Chapter Six #2
“Don’t you dare call me baby!” She kicked and squirmed, still trying to escape until I placed one of my legs over the back of hers. Now all she could do was beat her tiny feet on the bed.
“Are you jealous of the other women I have known?” I asked.
She glared at me over her shoulder. “Why don’t you just go back to your others and leave me alone?” Tears glistened, threatening to fall and over what? Something that wasn’t even real, albeit she didn’t know that yet.
“You really think a man like me hasn’t had dozens of women?
I’ve had more than you can count and no regrets.
Now, are you ready to behave yourself or do I need to find some ginger for your back hole and tie you up and leave you here?
Or perhaps leave you outside and invite the neighbors to come and see my naughty girl with her red backside. ”
Her eyes rounded. “You wouldn’t dare.”
I wouldn’t, but she didn’t know me well enough to know that. I raised an eyebrow at her and let her come to her own conclusions.
She studied me for a moment, considering her next move, and finally said, “Yes.”
“That’s not enough, Gaby. Yes, what?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. Such bratty behavior.
This woman needed to learn what was and wasn’t acceptable behavior.
She should know better, being in an Italian family, as most men, especially those part of the mafia, were dominant, with old-fashioned ideas of a woman’s place and high expectations of obedience.
We knew that death came early for those who didn’t know the rules of the game.
I may not be as active in the family business as my other brothers, but I was the doctor they came to when our soldiers needed medical attention and I’d taken bullets out of many men in our private infirmary at the estate.
I had to keep myself trained, not merely as a surgeon, but as one of the Vitale brothers, and any woman who stood at my side must be trained as well.
Any woman who stood at my side? Where had that thought come from? Gaby…Gabriella was delightful entertainment, but still a distraction and a potentially dangerous one.
Guard your heart, Tano…
“Yes, Tano,” Gaby grumbled, startling me from my reverie. “I will be a good girl.”
Removing my leg from hers, she immediately parted her thighs, looking for her reward. I took up where I’d left off and circled her hardened nub with my other hand. Within seconds, she cried out, her body tensing as she rode the orgasm and then collapsed over my lap.
I gently soothed her, running my hand in a circular pattern on her back, taking my fill of her before turning her back out to the world and out of mine, or at least my immediate proximity. When her breathing grew soft and even, I gently removed her.
“We need to talk, Gabriella. But first, you need a shower and coffee, in that order. I’ll leave a shirt on the bed for you and meet you downstairs when you’re ready.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but I held my fingers to her lips.
“Hold your questions,” I ordered. “We’ll discuss them over coffee.”
She nodded and slid off the bed, taking a look back at me before closing the bathroom door.
I made coffee and breakfast and had just placed the breakfast trays on the table outside when Gabriella appeared.
“A doctor who cooks,” she exclaimed. “If the food tastes as good as it looks, I may never leave.”
Inwardly I winced at how casually she spoke of an issue that had been tormenting me since I took her to bed last night. What to do with Gabriella?
“Please sit.” I pulled out her chair and as she took her seat, I stole the opportunity to breathe in her scent.
She had used my shampoo and conditioning products, but beneath those familiar scents was her own, a subtle yet unmistakable feminine musk.
Dressed only in a shirt that hung to her knees, her damp curls flowed down her back.
She wore no bra and her perky nipples poked through the cotton fabric enticingly.
She surprised me by not digging into the food right away, although I knew she must be starving. Instead, she reached for her full coffee cup and inhaled.
“Ah, the decadent notes of Molinari.” She inhaled again and took a sip, pleasure evident on her face.
“You have a refined palate, impressive.”
“It’s my father’s favorite,” she replied, tilting her face to the sun and closing her eyes.
Now was as good a time as any to dig. “Your father, Don Rego Calabretta?”
Her demeanor completely shifted. She lowered her chin, opening her eyes and staring at the full plate of food in front of her.
“He is,” Gaby replied shortly. She placed a forkful of crepe, egg, and bacon in her mouth. “Mmm, this is as delicious as it looks. You’re a keeper.”
Despite the compliment, her words sounded a false note, too cheerful, too shallow.
When confronted, Gaby hid behind a mask, very much like me.
