat dinner, I wash them when you go to bed so you and Drew can have plates to eat your breakfast on.”
My body reacts with fire, burning my skin with his words. What does he mean? Is there some sort of hidden code?
He quickly adds, “I don’t mind washing the dishes. It gives me something to do. But I thought you might need more plates.”
That’s when all the emotions I haven’t been able to pinpoint for months bubble up. More plates. My legs shake. Or are they bouncing? But my hands are definitely shaking. My throat burns, decidedly unlike the sexy fire. This is rawer. Everything gets blurry until I blink.
“Shit!” I hear vaguely to my left side.
The blinker ticks, and the tires rumble, breaking any dam I had holding back my tears. Now I am hysterical.
The engine dies, and the only sound is my sobs. He goes to reach over to me but is trapped by the seat belt, slingshotting him back into place. Unlatching the seatbelt, he throws his arms around me, crushing me into the center console. “What’s wrong?”
“Plates,” I manage to say.
“Okay, um, did you not like the patterns?”
Between sobs, I eke out, “they” gasp “were” sob “a pack of eight.”
He rubs my back as he says softly, “I don’t understand.”
“Twelve. You wanted to give me twelve plates. That’s four meals with you, me, and Drew.” Two days of breakfast and dinner. Two days of everything feeling right. Fun. Safe. Wanted. “But it’s going to be six meals when it’s just Drew and I. I’ll be left with a cabinet full of dishes.”
This is all temporary.
He isn’t hanging around because he wants to, but because he’s being paid to.
I didn’t realize how much I wanted this until reality sucker punched me with an Amazon link.
I’m not sure how my face ended up in his neck, or when he started to pet my hair. “It’s always been just the two of us because no one else wanted us,” I whisper once I get control of my breathing. “The family doesn’t want me because I fucked up all of Dad’s plans for me.”
No one wants me. No one wanted us. The stink of failure clings to me wherever I go.
His voice slices through my intrusive thoughts. “Your family wants you here, otherwise they wouldn’t have hired me.” He puts his hands on my cheeks and brushes a traitorous tear away with his thumb. “And they trust you, otherwise they wouldn’t have given you this job.”
Waverly still hasn’t gotten a job yet, and she’s been home this entire time. Thiago’s wife hasn’t been asked either. Maybe there’s something to this. Maybe.
He rests his head against mine as my breathing and sobs start to slow down. “I’m sorry the plates upset you.” I’m about to say it’s okay, but he continues, “I knew I should’ve sent you the plates with the flamingos on them instead of the parrots.”
I laugh through my tears. “Yes, that’s exactly why I’m so upset.”
He gives me a comforting smile, one that says he would do anything to take the pain away. “I can’t imagine what you would do if you saw the twelve-plate set with all the cryptids. Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, mermaids. Kinda glad there wasn’t one for the Wendigo. Seems a little too meta,” Lance offers with a smile.
I sniffle and withdraw to my side of the car. “You should’ve led with that.”
“Noted.” He slides back and straps himself in. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah.” I check myself in the mirror. My face is blotchy and red, but my eye makeup is untouched.
I feel a thousand times better once we pull up to the hotel. I needed the little cry to reset my perspective.
The lobby has an art deco grandeur, but the reception hall matches the bride’s dress with a cozy cottage core vibe. It is adorable, minimalist, yet super expensive, to transform the room. It is an Instagram-worthy wedding.
I point to the tables with their mason jar cups and wine glasses. “Winner winner, chicken dinner.” I laugh and grab our seating cards off the table. “Table 13.”
As we walk toward the back of the reception hall, there’s a low grumble from Lance. “We’ve been here for two minutes, and I’ve already clocked an underboss from a minor family, a shady CEO who’s under indictment for fraud, and five cons who got out of jail a year ago.”
“What did you expect?” I ask. He says nothing, but steps closer to me. His hand drifts to my lower back, and my insides melt.
We aren’t the only people at the table. Clearly, it’s an oasis for the misfit toys. The mish mash of people includes an elderly couple who seem confused by the mason jars, a girl who has to be a few years younger than the bride and groom taking selfies, and a man about our age, his back stiff, pressed against the chair. He has his back to the wall and eyes on the exits, but as soon as he sees us, he smiles. He is huge, all muscle, but his suit fits his body perfectly. His dirty blond hair is cut short, and there’s a scar on the side of his face that makes him look more cool than dangerous.
