Page 70 of Wicked Mafia Mistake
I am healing. It is terrifying and beautiful and I am doing it in the arms of a man who is patient enough to wait and brave enough to hold on.
He withdraws gently. Turns me onto my back. His thumbs brush the tears from my cheeks, his face close to mine, his dark eyes searching and finding whatever answer he needs because his expression softens into something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
"You're incredible." He says it like he's stating a law of physics. Not a compliment. A fact.
"I'm wrecked."
"Beautifully wrecked." He presses his lips against my forehead. "Don't move. I'll be right back."
Water runs in the next room. The sound of it filling the tub echoes off the tile and the pipes hum behind the walls. He comes back with his forearms damp, and lifts me from the bed. He carries me to the bathroom where steam rises from the surface of the water and the scent of lavender hits me before I see the bottle sitting on the edge of the tub.
He sets me in the water and the heat wraps around my body, soothing every stretched muscle, every aching place. I sink until the water touches my chin and close my eyes and let the warmth dissolve the last traces of tension from my limbs.
He kneels beside the tub. He wets a washcloth, wrings it, and presses it against the back of my neck. The heat blooms across my shoulders. He wets my hair and then he reaches for the shampoo and pours it into his palm.
"Lean back."
I lean back. His fingers work through my hair, massaging my scalp with slow, firm circles. The lather builds between his hands and the scent of mint mixes with the lavender from the bath. He rinses with cupped handfuls of warm water, his palm cradling the back of my head, careful to keep the soap from my eyes.
Nobody has washed my hair since I was a child. My mother used to do it in the kitchen sink, her hands gentle and quick, humming something I can't remember the melody of anymore. The memory surfaces and I press my hand against my mouth because the intimacy of this man kneeling beside a bathtub withshampoo on his hands is reaching a part of me the sex didn't touch.
He doesn't stop. He just keeps washing my hair with patient hands while the steam curls between us and the lavender fills the small space.
After, he wraps me in a towel so large it folds around me twice and carries me to the sofa. He disappears into the kitchen and returns with hot chocolate in my chipped mug and a plate of shortbread cookies from the bakery down the street. The chocolate is rich and dark, almost bitter, the way he makes it, with a splash of cream stirred in that mellows the bite. The shortbread crumbles between my fingers, buttery and warm.
I sit cross-legged on the sofa in his t-shirt with wet hair and a mug warming my palms and I watch him settle beside me. He pulls my feet into his lap and presses his thumbs into my arches, working slow circles into the tight muscles. The pressure sends warmth spreading up through my calves and my toes curl against his palm. He finds a knot beneath the ball of my foot and holds the pressure until it releases, and I melt deeper into the sofa with a sound that makes him smile without looking up. This is what it feels like to be loved by a man who pays attention.
"Thank you," I whisper.
"For what?"
"For everything."
His jaw works. His eyes glisten in the lamplight, wet at the edges, and he blinks twice before pulling me against his chest and tucking my head under his chin. We sit in the quiet while the hot chocolate warms my palms and his heartbeat steadies beneath my ear.
His phone buzzes on the counter. Once. Twice. Three times.
His shoulders lock against my cheek. The arm around me tightens. I feel the shift in his body, the ease draining out of him, tension flooding back into muscles that were soft a moment ago. His heartbeat picks up speed beneath my ear, each beat harder than the last.
"Mass?"
"It's nothing,tesoro. Work follows me everywhere I go. Sometimes it’s not as easy as clocking in and clocking out." His voice is steady but his body tells a different story. His breathing has changed. His fingers press into my arm with a pressure he doesn't seem to notice.
My gut tightens. The warmth I've been wrapped in cools by a degree, then another, and something in the gap between his words and his body tells me the calm just ended.
I don't push.
But my gut says I need to worry.
Nineteen
Massimo
Three days. Every legal angle I've run has hit the same wall: Harrison signed willingly.
There's no coercion on paper, no duress I can prove, no dead man's switches I can verify. The only person who claims they exist is a man who just threatened to use Genesis runners against me if I don't step aside and let his daughter be handed to a man who will destroy her.
I sit in my office at two in the morning staring at the Ferraro file spread across my desk like a crime scene and the only crime I can prove is my own. I've been lying to the woman sleeping thirty feet above me for seven days. Seven days of deflected phone calls, closed-door meetings, half-truths served with a kiss and a smile, and the handwritten promise of clause thirteen collecting dust in a drawer next to photographs of her father at Society 69.