Except my walls were strongly erected, near impossible to penetrate, or they had been until she showed up in my life.
Gaby’s were not as well-built, but the fact that they were there at all was proof of her survival instincts.
Had she learned to protect her true feelings growing up in the combative environment that many mafia households were, or was there something else at work? I wasn’t yet sure.
“Gaby, why are you here, under a false name? Did something happen to make you afraid, or are you just reinventing yourself away from family?”
Her fork dropped and clattered to her plate. “Do we have to talk about this? How do I know I can trust you not to rat me out?”
That answered my question about motive. “I don’t see how you have a choice, but if it makes you feel confident, I promise that I will not share this with anyone who could possibly use the information against you.”
Gaby pulled up her feet, resting her heels on the edge of the chair with her knees only inches from her chin and pulled the shirt over her legs.
My cousin JoJo used to do that as a child when she was about to be lectured.
Was it a way to disassociate or feel safe, to make themselves small like that?
She grabbed her coffee and held it in both hands, resting the mug on her knees, effectively blocking a portion of her face.
Her gaze found mine and held a mix of trepidation and resolution. Regardless of the outcome, she seemed to be saying, she was ready to share her secret.
“I already confessed that I am a daughter of Don Calabretta.” She watched me closely as she spoke and must have seen what she wanted, because her tense body relaxed slightly and she continued in a less strained tone.
“He gave me a lot of freedom growing up, which my mother didn’t approve of.
Ours is a traditional family…Well, you surely understand what I mean by that.
He indulged us to a degree, but despite his lenient nature when it came to his daughters, I always knew that one day, I would have to marry. ”
“Ah yes.”
Marriage, of course. I’d guessed as much.
It was how Vittoria had joined the family, her father had traded her to my brother along with some shipping lanes and a supposed peace.
It was just the way of things in our world.
Although some matches eventually found love together, most mafia marriages were little more than business contracts or alliances.
“You think you understand,” said Gaby, as if she’d read my mind.
Unnerving. “You don’t, you know. Not really.
It’s different for men. You have to marry and you don’t always have a choice, but you don’t have to be anything special.
You don’t have to be handsome. No one cares if you can sing or dance or cook.
And a virgin? Ha, as you say, you’ve had dozens of women and no one blinks an eye.
But God forbid your bride-to-be has ever so much as kissed another man. She’s spoiled, shameful, a slut.”
I frowned.
“It’s different for men,” Gaby repeated and gulped down some coffee for courage before continuing.
“One day, my father came to visit. He dropped the marriage bomb on me and left me with a choice to make. Marry a man I’d never met, give up on my dreams of a career, because God forbid a mafia bride has a life outside her husband’s bedroom.
I love nursing,” she interrupted herself fiercely.
“I love what I do! It’s exhausting and heart-breaking and smelly and I love it.
I’m helping people, I’m healing people, and I’m supposed to just give that up because the man who owns me can’t let his property associate with other men. ”
Now it was my turn to drink my coffee, black and bitter, while my earlier decisions about her job made on her behalf drifted through my head.
“So, yeah,” Gaby said at last. “The choice was to get married or…don’t.
And since I couldn’t just say no, I called Red, my best friend, and asked her to get me a new ID.
She’s…kind of a hacker. I knew she did a pretty good side hustle fixing grades for preppies who can’t be bothered to go to class and faking IDs for the teens who are always trying to party in a college town.
She made me Gaby Cala, and Gigi Carter, in case Gaby got compromised, and I took the next bus out of town. ”
“Who were you promised to?” That shouldn’t have been my first concern, as falsifying documents was a serious crime that put my hospital at considerable risk, but my dick had its own priorities.
And despite my very real chagrin while she’d fumed about controlling husbands, my inner caveman wanted to know who to kill.
As for her career, even if I wanted to give her a choice, that couldn’t happen now, not at the hospital and certainly not at one of Gio’s clubs.
Too dangerous. Even if the Calabrettas—or, more likely, the family Gaby had been promised to—was not actively looking for her, if word ever got back to them that Gaby was working in a Vitale business, tradition demanded that they seek vengeance, no matter how they personally felt about it.