Chapter 11 Gemma

“Stop worrying about the car, Gem.” Natalie’s insistence on making me feel better can be exhausting, but I think this feeling is just the day taking its toll. She emphasizes her point, telling me, “It’s just a car and you don’t know how bad it is yet. We have full coverage. Relax.”

“This is my fault.”

“It’s not,” she disagrees. “But if you feel that way, then you can pay the deductible to get it fixed. Okay?”

“It’s not just that, Natalie. I think the guy we saw looking in my window at our house came into Booked and Boozy tonight. Then he waited until we closed and followed me into the parking lot. It was fucking awful. I didn’t have my pepper spray with me or anything. He said something about Verducci.”

“Damian, put that scrub brush down.” Natalie shouts away from the phone.

“I need to clean or shoot. Give me something else to do with my hands and I will.” Damian’s reply is nerve-racking. He’s just as anxious as I am.

“I thought coming out here would be peaceful you know?” I tell her. “We had family out here so it would be safe. My brothers could stay in New York, and I could live my life.”

Antonio reaches over to rub my knee, sweet and gentle assurance that he understands where I’m coming from.

“You’re going to be fine, Gem.” Natalie says firmly. “We’re all going to be fine. Listen. Don’t worry about the car. We can have it towed to a body shop. You should probably ride with Antonio for the time being to be safe.”

“I am, I mean, I will as much as I can. I have a life, too. I don’t want to rely on anyone or make them feel obligated to chauffeur me around.” I tell her with a side glance at Antonio. The clenching of his jaw lets me know he takes offense to that, but I’m not going to take advantage of him or his car.

“Don’t be so stubborn, Gemma Marie. A car is just a thing. A ride is just a favor. When favors come from people who care about you, it’s not taking advantage. It’s called help, and it’s okay to need it sometimes. Me and Damian are pretty much glued at the hip, knee-deep in business contracts and whatnot, so I don’t need the car either. Stick with the doc.”

“I don’t have much of a choice in the matter now do I?”

She laughs. “Stop acting like you won’t guzzle his kids—”

“SHE WON’T WHAT!” Damian barks in the distance.

“Shit, I forgot he was here. Love you. Gotta go, bye girl.” Natalie ends the call with me fighting laughter.

“I’ll take you wherever you need to go,” Antonio says after I slip my phone into my pocket.

“Thank you.”

“As your fiancé, it’s my duty to keep you safe.” This time he wraps his hand around mine, brings it up to his mouth, and kisses the back of it. “What was Damian yelling about?”

I shake my head with a giggle. “Something inappropriate Natalie said about me.”

“I’ve wondered about how inappropriate we can get,” he says with the corner of his mouth turning up ever so slightly.

“You mean aside from you fingering my ass, using my own toy against me, and choking me while some pervert watches?” I can’t stop the sarcasm coating every syllable.

“The way you twisted your body when you came says you enjoyed it all. Pervert aside, would being watched be something you’re into?”

“I did enjoy it, and I don’t know,” I reply. “Is there somewhere like that for us to test things out?”

He nods. “A friend of mine knows another doctor, Dr. Mescal, who has places we can visit, but I’m not sure how things work with her. It might be a member’s only kind of set up.”

“How about we explore each other first before we think about taking our adventure on a tour as a spectacle? Wait, what does that mean for our fake relationship?”

Antonio pulls the car to a stop as we pull up to the impound lot where my car is sitting among others, waiting for me to rescue it. Hopefully, no one from Verducci’s organization is watching us, but Antonio’s voice has a way of pulling me out of my head.

“Our relationship isn’t fake, Gemma, just the engagement is.” He looks me in the eyes with every word, and there’s no doubting his sincerity. Antonio’s not someone I can rid myself of, and I never thought this day would come.

He leans over the console where I meet him in the middle for a kiss. It’s a kiss that easily shifts into comfortable passion. The ease of how we slip into this bond shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. It even scares me a bit how fast I can fall for someone simply because of how well he knows my body. Toss is in our mutual trauma and it is comforting. I’m hopeful that when the chaos dies our relationship survives.

