18. Marisol
18
MARISOL
Outside, Camillo takes Junior’s eye from me. His scarred mouth twists into a grimace, but he says nothing.
“Hold on to that for her,” Salvatore says, his voice rumbling through me like far-off thunder. “Let Dom and Giordana know I’m taking her home. And have Dr. Macaluso wait for us there.”
“Yes, sir.”
Camillo gives me the faintest smile before leaving. A pink hickey peeks out from under his collar. Looks like he made it back to Nola okay.
We pass by two other SUVs and an old beater that must be Junior’s car. An eerie feeling drifts through me. I have no memory of the drive. Did he buckle me in the backseat or just throw me into the trunk like a set of old golf clubs? I tighten my grip on Salvatore’s shirt.
His shoes crunch along the gravel lot until we’re at the end of one of the SUVs. He pops open the trunk and, for one panicked moment, I wonder if he’s going to toss me inside like Junior had. He must feel me tense up but doesn’t say a word as he drags a big plastic dispenser of water to the edge.
He sets me down and presses a bar of soap in my hands. “Wash your hands.”
Even with the sun out, by the time I’m done, I have goosebumps. I step back, flinging water droplets off me, but Salvatore snares me by the elbow and pulls me back. He washes my red wrists with a firm, clinical touch. When I’m suitably clean, he releases me, passes me a shop towel, and washes his own hands just as thoroughly.
I clench my teeth so they don’t chatter and look out at the squat, desolate buildings opposite the garage. Where are we?
How did Junior find me?
I’d bet it was one of Salvatore’s trackers—his ring or something in the food.
I don’t fight when he picks me up again and takes me to the passenger seat. My feet are fine , I want to say, but I shut up for once in my life because Salvatore still hasn’t said a word to me. A few muted thuds sound from the garage before Salvatore slams my car door shut.
The steering wheel squeaks under his grip as he drives us through the nearly abandoned rural town and back onto the highway.
So… the silent treatment? He’s icing me out?
I guess it’s not technically silent, because he has his cafe noise generator playing even now. Mustn’t want the FBI listening in to him pouting.
I cross my arms and look out the window at the rolling yellow fields beyond the road. I get caught, almost tortured, and he’s pissed off? I shiver. The AC’s freezing me through my thin clothes, but I ignore the urge to rub my arms. My eyes prick with tears.
I should’ve expected this. I fought to leave, and I got caught. First day too, like a big idiot loser. And now he gets to drag me back to Chicago and say I told you so before he deals with the maelstrom of shit I just kicked up for him.
I bite the inside of my cheeks. I’m going to shut up and take whatever he wants to dish out because, whether he knows it or not, he bought my loyalty back there. I shiver, and this time it’s not because of the cold. I watched him take out a man’s eye, and I liked it.
He can be pissy all he wants. After what he did for me, he can do whatever he wants to me.
Salvatore turns the car heat on full blast.
I glance at him, but he’s still wholly focused on the road. We pass by a sign for Iowa, Fields of Opportunities. I calculate how much further we have to drive and groan internally.
“What do you remember?” Salvatore asks, finally breaking the silence. His voice is eerily calm. He’s probably holding himself back from strangling me right now.
“I went to sleep in a motel, and when I woke up, I was on that hook.” When he doesn’t do anything besides flex his hands menacingly on the wheel, I go on. “He said he wanted to know about us. Why I wanted to marry you. He wanted to send your dad’s ring back with… my eye.”
I don’t repeat what Junior called him, although I’m burning to. “I’m sorry,” I add.
Salvatore pins me to the seat with a single furious glance. I recoil, slamming my jaw firmly shut.
He blinks a few times, and the muscles in his arms relax. He extends a hand toward me, and for a moment, I think he’s going to touch me, but it drops to the center console instead. His long fingers form a loose fist.
“Why would you be sorry?”
“Because I made you drive all this way to come get me. I didn’t even”—my voice breaks and tears threaten to spill over —“I didn’t even last a full day. I’m sorry , I did everything I could.”
Salvatore guides the car to the shoulder and flicks the emergency lights on.
“Come here.”
He unbuckles me and drags me over onto his lap, and I should be terrified, but I haven’t been hugged in months and if he’s going to strangle me after, then at least it felt like kindness.
He tilts my face up to his. Dark shadows circle his eyes.
Did he sleep at all while I was gone?
“You did well,” he says.
I burst into tears. There’s nowhere to go. I cram my face into his chest and sob.
Salvatore strokes my back and doesn’t say a thing.
