19. Maybe...
2517 Words
The scent welcomed him like nothing else could. Michael could hear the shower running, and he closed the front door behind him quietly, intent to sneak up on her. If he knew her at all, she wouldn’t be able to scent him until he was walking through the door of the bathroom. Her favorite bath gel was overpowering and his fragrance—that deliciously musky sandalwood—was muted due to that and the dampness of the room.
Delia loved to take steaming hot showers.
He could hear her humming a tune that sounded a vaguely familiar, maybe some song on the radio, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember a word of it or even the chorus. When he passed by the door on his way to his bedroom to hang up his suit, he could tell she had the shower radio on low, just soft enough not to be heard until he was quite close.
Stripping himself of both his attire and the heavy atmosphere of the meeting, he wanted to shed both the misery he felt at his parents’ persistence, and bathe in the tonic that was Delia’s natural scent.
She sounded like she was starting on the second verse of her song, and strong scent of lavender faded, taking on a fruitier, lighter tone.
Apples. Delia must already be on to her shampooing routine after having let the water wash away the soap and carry away the last of the lavender.
He loved when she let him soap up her hair. There was something quietly calming about the activity, even with the sound of water pounding on the floor loud in the background.
Michael peeked into the room, bare as the day he was born to see Delia sniffing the top of her shampoo bottle and smiling. His mate was easy to please in some ways, and it took only the smallest kind gesture and she was nearly undone.
It was for that he hated to think about the kind of men she’d dated before him. Greedy, self-centered pricks that didn’t give a damn about anything but getting off on a woman.
He knew the type as they were all around him. He’d once listened in on a few females whose voices carried just enough so that he could hear while on duty for work. It wasn’t the women’s fault; it was just that he had a keener ear, though it had been hard for him to keep his face neutral when one of the unfortunate women called her husband a minute man, whatever that was. It didn’t take him long to figure it out thanks to something called the Urban Dictionary, and he tried not to look commiserating as the women left the shop he’d been working security at when he’d first started out in LA.
This was all before he’d been hired on at SecurElite and years before he’d become associates with Eli. It seemed like eons ago, but he couldn’t help but smile at his good fortune now…
Even with the reminder of his father’s last words to him echoing throughout his mind.
“Sposina,” he called to her as he slid the glass door to the shower open.
Delia looked over her shoulder, looking genuinely relieved to see him. With her hand still holding the shampoo, she turned to him. “How was it? Are they going to leave you alone?”
Us alone? she almost added.
Shaking his head, he almost didn’t want to tell her everything, but knew he would hate himself in the end if he left even one minute detail out. “I’m hoping they got the message, even though they did their best to make me think that this was all in my best interest, of course.”
“Of course,” she scoffed, soundly oddly like his own dear mother with the haughty puff of air that passed her lips. Instead of irritating him, it only made him smile. “Tell me everything, Michael.”
“Let me get started on your hair,” he murmured against her skin as his lips pressed to her forehead. He’d taken the shampoo from her hands without protest and started to drizzle some onto his left palm. “Turn around.”
It was an unspoken truth that he loved caring for her in the simplest of ways. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash if he got into the shower on time—there was something peaceful about caring for her in the smallest of ways. Larger gestures were fine and all, but the calming simplicity as his fingers massaged her scalp as she relaxed against him seemed to settle them both.
After the day he’d had, he felt they both needed it.
“They want me to start an off-shoot of Sangue Nero here in LA,” he told her gently. “Implied that you could help with the strip clubs they plan on opening up. I, of course, said no on your behalf. I know you have no love for the job when you were there, and it was only the need for money that made you turn to seeking employment at Promises.”
She nodded her head almost imperceptibly so as not to disturb the soft kneading he was doing that pacified her soul like nothing else could. “What did they say when you declined? They don’t exactly seem like people who would take no all that well.”
He nodded his head, one side of his lips tilting up. After meeting them just the once, Delia appeared to have a pretty good read on the older Jensens. “No, they didn’t. I suggested that my brother or Anselmo do it instead. ’Selmo’s an associate to them and handles the human side of their businesses in Italy. They seem desperate to keep the Jensen name in all parts of the business, though. They said my brother is also in America now. New York City. Handling whatever businesses they have started there.”
“Racketeering?” Her voice sounded sardonic. Hanging out with the movie buffs Eli and Cassie were had her immediately thinking of films like Goodfellas and The Godfather. It brought a smile to his lips as nothing else could.
“Many kinds, and not all of them as easy and pretty as they make them to be in the movies,” he told her. “You only get the outer, gilded edges—the best bits you might say, in movies about the Mob. The nicely tailored suits, the cash—the benefits of living a life of crime and all its benefits that the money can buy. What it’s really like is that man from New Jersey—what was his name? The one they put in prison that they nicknamed The Iceman.”
Delia, who was a true crime buff, knew exactly who he was talking about. “Kuklinski. Richard, I’m pretty sure his name was. He was a hitman for the Gambino crime family.”
