Chapter 14
C ALLUM
The light hits at a different angle, and the evening creeps in with tones of burning red and dark navy, glazing the old buildings, calling everyone to dinner tables, making the history of this town go on.
This place has been a crossroads of architectural and culinary influences, but its history doesn’t belong to the past.
Leilani and I are making history tonight in our secret, gentle way, which is a big change.
She’s coming out of her shell, showing me her beautiful smile and eyes burning with life.
I can’t stop staring at her when she’s not looking, although it’s hard to avoid her eyes.
They’re attracted to mine like magnets.
She feeds on my soul, or whatever part of my soul she glimpses in me.
Callum O’Hara hasn’t always been the way she perceives him tonight.
I wasn’t always paying attention to a woman’s needs.
I was younger, wilder, and I tasted life with the force of a hurricane.
Women were never a mystery to me.
I always knew what they wanted and what they needed, even when they said they wanted something else or pretended to be someone else.
But we never connected in a meaningful way.
Perhaps because I knew them so well, there was no room for exploration, no space for feelings, no time for intellectual conversations.
We fleetingly consumed each other the way you’d consume a snack at midnight, in secret, experiencing guilt, and trying to forget about the unwanted effects on your body the following day.
At some point, going the way of an arranged marriage came into play. My father spoke to me about it. He was a good salesman who knew how to sell anything to anyone by highlighting the benefits.
He and my mother were not exactly the product of an arranged marriage, but it looked that way.
They were lucky to have fallen in love before their families considered bringing them together.
My mother died young, and I was the only child, something my father deeply regretted.
There was no time to make and raise another.
Because of that, he never insisted on convincing me that the arranged marriage is the way to go, but he talked about its benefits as I just said.
I could get a young bride, someone I could initiate in the pleasures of life. Someone I could have children with, and many of them, if possible.
We also talked about the business side of it and how we could forge alliances.
But unlike Giorgio Gallo, he never believed those alliances would last for long. Therefore, he didn’t think the price we had to pay for them was justified.
He would’ve much preferred for me to find a woman suitable for our family, someone from a family like ours.
He always liked to point out that someone from outside might become a problem, and he was right.
Things can get quickly complicated with a woman who doesn’t understand how we run our lives.
He never got the chance to see me pick a bride, and I have Giorgio Gallo and Stefano Varela to thank for that.
Had they not set me up and ambushed us, my father would still be alive.
To make things worse, they did it for something trivial that later changed, proving once again that my father was right.
These alliances are weak like twigs.
One snap, and they’re no longer whole.
I think my father would’ve liked Leilani. She is a woman of our world. She knows crime. She’s lived amongst the worst.
Unfortunately, she’s been subjected to it as well.
They have truly done a number on this woman, and now to think that Varela is the best option for her?
Why can’t they just leave her alone?
And if she is Varela’s newest obsession, what the fuck is wrong with him?
I get angry just thinking about these two fools, and don’t start me on Sylvia Gallo.
Why would any woman do to another woman what she’s been doing to her own granddaughter?
I could never understand.
They weren’t more protective of their own daughter, and I bet they now know who has killed her, and they’re still bowing to that man.
I like money and power as much as the next gangster, but I’d never consider doing that.
There’s the line I’d never cross.
The breeze off the sea sweeps over us.
It carries a salty scent and makes her dress reveal the shape of her body.
Long legs, round breasts, hips made to be gripped and worshipped.
I move my eyes from her body to her face, and soak in her profile as she looks in the distance, her nostrils flaring.
She’s like a wild animal tasting freedom for the first time.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asks as we walk closer to the sea and stop not far from the water.
“Yes, it is,” I say, not looking at the water but at the warm sunset kiss on her skin that makes her look like a fecund Greek goddess.
I’m sure the Greeks who walked these paths and sailed this sea would’ve stopped, mesmerized at the sight of this woman, convinced she is a goddess.
I’m sure the poets would’ve picked up their quills, dipped them in ink, and written poems about her.
Poems that later would’ve been recited and transferred from one generation to another.
She is more beautiful than the sea.She is the woman I never thought I’d meet.
Men like to talk.
Sometimes, they share unsavory stuff.
Sometimes, it’s things you learn from. I have experienced a lot of that, too.
I know what Cosimo meant when he said Nona was a good woman. I know precisely what he referred to.
Some women travel alone, keep to themselves, yet feel more deeply than a room full of people.
That’s Nona.
Under her quiet, subdued appearance lives a woman with a big heart.
The kind of woman you want to come home to after a long night, after staring death in the eye, and making it another day.
Women like her are like a calm sea.
Stretching out all the way in front of you and around you, giving you peace and something steady to hold onto.
And then there are women like Leilani.
They seem to be something different than what they are. They may look crazy, superficial, a handful.
In other words, trouble.
But then, if you dare to ram open the doors to their hearts, you’ll find something different.
Something deep, profound.
A well of gentleness, a sense of justice, love that has never been met with love, and an ocean of life that needs to be discovered.