Every time I think about how badly I messed this up, it triggers a new wave of hot, shameful tears. I let Junior catch me, I had to be rescued like a runaway teenager, and now I’m forcing Salvatore soothe me through my meltdown.
Once I regain some level of emotional control and wipe my face on my shirt, I look up at Salvatore. Well, at his throat, because I’ll start crying again if I look into his eyes.
“You threw out that phone, didn’t you?” he asks.
The question surprises me enough that I dare to glance up. He’s smiling.
I nod.
His eyes soften indulgently, and I’m suddenly aware of the swell of his chest under my hands.
“Good,” he says. “I was tracking that. And your car. And your shoes. And my ring. And Buck’s collar. You got much further than I would’ve expected from any of my men.”
Buck’s collar. I gasp. “Buck! I completely forgot! He’s?—”
“In your hotel, I know.” Salvatore runs a soothing hand down my arm, the tension bleeding out of my body with each stroke. “We have him and the rest of your things. Two-Fingers is driving him home now.”
“Is he okay?”
“Two-Fingers is a little shaken, but he’ll survive. Buck pissed all over his car.”
“Oh… He used to piss in Grant’s shoes all the time.”
Salvatore snorts. I smile.
“I knew I liked that cat.” His hand squeezes over my elbow, and I lean into the touch. Something big and hard presses into the underside of my thigh.
“You can still leave if you want to,” he says in a low voice. “But first I’m taking you to Chicago to see my doctor. After… if you want to leave again, we’ll need a better plan, but you can still go.”
“So long as you can track me?” I say without much bite.
He hesitates. “My mom would drink herself sick if I didn’t find all the hiding spots for her wine, and I had to monitor her every time she left the house. And I couldn’t watch her and my brother at the same time when he kept sneaking out to go do reckless jobs for Aldo. It was on me to keep them safe. I need to know where you are. I need to know you’re safe.”
It’s not a request. But it’s not a demand. It’s a soft plea. I should hold on to my anger. I want to be mad about him stoking Junior’s interest in me and throwing me in his basement and not really letting me go.
But I’m too damn pleased he didn’t really let me go.
“Canada. Will you help me get to Canada?” I ask, searching his face for the truth.
His eyes flash, but he nods. “I’ll help you go wherever you’d like,” he says even as his grip on my elbow tightens ever so slightly.
I close my eyes.
I don’t want to be on the run. I’m tired of shuffling down the same worn path I’ve taken my entire life—alone and desperate for someone to love me.
I already have Salvatore here, underneath me, and he feels warm and solid and real. And he was right when he said I’d want to work for him. Being trained by someone with resources like him would be a dream.
And he came back for me. If this had really been about Junior, Salvatore would’ve been better off letting me die so he could’ve had the right to kill Junior, but he came back instead, and that’s more than anyone’s ever done for me.
And… Buck likes him, and that little asshole hates everyone.
I blink my eyes open.
“You’re telling me things will be different,” I say slowly. “I believe you. I’ll stay with you.”
Salvatore wraps his long fingers around my face and crushes my mouth to his, scattering my thoughts to the wind. His smell, his warm weight, the way he sucks against my lower lip, and the faint, possessive pressure of his fingers along my jaw all threaten to drown me in pleasure.
“Wait—” I choke out.
Salvatore pulls back immediately. “I’m sorry. I thought?—”
I grab his wrist to anchor myself, to reassure him, and because even that small taste has my panties drenched and heightened my arousal to the point where, right now, it feels slutty and indulgent to touch his wrist. His stupidly sexy wrist, covered in tattoos and strong enough to lift my entire body.
How does he make me feel drunk like this in a matter of seconds?
I look out the window at the farmland surrounding us to tether my thoughts into place. In the distance, a hawk flies in slow, predatory circles.
“I have other conditions.”
“Of course.” Salvatore clears his throat and shifts, but his cock is trapped beneath me.
I focus very hard on resisting the urge to grind into him.
“I want my phone and my laptop,” I say. “And I want to be able to leave the house. When I want to.”
“Your phone’s at the house. No laptop. I’ll pay for a much better computer. And you can leave the house, but take a guard with you. You can pick who.”
I don’t say that it’s unlikely I’ll ever leave the house again after what just happened in that garage, but it doesn’t hurt to have him think otherwise. And I do like the sound of a new computer.
“Were you serious about letting me work in your cyber team?”
I clench my thighs for the tiniest ounce of relief, and Salvatore’s eyes sharpen as his fingers press into my thigh. Would he eat me out again if I asked?
