Of Blood & Consequence (Book 2 of The Blood Bond Series)

20. Heart Vs. Head

Michael rooted through the security footage from the night before. The motion sensor had been tripped a few times in the docking bay of one of the high rises Eli owned, but from what he’d seen, it was only animals. Just like the guards from last night had professed. Michael had believed them, but since he had seniority, he needed to doublecheck.

Indeed, a pack of raccoons had scurried past, a stray dog, and one feral tomcat who decided to mate a female in heat right there in the middle of the damn alleyway.

After he scanned past the last scene that had caught the cameras attention—just a junkie shooting up before stumbling off back down the alley—he sat back and looked at his cell phone.

Delia: Love you. See you at 5.

He hadn’t responded—yet—but he quickly did now, and then the door was being knocked on just as he hit Send.

Opening the locked door, he saw one of his subordinates with a man Michael recognized behind him.

Gio, he thought as his eyes narrowed slightly. Well, I’m ready for him.

“Sir, this man says he’s a friend of yours and wants to have a word with you,” Ignacio told him as he stepped inside. “What should I tell him?”

Michael sighed and fought the urge to run his fingers through his hair. “I’ll deal with it. I’m overdue for a short break anyway.”

Without saying anymore, he walked past Ignacio and opened the door again. Instead of speaking and being heard in the bustling apartment building as residents walked past toward the elevators, he jerked his head for the man—Giovanni Constantino—to follow him to a quiet room near the back of the building.

Gio followed the swift pace Michael set, silent as a tomb but with sure strides, almost like he knew the building as well as Michael did.

That was all probably an act. Gio never usually ventured into the nicer parts of LA, preferring to accomplish his underhanded business in the seedier districts, or perhaps a private VIP room in one of the swankier strip joints if he was feeling generous.

It wouldn’t have surprised Michael if he’d been to Promises a time of two, and he was doubly-glad that Delia was out of that business for good.

His mate was starting to look forward to taking some classes for graphic design, and Michael was quite pleased at the moment about that, even if his parents were still in LA and still bothering him about opening up their business here. If only they’d fly back to Sicily, he’d have been enjoying his life more than ever.

With the exception of Gio.

Closing the door behind them in a dimly lit back office, Michael straightened his collar and cleared his throat. “I sent you a check just last week, Gio. Why are you showing up at my place of employment today?”

“One of your places of employment,” the man emphasized with a dark chuckle. “It seems you’ve been given a hefty raise recently now that you’ve signed on fully with Elijah Payne.” The man tutted as though Michael was an errant child in need of discipline. “For shame, Michele. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, as you’re not close enough to even garner a place on my mate and I’s Christmas card list, I didn’t think you’d care to hear of my good fortune. Perhaps I’ll ask Delia to add you to the list.” He paused, smiling. “Oh, wait. I can’t. No one seems to know where you live, and I wouldn’t want your card to get lost in the mail.”

The man’s smile faltered only slightly before the corners of his lips ticked up again. “I like you, Michele, but you’ve been keeping things from me. I’m hurt. A new mate, a better-paying job. Where is the love for your old friend, Gio?”

“What. Do. You. Want?” He enunciated each word. Friend? The man had been helpful in the past, true, but he was no friend. Just like everyone else, he had bills to pay, and when money exchanged hands, a possible friend turned into business associate mighty quick.

“Michele, I want what I always want,” the man told him amiably enough. “The debt you owe me.”

“I sent you a check just last week. I won’t get paid again until next Friday. Besides, we agreed to a price. We shook on it.” He was getting angry. He knew he should have known better than to borrow money from likes of Giovanni Constantino. If he hadn’t been so desperate at the time, he never would have even considered it.

But he’d been stuck. Most of the men he knew were too well-connected to the Di Salvios, and Constantino was the only other man with enough cash at the time that was unconnected to his family and could keep a f*****g secret. He’d been stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“And the time to collect the rest of the debt has already passed,” Gio reminded him. “Don’t you remember a few of years ago when you were in between jobs? It was before you’d gotten your position at SecurElite and I allowed you a few months off p*****t to find employment? As a friend, of course.” The man smiled brilliantly at him, his white teeth stark against his olive-toned complexion.

Fuck. Michael had forgotten about that, and he realized now that he was still five thousand in the hole. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t much, but he didn’t have even half that in the bank, and most of that was going towards rent for his condominium.

Damn this man.

“Gio.” He tried to soften his voice, attempting to appeal to the man’s soft spot—if he even had any. “I have a newborn vampire on my hands who I pay dearly to feed. Buying blood isn’t cheap, and until she—”

“Then drink from the source, amico. Go to one who won’t be missed—a hooker or a runaway. Hell, even a junkie would be better. No one will miss any of that slime.”

“My mate doesn’t wish to kill unnecessarily,” came Michael’s quick reply. “If she were to feed, she would undoubtedly drain them. She has a kinder heart than any of your associates, and she would be devastated at the loss of life at her hands.”