“Yes. They called him The Iceman because he tried to disguise the times of death by freezing the bodies in freezing temperatures.” He paused. “That was actually quite smart of him. The Di Salvios always burned the bodies or threw them out into deep, shark-infested waters in the Mediterranean.”
“How very Dexter of them,” she mumbled.
“Except my parents weren’t stupid enough to leave any evidence behind. Or they planted evidence and left the Italian police what you’d call a red herring, if this was a European mystery novel.”
He started to rinse the shampoo from her hair, grabbing the detachable showerhead and using it to wash away all evidence of the fruit-scented lather.
“Did they say anything else, Michael? Your parents? I have a feeling there’s something that you’re keeping from me.”
He kept up his sure movements, but didn’t disagree. “Not keeping from you, amore. I was getting to it, so be patient.”
He placed the showerhead back and grabbed her conditioner, pouring some onto his hand and then adding it to her hair before he continued to speak. “They did a background check on you, sposina. It looked to be quite thorough.”
“Background check?” She didn’t seem surprised nor even annoyed about that fact. “I have nothing to hide. No known father, mother who’s off galivanting every other month with a new Sugar Daddy. The only thing that would affect me is if they tried to hurt Gran.” She paused. “Did they mention her?”
He shrugged. “Only in passing when they said who your family was. They said you were quite unimpressive, even if you were pretty enough to look at.”
“Well, I’d say the same goes for them. Striking enough from the outside, but as pleasant as a hard fist to the nuts.”
Michael’s lips twitched. “I feel the same way, and I’m related to them.” His mood soured slowly as he thought of the last thing his father said. “There’s more, fiore. Something like a veiled threat.”
She drew in a long, slow breath before exhaling. “What? What is it they said?”
“Something my father said to me upon leaving the conference room. He said, just remember that we have a far reach, even longer than most would admit to.”
She thought about it, wondering if there wasn’t more he wasn’t readily admitting to, however small or insignificant it might seem. “Meaning?”
“I don’t know actually. I know they have a far reach even if they’ve just begun really exploring the dark underground of the east coast crime industry. It could possibly mean they have connections here in LA already, or it could be something even more sinister.”
She paused, almost regretting the next words out of her mouth as they slipped too readily. “What would be more sinister?”
He heaved a heavy sigh, not wanting to even think about how far his parents would go to lure him back to their life of corruption. “I wouldn’t put it past them to kidnap you and use you as ransom to convince me of starting up shop in LA for them. They’ve admittedly done worse, and I’ve seen things that would make that seem like child’s play.”
Delia looked shocked as she turned to face him. “But they’re vampires as well. You’re their son! Don’t they know that taking me would harm you as well? How you would hurt through the bond? Have they no love for you and your happiness? It would be cruel if they did that. Absolutely vile, disgusting human—”
“—vampire, cara,” he interjected with a tilt of his lips.
“Whatever.” She seemed bent on having her say. “If they would do that to… What Eli was like when Cassie was gone was horrible to watch. I couldn’t bear to see you go through the same thing. I’d rather die!”
“Hush, love,” he soothed. “I don’t think they’d actually go through with that, but it’s always a slight possibility. It depends on how desperate they get or if they can’t find someone else to take my place. Guglielmo seems content enough with this lifestyle. My only hope is that he and his mate have children soon and they bequeath their legacy to whichever hell spawn my brother creates with that so-called mate of his. My brother was named after his grandfather on my mother’s side, and you couldn’t have found a more perfect name for him. Evil incarnate.”
He started to rinse her hair again, pausing every so often just to look at her, the stern outrage that was so prominent melting away as his fingers deftly sifted through her hair, trying to get every last sign of the slickness of the conditioner cleaned away.
When every last inch of her hair was sleek and shiny and the conditioner completely washed down the drain, Delia started to use his shower gel to wash every hard inch of his body. She loved this shower ritual almost as much as Michael did, though she definitely had more real estate to work with than he. Since she didn’t seem to mind, he let her mull over their conversation in silence until she broke it with a question.
“Did they say when they were leaving?”
He paused. “No. I didn’t even ask. I was so angry that they’d looked into your past that I—well, it’s none of their f*****g business who I mate to as I’ve washed my hands of them and everything they hold dear. If my mother would just stop trying to mold me into the perfect little soldier, I’d probably not despise them for all their meddling in my life. They’re not stupid, and they know they can’t change a mating bond any more than they can reverse the earth’s rotation, but if they’d just leave me be and let me live my life how I want it, we would all be better off.”
Delia looked up at him, just the glimmer of hope shining in her eyes. “Could it be just that they want you to succeed and become wealthy? To be happy and wish for you to be rich in all things and not just living hand to mouth? Maybe they just want more for you—think you deserve it.”
Sometimes Delia was unwittingly naïve, but he would never say so because he also found it so endearing.
“I doubt it, cara. I doubt that very much.”
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