“Lance!” The stranger stands and shakes my bodyguard’s hand.
They both start speaking in Russian. What the fuck? Lance speaks Russian? I don’t know a lot of Russian—Uri only taught me and Waverly the curse words—but I definitely hear my name and Drew’s.
“Izzy, this is Dimitri, Ian’s uncle,” Lance says before pulling out a chair for me.
I extend my hand. “Hi. Drew talks about Ian all the time.” Things start to click together. “Are you a part of the Four Families?” My father didn’t trust me enough to follow through on this. He sent a backup.
Dimitri shakes his head. “I am Uri’s cousin from Russia, but I am not directly tied to the Four Families.”
Oh. He must see the confusion on my face and adds, “The bride and groom invited me. They are clients.”
Oh, okay, sounds reasonable.
But now Lance pipes in, “But you work at Joey’s club. Is it normal to invite a dungeon master to a wedding?”
OH. Okay, well, that changes a lot.
“You’re not supposed to out people like that.” Dimitri shakes his head. “You don’t know what goes on at the club, do you?”
Okay, so Lance is not a member of Joey’s sex club. File that information away. I kinda breathe a sigh of relief because the last thing I want is my cousin to watch me having dirty sex. Not exactly my kink.
Lance swirls his water around his glass. “I always imagine it like a gym…with a different type of spotter, and equipment that needs to be wiped down more.”
Dimitri shakes his head. “I’m sure you know someone you could ask.”
Lance gives a little shrug. “Alana likes to give me wildly inaccurate information just to make me squirm. When it comes to this stuff, I can’t ever tell what’s real and what’s a joke with her.”
Well, another knowledge bomb right there. “Wait, so, Alana, your boss who owns and operates a massive private security company, who also has Joey scared out of his mind, is a member of his sex club? That’s so complicated.” This little revelation causes the rest of the table to pause what they’re doing and stare at us.
Shit.
Lance pipes in for the save, “Sax club, it’s for jazz.” This seems to placate the others and they go back to their previous conversations.
Dimitri frowns and rolls his eyes, “Only the letter A is wrong in that sentence.” He exhales and watches the room. “Back home, I had a sense of humor.”
I snort-laugh…very attractive, Izzy. “Oh, you have a sense of humor here, too.”
Lance’s coat vibrates, and he takes out his cell phone, frowns, and glances over to Dimitri. “I need to take this.” His eyes dart between me and his Russian friend, who merely nods back. “He’s a good guy. He’ll watch you while I’m gone.” Lance stands and puts his ear to his phone as he walks toward the lobby.
Always a protector.
This leaves me with Ian’s uncle, who has ties to the Russian mob and works at a sex club, but according to Lance is a good guy. So okay, whatever.
“I’m glad Ian and Drew have become friends. I was worried when we came up here he wouldn’t find anyone he could connect with.” I lean forward and whisper, “The kids at school seem very fancy.”
Dimitri nods and lifts a beer bottle to his lips. Clearly, he’s smart enough to hit the open bar before he sits. “Yes, I am grateful Ian finally has someone he can speak with. Coming to America has been a difficult transition.” He pulls at the paper on his beer. “Everything is different here than it was back in Russia. But even there, Ian didn’t have many friends. His father was constantly worried about his son’s safety, so he had private tutors, not many kids his own age.”
“Where are his parents?” I ask, while reaching for a mason jar of water.
His face darkens as he rips the paper once around the bottle completely. “We are the last of our family.” I choke on the water and wonder if I can fit my foot inside my mouth, too.
Dimitri watches me a moment longer then glances across the room. “Are you friends with Lance?”
Defining our relationship is hard. Are we friendly? Yes. Do I rely on him? Also yes. Do I absolutely want to see him with his shirt off? “I’m a client of Mastodon.”
He stiffens but dips his head. “You are the one Joseph is so concerned about.” I guess he’s only getting pieces of the stories too. He starts to speak but closes his mouth. After a brief, but awkward, press of silence, he says, “I think your ex is an asshole.”
“Me too. I’m forming a club. Want a T-shirt?”
This earns me a full smile and another rip of the paper. “Yes, I do.” He clears his throat and shifts his gaze to his beer. The bottle is scandalous, naked. “It is nice to see Ian laugh again. When we first came to America, I didn’t know if I would ever hear that sound from him again. I hope Ian and Drew stay friends. But you should know, Ian’s sadness is more than simply losing his parents. He may lash out and get angry. His therapist says it is to be expected with that level of trauma.”