Their guard is up. Their games are misleading. Their fight to stay alive is crushing.
When you see such force contained in such a tiny, ugly place, it breaks your heart.
Life can be a beast even without confining a beautiful soul like hers in the slimy quarters of some ugly men.
She flicks her eyes to me, catching me staring at her, and I give her a smile, making her grin back at me.
Her eyes smile first, a mix of the sea, the sunset, and the gratitude she shows me.
“You’re not looking,” she protests playfully.
“I absolutely am,” I say, more truthful than ever. “Let me show you,” I add, stepping behind her and gripping the handrail on either side of her, making her lean back into me as the wind blows her hair over my face.
The smell of the water and wildflowers from her tresses washes over me.
I press my nose to her hair and inhale, my lips touching her head.
“You like this?” I ask, looking at the sunset, relishing her warm body being shielded by my arms.
“Yes, I do,” she says, taking comfort in my presence, leaning back even more, cuddling against my chest.
And then, she turns her eyes to me, her lips maybe an inch away from mine.
Our eyes keep talking about the things we’d like to do to each other, about how much we’d like to learn about each other.
About the ways we’d like to end this evening.
Some of them are possible.
Some of them are not.
Not now, at least.
She presses the length of her body against mine, and I feel every bit of her against me.
Before long, it’s evident I’ve grown hard, and this time, I’m not pulling back.
I’m not hiding it.
I haven’t enjoyed my reaction to a woman like that in a very long time, maybe never.
She turns around like a swirl of Bougainvillea petals blown by the wind, and wraps her arms around my neck, as our eyes connect.
I know what she wants.
I feel it in my blood.
Her face is tilted up, her lips parted.
We’re almost there, kissing.
But if we start kissing here, I might be ripping her clothes off just to have her naked in my arms.
Instead, I tease myself and lower my mouth to hers, breathing into her.
“Let’s go home. We’ll continue over there,” I say, talking against her lips.
She takes a long breath as if her heart is about to explode before she answers.
“All right.”
And then she starts moving her fingers through my hair and down my neck, and I become iron hard, the tension impossible to bear.
And although I know I can’t do much here, I go for the impossible.For the last thing I should do.
I press my lips against hers and feel her shaking like a leaf in the wind.
Shudder after shudder moves through her as she absorbs the power of my touch, too afraid to do anything to me.
Just breathing through me as if it’s the only way she knows how to breathe.
Then I put a little tension into my kiss, so she knows I mean it, and it allows her to come back to me, to react.
And when she does that, I realize how hard it’s been to suppress my need to have her. And how quickly I could take her, which is the last thing I should do.
As much as I’d love to do that, Leilani has never traveled this road before.
She’s had men come after her, treat her badly, but she’s never had something like this that comes with a myriad of implications, and many ways to screw her life and mess with her brain.
So, we need to stop.
But then I move my lips to hers, and our kiss tastes like a reward, despite being so tormenting.
For me, it is.
I’d like nothing more than to savage her, make her sweat, so I can lick that salty dampness from her skin as I cover her in kisses.
Make her cry my name out, beg me to enter her, feel her soft insides around me, and the pulsing heat between her legs.
Have her nails leave bloody trails on my back.The blood my enemies are so much after.
My hand moves up her back before my fingers thread through her hair.
She tilts her head back against my touch, and I’m tempted to part her lips.
A few people walk in the distance, their voices traveling to us.
My men are not far from us, surveilling the area, making sure nothing crazy can happen.
There’s not much privacy for what I want to do, yet I go for it regardless.
I move my fingers through her hair and stroke the back of her neck, indulging in the way she’d like me to kiss her harder.
I'm doing just that, listening to her quiet moans while dragging my hand down her back, around her torso, and over her breasts.
The way she breathes a silent moan as if she’s about to collapse makes me stop and break away from her.
Her eyes could start a fire.
Her lips are open as she struggles to breathe.
“Is something wrong?” she asks, with deep concern in her voice.
Smiling, I run a tense hand through my hair.
“There’s nothing wrong,” I murmur, hiding how affected I am by her, wanting nothing more than to adjust myself.
I take her hand and look away, so she can’t notice the lust in my stare.
If I had my way, I’d book a private plane and vanish with her in some forgotten country, not looking back, not thinking about the things I left behind.
It would be reckless, as so many people depend on me, but that’s how I feel.
I amassed enough wealth to pull a disappearing act, and I have no family left.
I could walk the streets of Panama City––and I’m not talking Florida here––doing my best impression of a clumsy tourist with a beautiful bride on my arm.
But life would probably get back to me one way or another for leaving so many loose ends in my past.
And she and I are not there yet.
I still need to assess the damage other men had done to her, and then see where life is taking us.
There is time for all that.
Just not enough.
We have two weeks to figure things out.
At the end of these two weeks, maybe earlier, we’ll know where we stand.
We’ll also know how hard we need to fight to make this dream come true.
“Let’s go,” I say, casting a glance around the area.
Not many people walk this way, but there are still a few, and I don’t trust their eyes.