Chapter 13 Lena
LENA
I’m sitting at the glossy granite breakfast bar, wrapped in a cozy robe, watching a petite grandmother-aged woman cook me breakfast.
The similarities to yesterday morning are eerie. Someone else’s house. Someone else’s clothes. Someone else’s food. But this time, no sexy, domineering, and deliciously scruffy bully is barging in to put me off my appetite.
Even if I keep surreptitiously glancing around, looking for him.
I don’t know what in the name of God’s green earth got into me last night. Maybe the shock of everything that’s happened drove me to have an out of body experience. Or broke my brain. Or both.
Because I have no rational explanation for how I went from hitting and yelling at Rem at my apartment, accusing him of destroying my life, to laying sprawled across his desk completely naked while he licked me to the most earth-shattering orgasm of my life.
The progression from one polar opposite to the other is definitely not the work of a healthy brain. Or the sign of a woman with any sense of self-preservation.
Never again, I scold myself, watching with appreciation as his chef whips up what looks like the fluffiest omelet I’ve ever seen.
It’s because you trust him, a traitorous little voice in my heart whispers.
“I don’t,” I insist, quickly taking a sip of coffee when the woman at the stove turns and gives me a questioning glance. She hasn’t spoken a word to me and I’m not ready for her to break the silence yet.
You trust him to protect you.
“Ridiculous,” I whisper into my cup. “He’s a stalker and a kidnapper.”
Who comforts you in your sleep, pushes you out of the way of bullets, tends to your injuries, and gives you a safe place to sleep after a crazy Russian threatens you at work. Oh, and is wickedly talented with his mouth and has a gorgeous cock to boot.
The memory of Rem watching me watch him as I jerked him off slams into my brain, my body going instantly hot as I drop my forehead onto the counter. Yup, definitely not something I will ever be doing again.
Even if it was the single hottest experience of my life.
No, I rock my head against the granite, letting the surface cool my flushed skin. No more fraternizing with the dangerous mobster from now on.
Mobster. The word, spat directly from my subconscious into the bright reality of day, pulls me up short. That’s what he is, right?
The way he wields authority like a weapon, the way he’s so matter of fact about guns and gunshot wounds.
The way he’s always armed and commanding a small army of men.
His access to the most exclusive places in the city, where only the most powerful and most wealthy dare step foot.
His dark aura of carefully leashed violence.
The comments Bianca made, not to mention the Russian guy…
Holy shit. I just hooked up with the mob.
The tiny woman puts a gorgeous plate of food in front of me at the same time I burst into maniacal giggles.
I hooked up with a man in the mob and I slept in his bed.
And I’m wearing his diamond ring. And I’m just sitting in his insanely posh penthouse as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
And I clearly, clearly have stepped into an alternate universe, because what the fuck is happening right now? !
Rem’s chef is looking at me with something that might be concern, might be suspicion. When I don’t start eating right away, she nudges the fork in my direction.
Body on autopilot, I wolf down a few bites—it really is the best omelet I’ve ever had—before the food turns toxic in my stomach.
“Thank you,” I tell her, moving away from the bar. “Thanks, but I…” I give a wave I hope she understands as I’m having a break from reality, am maybe fake engaged to a member of the Italian mafia and can’t really eat eggs right now.
Other than the woman I leave muttering in Italian behind me, the penthouse is empty. No bodyguards lurking. No Johnny hovering. No Rem looming. No one to stop me rushing through hallways in search of the room I first fell asleep in last night.
Miracle of miracles, I manage to get to the right room without getting lost. I don’t bother showering or finger-combing my hair or doing anything else that would make me vaguely presentable as I formulate a plan to get out of the city.
Maybe I can pawn the giant diamond on my hand, get enough cash for a burner phone, new clothes, and a bus ticket out to the middle of nowhere.
I’ve never run from the mafia before, but it seems like as solid a strategy as I’m going to come up with on short notice. Once I’m far enough away I can find a way to contact the Cortland police department and see if they can tell me how and why my aunt was killed.
At least, that’s the plan until I hear a knock on the bedroom door.
“Hi Lena. How are you feeling?”
Turning, I find Bianca smiling in the doorway. “Ah…” I jerk the robe tight, wrapping my arms around my midsection. “What are you doing here?”
“Rem sent me.” Her smile expands in what looks like genuine delight. “He asked me to keep you company. He thought you might be lonely.”
“Lonely?”
“Yup,” she says, shrugging, like me wearing nothing but a robe in Rem’s house is no big deal. “He said something about Netflix, popcorn, and giving each other pedicures.”
I stare at her, unsure I heard her correctly. “Everything about that sentence is ridiculous.”
“Especially the part that it came out of Rem’s mouth. But I swear on my grandmother’s pie crust recipe that’s what he said. Verbatim.”
Something about Bianca’s sudden presence and the rom-com day Rem has planned for us sets off alarm bells. “I can’t leave the apartment, can I?”
Of course walking out the front door wouldn’t be as easy as I naively thought. Not if Rem is really who I think he is.
