Page 97 of The Mad Don
“If you can go again,” I whisper, “I’ll consider it.”
He throbs fully hard in seconds. “Lupa, you asked for this.”
I lean in, lips brushing his ear. “Pin me to this desk and make me call your name.”
He lifts me, spins me around, and bends me over the desk, ready to give me exactly what I want. I let out a groan as he enters me again.
Later that night, because he kept his promise, I come down the stairs in a black dress.
The house is quiet at this hour; he’s waiting at the bottom of the staircase with one hand on the banister, looking up at me. When he sees the dress, his whole face changes, and after a year, I still feel that look land somewhere in my chest.
He is wearing a black shirt that is open at the neck, showing his tattoo. He bulked up almost immediately after he recovered.
He pulls me in and kisses me and whispers against my mouth, “You look so pretty.”
I smile. “Let me go tell Lucia and Christov we’re leaving —”
He catches my hand. “Don’t worry about them.”
“Giovanni —”
Before I can protest, he stops my mouth with his and lifts me off the floor, and I’m laughing as he carries me out the front door, down the steps, past the new fountain in the courtyard he rebuilt, and sets me into the car. The night air is cool and smells of the garden, my garden, the lavender I put in along the drive. He gets in beside me, and I lean into his shoulder as we pull out of the gates.
“I never thought I’d be this happy,” I tell him. The lights slide past the window, gold and white against the dark. “Sometimes, I think it’s a dream.”
He takes my hand, lays it to his mouth and bites it gently.
“Ow —” I laugh.
“Not a dream,” he says.
“I know.” I look at his face, the soft light from the dashboard catching his jaw. “I just keep feeling like something has to come next. Like it can’t stay this quiet.”
It’s the old habit. Five years of guarding taught my body that quiet is the sound before something breaks, and a year of peace hasn’t fully untaught it. I still count exits in restaurants. I still wake at five.
“Whatever comes,” he says, “I’ll protect you.”
The car stops.
The restaurant sits on a corner above the water, light spilling out of tall windows onto the pavement. I expect it to be humming with people; after all, it’s a nice night. But it isn’t humming. It’s empty. There are only the workers, going quietly between tables set for no one. It’s so calm that our footsteps feel too loud.
“Did you book out the whole place?”
“No,” he says.
Unease spreads through my body as the waiter greets us and walks us to a table at the center of the room. We sit, and he hands me a menu. I look at it without reading a word.
“I feel strange,” I say quietly.
He smiles. “I’m here.”
His phone buzzes. He glances at the screen and stands. “I have to take this. One minute.”
He walks off toward the front, and the second, he’s out of sight, I feel eyes on me. There is no mistaking it; I know when I am being watched from somewhere in the room. My hand drifts to my bag; in there is a small gun Giovanni gifted me one random Tuesday, the way other men gift earrings. I carry it around for times like this.
Then the lights go out. I’m on my feet with the gun up. Everywhere is pitch black, the candles snuffed, only the faint blue moonlight through the windows hit a part of the room far away.
“Who’s there?” My voice carries flat into the black. “I can hear you. I know you’re there.”