“People die all the time, Mich—”

“This isn’t like an accident or a terminal illness, Gio!” The interjection was cold and cutting. If he didn’t know the building as well as he did and aware that the walls were soundproofed in this office for ultimate privacy, he would have used a softer tone. “The unnecessary loss of life isn’t objective to her. Each life is precious, each soul redeemable, ea—”

“Soul,” the man spat. “Who knows if our kind have souls, eh, fratello? We may have soulmates, but our hearts do not beat. How can you have a soul within an empty vessel? I certainly don’t attest to having one, nor does my mate, Michele. Souls are for the weak humans, not for the impenetrable vampiri.”

Michael had heard enough. The man wouldn’t budge, but he knew that getting the money to him would be no easy feat. “How much time will you give me for the rest of the cash? I can see to getting the entire sum to you within three months, no sooner.”

Giovanni stepped closer quietly, invading the younger vampire’s space, but Michael kept his eyes locked to his. He wouldn’t show any feeling toward the man. Be it in fright or care or even a mild kinship between two of an immortal race, the man couldn’t show any of his emotions. He refused to as Gio’s dark eyes stared back at him.

“You’ll get it to me in 90 days and no later,” the man told Michael. “On the 91st day, I come for you and that mate of yours. Or, should I say, my men will come for you? If you don’t have that money by then, you will truly be a dead man, fratello.”

Michael’s jaw tightened and a muscle ticked. “Ninety days it is then, and after that, don’t come near me. Don’t look at me, don’t call me, and if you see me coming, walk away. I don’t take kindly to people threatening my loved ones, especially such a despicable man as you. In a month and a half, we’re through.”

***

When he walked into the condominium later with Delia beside him, he let the smell of the room enfold him in its arms. Having lived in the apartment for months now, everything smelled like Delia. The furniture, the bed sheets. She was infused into the walls of the space, he’d swear it.

Taking a deep, cleansing breath that was brimming over with her flowery bouquet, he closed his eyes and listened to her footsteps as she walked towards the kitchen, still chirping happily away, unknowing of his deep, inner turmoil.

“I just knew those two were knocking boots,” she was saying. “But when they finally admitted they were just having a little bit of fun until they found their mates, they acted like it was no big deal. I get it, I really do—but I think Desiree is going to find herself getting too attached to Lee. He’s older and more likely to find his mate first, and…”

He let the sound of her words fade away and simply nodded, too concerned with how he was going to be able to come up with $5,000 in just ninety days. He could—that is if he stopped feeding Delia, didn’t pay rent or any utilities, stopped getting his laundry dry-cleaned…

The list was endless. Ever since Gio had left him that afternoon, he’d been trying to think of ways to save money to pay the man back. It all came back to borrowing money from another source. The only people he knew who had that kind of cash were Eli and his siblings, and he had already texted Eli his willingness to work overtime if he was needed.

He hoped it would be enough.

Eli had tried to pry, but he didn’t want to weigh the man down with his money woes. And he didn’t like borrowing from friends. Call him too proud, but he’d grown up with Giuliana and Nico, and they didn’t borrow or beg. It was one of the few traits he still stood by to this day.

Working overtime would mean less time with Delia, but if he saved her life in the process, surely it would be worth it in the end.

He could probably save a little bit of money by getting a blood-bag for himself and stop feeding from the donated blood he bought for Delia, but then he’d have to find an excuse why he wasn’t drinking as much blood anymore. He wouldn’t outright lie—not to Delia. He sometimes skirted the truth or omitted things, but he wouldn’t tell a straight-out falsehood right to her face.

He just couldn’t.

He sat on the couch, his mate still talking as he grunted his short responses. This long day felt like a week’s worth of woes piled up, and he was feeling as old as several human lifetimes.

When Delia presented him a glass of warm blood, he took it perfunctorily, and even obligingly sipped it at his usual speed, though he couldn’t say he was at all hungry. When Delia put on the TV and snuggled up close, he was finally able to untangle himself from some of the dread he felt, and he let her curl around him like a cat after finishing her blood.

“Any word from your parents?” she asked after the first commercial came on.

Another sore spot. People seemed to be hitting them all today.

“No. Well, I got a text from my mother hoping to get together again, but I haven’t replied. There’s nothing more to say to her. They won’t listen, and I’m not about to go back there anytime soon. My life in Sicily is over in all ways.”

Yes, but if you took the job like they want you to, you’ll have more money than Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey combined. 5K will seem like chump change after that. Your problems will be solved, amico.

Fuck. Even his f*****g subconscious was starting to sound like Gio Constantino. That b***h needed to be out of his life as soon as possible.

But he’d had enough of that line of thought for now. Michael needed to immerse himself in a different activity. Something pleasurable, where he could lose himself for a few hours, forget the haunting past, the stressful present, and the doubtful future.

“Sposina, I need you in the bedroom,” he told her in his deepest, huskiest timbre. “Ora.” (Now.)

She didn’t need a translation of that foreign word. The intensity of that single syllable said everything for him.