Bianca gives me a sympathetic look. “Not without the ten-digit code for the front door lock and a way past the armed guards outside, no. It wasn’t on his suggested itinerary. But that’s just because he’s wants to keep you safe. Not because you’re a—”
“Prisoner?” Hostage? Captive? Sex-slave? Though I’m to blame for the last one. I was the one who sat my ass on his desk last night, practically begging Rem to distract me with his mouth.
Bianca ignores my comment and holds up a bag from clothing store on the Magnificent Mile.
I’ve never stepped foot in the place; even the air in there is too expensive for me.
“As I see it, you have two options. Both of which involve hanging out with me. We can do the whole movie and snacks and hanging out thing, as Rem suggested. Or you can put this on, and we can have a very safe, very well-guarded escape to a fabulous little cafe I know. Because, as it happens, there’s also a second elevator just down this hall that takes us straight from the apartment to the private parking lot in the basement.
Rem rarely posts guards there because he never uses that elevator.
It makes him claustrophobic. From there we can hop into my armored car, drive three blocks to another private lot, and get ushered through the rear entrance of the cafe by my giant of a bodyguard.
No one will see us. No one will find out. ”
I blink, taken aback by Bianca’s suggestion. “You’re going to help me leave?”
“I’m going to get you out of the house for a fabulous cappuccino and an even better cornetto and then return you unharmed with Rem none the wiser. We’ll be gone an hour, max.”
“But…why?”
Bianca approaches me by the bed, carefully setting the bag of clothes on the pristine bedspread. She takes one of my hands and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Because I’ve been where you are.”
She catches my startled expression and rushes to explain.
“No, not shot at or threatened by an infamous Russian hitman. But I’ve been swept up into the intensity that is life in the Cerreti Family, and I know how hard it can be to get your bearings.
Johnny, Rem, his brother Ari—these men are fierce.
Fiercely protective, fiercely loyal. And fiercely focused on having things happen their way.
And sometimes, when they’re so focused on doing what they think needs to be done in the only way it can be done—their way—they forget that we ladies might need a moment to come to terms with our new reality.
That falling for a man from this family, while intoxicating, means you sometimes need to catch your breath—away from the intoxicating scent of their cologne. ”
“Falling for…?” I shake my head, trying to correct Bianca’s mistake. “No, I’m not—I haven’t fallen for Rem. We’re not together. This”—I wave my free hand weakly at my near-naked body—“it isn’t what you think.”
“No?” Bianca lifts one perfectly groomed eyebrow. “The two-ton rock on your finger and hickey on your chest say otherwise.”
“Hickey?” I pull away from Bianca and rush to the bedroom mirror. My robe has gaped open and, just like Bianca said, there is a mouth-shaped mark on the skin above my left nipple. I can almost feel Rem’s lips on me, his hands stripping me. The two orgasms he sent ripping through me.
I haul the robe closed but not before Bianca catches the blush that paints my entire chest red.
“Nothing to be embarrassed about, Lena.” Bianca starts pulling clothes out of the shopping bag and laying them on the bed.
Beautiful, soft sweaters and woolen trousers to match.
A pair of buttery leather boots lands with a soft thud on the floor.
“You’d have to be a nun to say no to an orgasm from Rem Cosenza.
And even then, you’d be seriously tempted. ”
“Wait, have you…?” I spin, caught off guard by how jealous I am at the idea of Bianca having ever been with Rem. “Have you two hooked up?”
“What? No!” Bianca laughs, her surprise genuine.
“I’m merely extrapolating based on what I’ve heard a few girls say and the rumors that have gone around over the years.
Rem would never kiss and tell, but I’ve seen the dazed look on a girl or two after they’ve come out of a private room at the club after being with him.
There’s only one thing that makes cartoon stars swirl around a woman’s head like that, and it’s orgasming good and hard.
And more than once. Am I right?” Bianca winks at me, humor brightening her eyes.
I mumble something, embarrassed that she can read me so well and horrified at the explosion of jealously I feel at the idea of Rem pleasuring any woman other than me. Or, worse, any other woman touching him.
Fuuuuuck, I grown inwardly. Bianca’s right. I have to get out of here, try to regain some semblance of sanity before I’m the one locking myself in Rem’s penthouse.
Lena, Lena, Lena, you’re missing the point! What’s left of the rational part of my brain is shouting at me. Bianca is my ticket out of the apartment. My best shot for actually escaping is to sneak away when she isn’t looking. If I’m going to run far away from Rem Cosenza, this is my chance.
I pick up a sweater and pair of pants. “You’re right. I need to get out of here, even if it’s just for a little bit. Give me five minutes to get ready?”
“Yay!” Bianca gives a little gleeful clap and I smother the tingle of guilt that I’m planning to betray her. “I’ll be in the hall. With Bruce.”
“Bruce?”
“He’s my bodyguard. Johnny insists he come with me everywhere.
But don’t worry, I’ve bribed him with sfogliatella; he won’t tell the boys that we’ve gone out and he’ll keep us safe.
If there’s one rule I’ve had since getting together with Johnny, it’s this: you shouldn’t let being married to the mob and the occasional death threat get in the way of eating excellent pastry. ”
On that utterly surreal statement, Bianca gives me a cheerful wave and leaves the room, closing the door so I can change in stupefied silence.