“Absolutely. The lead still has a spot prepared for you.”
I shift myself onto the center of his lap, and his hand rises to my hip. I’m not really grinding into him and he’s not really squeezing my waist because we’re talking and if I keep him talking, I don’t have to admit to what I’m doing. Our shirts are both damp, mine from Junior’s water bottle and Salvatore’s from my tears. The air between us grows sticky and hot.
“Will I get my own income? That goes into my bank account?”
“You could. I have a legitimate company you’ll be hired under. You’ll get paid through them.”
I squeeze his wrist and give a deliberate roll of my hips. A groan rumbles in his throat.
“Are they all going to hate me for being a nepo hire?”
His cool gaze tells me, no one will hate you because I’ll shoot them if they do . “No. The lead wants you there.”
The press of his cock against my cloth-covered pussy is making me delirious. I need him to touch me.
“You know I dropped out of college? I barely even finished high school. Hate reading books. Might not even be able to read—couldn’t tell you the last time I tried.”
His laugh vibrates through my chest.
“Trust me. Worm’s been begging me to get you onto our team for a while now, regardless of my interest. You’re a driven problem-solver and a skilled rule-breaker. You’ll be perfect.”
“ Perfect, huh?” My heart gives a squeeze. “I thought I was impulsive and vindictive?”
“And stubborn. You are. And you’re still perfect.”
We’re skating into dangerous territory now. The kind that has me trailing after a man for years as his bang-maid because he’s offered me a steady stream of Love Lite.
He’s answered almost all of my questions, but the last one has me cooling down.
I glance back out the window. The hawk spots its prey. It dives.
“Do we still have to get married?”
Why don’t you want to marry me? I asked Grant. I told you, I’m just not ready , he said and left for Jeremy and Lilah’s place while I finished folding his socks and tried not to cry.
Salvatore scrubs a hand over his jaw. “I’m not sure…”
My Marisol’s-a-Pathetic-Idiot alarm bells are ringing. “That’s fine, I just wanted to make sure.”
I scramble to get off of him, but he pins me down to his lap by my hips, and I suck in a breath so I don’t moan at the sudden friction against my pussy.
“Sal—” I warn.
“I told you I’d marry you because I thought it could offer you protection. I still think it will. But I’m also biased because I’d marry you whether or not it helps you. I want you at my side. I want you as my wife. I love you, Marisol.”
My thoughts crash into a brick wall. All I can hear is white noise.
Salvatore laughs, and it’s just the tiniest bit unhinged, and that shouldn’t be sexy, not when he has me trapped on his lap and his cock is digging into me.
“Junior’s still alive and so is Aldo. The longer you’re with me, the more dangerous it’ll be for you to leave. But so long as you’re with me, I’ll protect you with everything I have… but there’s one caveat.”—My belly clenches—“I want divorce off the table. If you agree to this, I want you all in.”
My shoulders twinge. I was running away from this man yesterday , I remind myself desperately, but I can’t stop the champagne bubbles from fizzing and popping in my belly. I bite into my lower lip to stop a smile from forming.
No. Stop it, dummy. For cripes sake, when will I learn?
I want to turn off my brain. I don’t want to think about this right now. I’m going to ask him to fuck me. I just want to feel good.
“Sal…” Dammit. I sigh. “Can you let me think about it?”
He searches my face for a moment and then nods before easing me back into the passenger seat. My pussy aches and my nipples hurt. Stupid .
He adjusts his cock and drives back onto the road. “We have a long trip ahead. Try to sleep.”
I turn my face toward the window next to me, resolving to stay awake and think about what he’s offering.
When I wake up, my entire body has rotated toward Salvatore like a sunflower toward the sun. He left his noise generator running, but his voice weaves in another low layer, speaking softly and urgently to someone in Italian. I peer up at him through my lashes.
The moon highlights his beautiful, fierce profile in the car’s dark interior. He falls silent for a moment to listen, exhaling as he pinches the bridge of his nose. When he responds in a slow tone, I get the idea he’s patiently explaining to a child how to cook toast—or whatever the Mafia equivalent is. How to recover a faulty loan debt or cheat at cards. As he talks, his hand falls to circle my forearm, carefully avoiding my raw wrist and impressing long fingers and calluses onto my skin.
I fall in and out of consciousness like that, lulled into dreamy relaxation by Salvatore’s voice and kept on edge by the possessive grip of his hand.
Il Diavolo, Junior called him. And after seeing him in that garage, I believe it.
But what he did back there, he did for me.
Just before I drift off, I make my decision:
He’s never getting rid of me.