The parent in me appreciates the warning, but the mob daughter in me understands the truth about this life. “Drew’s had his fair share of shitty experiences, too.” I laugh under my breath, “They can be trauma buddies.” But the man beside me doesn’t fully understand what I’m saying.
I can see the distance in his eyes, like he’s reliving the events. “It was a massacre that killed my brother, father, and most of our allies. But Ian and his mother were far away in a safe house. My brother’s final action was to send his wife the emergency code, alerting her that he was in danger. She packed up her son and locked them in a panic room.” The man gets quiet. “She was sick. Her body betrayed her and finally killed her. But she didn’t tell Ian how to get out of the panic room.”
I gasp, the horror of the situation almost too much for me to wrap my head around. “How long was he in there?” A scared little boy, watching his mother die and being alone with her body. Did he even know if he was going to survive?
“He was in the room for two days while his mother was alive and another twelve hours after she passed away.”
My eyes burn. What was Ian’s mother thinking and feeling as she took her last breaths? Trying to save her baby’s life but knowing it could also be the end of it. Why wouldn’t she tell him the code to get out? Did she not know? The whole thought of it makes my throat tighten
Dimitri speaks again. “Lance and Alana were on the extraction team.”
“What?” My Lance? Who practices Drew’s wax museum lines, ran into Russia to save a little kid’s life? Too many emotions fog up my train of thought.
Lance. My Lance. My protector, who wants to buy me plates and take me out for ice cream, extracted a boy and carried a corpse back to the States. From Russia. Years later, that boy would be my son’s best friend. Lance has a whole new layer of goodness.
A shadow casts over me, and Dimitri stiffens.
“Ms. Marciano?” I twist in my chair to see a balding man in his mid forties, his skin shiny from either sweat or oil. I can’t really tell. Icky either way.
“Yes?” I respond instinctively but search for Lance rather than make eye contact with the stranger.
“You look wonderful,” the strange man says. There’s something about his tone and mannerisms. It’s too formal. I’ve seen this before, but I can’t place it.
Dimitri gives a little cough while he rolls up his sleeves. For a brief second, I see the flash of orange ribbons around his forearm. The middle-aged stranger with his ill-fitting suit flinches, like there’s some unheard conversation happening between them.
The stranger clears his throat and straightens his tie. “Your father must be pleased to have you back home. I know he had such high hopes for you.”
Had high hopes. Fuck you, Sweaty Man.
I look back to Dimitri, wondering if I should say something, ignore him, or bolt. But a new figure looms over him. With one hand, Lance is holding a glass of wine, his other hand slams on the sweaty man’s shoulder. “Facci, now why are you bothering Ms. Marciano?” My bodyguard towers over the shrinking man.
“I’m not bothering.” Facci appears even more shiny, like his body sweats glitter. “I’m paying tribute.”
“Oh, was that what that was? Backhanded compliments?” I lean in, “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, last time someone came to my table to pay tribute to my family, my mom got a fur coat.” I blink at him and gesture to his empty hands. “I think you have some work you need to do.”
“I’ll be sure to tell my ex-wife, your aunt Rita.” His eyes flash with anger but a coolness takes over. “Have a lovely evening.”
“I’ll be sure to pass on your message.” I wiggle my fingers at him. My ex is bad, and possibly on par with Rita, but still. Yuck. “Mr. Sweaty has shitty manners and even worse taste in women.”
Lance steps between us and puts his hand on my chair. Looming is the right word. My sweet Lance wanted to buy me plates an hour ago. But now his darkness leaks out, and I start to envision him in military fatigues running through the forest in Russia to get to a safe house, only to have to carry a dead woman home.
It’s a harsh reminder that he’s as complicated as I am. And probably more dangerous.
Once Facci returns to his table, Lance sits, but his hand remains on the back of my chair. “You good?” he asks.
I nod. It’s the first time I had to play the Mafia princess on my own. I’m already fucking it up. But I don’t trust myself to speak. Too many emotions swirling around at once.
Lance puts the wine in front of me and gives a little appreciative nod to Dimitri, motioning to his rolled-up shirt. “Had to flash the octopus?”
Oh, on a closer inspection, it is an octopus; the ribbons are twisting tentacles.
The Russian man shrugs. “Why play an ace when a deuce will do?”