It shouldn’t be a foreign concept that he knows the body. What he’s done to mine is only a glimpse of what’s possible between us. Our tongues swirl effortlessly as his lips capture mine and nearly make me forget the events of the night.

“You can’t park here.” A voice calls from beyond the car, causing our kiss to end abruptly.

I take a deep breath and tell him. “It’s fine, Antonio. Pull the car up a little so we’re not blocking this driveway. I’m going to go stand in the line.”

Antonio looks like he wants to stop me from getting out of the car by myself, but he’s not going far, and neither am I. There are three people ahead of me and by the time I reach the window, the slimy asshole runs his tongue over his grimy teeth.

“What can I do for you, kitten?” I imagine his words spilling from his mouth like biohazardous gas.

“My car was towed here a while ago. California plates, silver Volvo—”

The man cuts me off. ”Aw, it’s a pity the shape that car’s in. Two flat tires and a broken rear window. I remember it clearly. That will be 550, kitten.”

I balk at the price. “What? FIVE hundred and fifty dollars? For what? How long has my car been here?”

“Well, kitten—”

“Stop calling me that,” I snarl. “Break it down slow.”

“I’m rounding down. There’s a 295-dollar administrative fee for the first time the car’s towed and 280 for the tow charge. Your first four hours are free, but if you wait until midnight, which is in about twenty minutes, you’ll be billed for the entire day tomorrow.”

“You’re a bunch of fucking crooks.” I shake my head and peer over my shoulder as Antonio comes into the lot.

“Such a dirty mouth. If you put it to better use on me, I might shave a hundred dollars off that bill,” the weasel replies, again with a disgusting swipe of his tongue over his teeth.

“That’s all it takes to get a discount these days?” Antonio asks from behind me. It doesn’t look like we’re together, but the guy behind the glass is too busy trying to get my lips around his dick to pay much attention.

“Fuck off, pretty boy before I make you suck my cock for free,” the guy sneers at Antonio.

“You want to come out here and see how that works for you?” Antonio challenges the guy and to my surprise the asshole behind the glass steps out of his protective box. The metal door separating the likes of this tow yard manager from the public is the only thing keeping this guy safe.

The man snaps out a baton once he takes in Antonio’s frame from head to toe. Antonio’s not just a pretty boy. Muscles bulge from under his collared shirt and the attendant charges Antonio with his baton flailing in the night.

Antonio dodges the first blow, uses his forearm to block the second, and catches the baton on the third swing. He snatches it from the attendant and throws it to the ground. Antonio doesn’t wait for his attacker to say anything before he punches him in the face. The fight isn’t nearly as long or as visceral as his fight against Frankie.

It takes a few blows and a strong grip to the attendant’s shoulder to make the guy cower in fear.

“Please,” the attendant begs. “I’m sorry.”

“You need to apologize to her,” Antonio says as he jerks the attendant to his knees.

“I’m sorry, Miss. I swear. I didn’t mean it.” His trembling voice doesn’t make me feel sorry for him. I imagine the number of women this asshole’s tormented to get their car out of the impound.

“I just want my car,” I tell Antonio, ignoring the attendant and his apology.

Antonio jerks him one more time for good measure and tosses him back onto the ground. The attendant scurries back into the booth and locks the door behind him. Antonio walks up to the window and pulls out his wallet.

“How much?” Antonio asks as if he didn’t just toss this man around like a dog with a bone.

“Five seventy-five.”

Antonio pulls out six one-hundred-dollar bills and places them under the slot in the glass. The attendant writes up a receipt and slides it under the glass. We step away from the booth with Antonio on the phone as my car is brought out on a flatbed. They put it on the street in a No Parking Zone, which means we have to move it before the morning.

“I have a tow truck coming to take it to a private garage. We can have your insurance company send out the adjuster and have a rental waiting for you tomorrow.”

I let out a sigh of relief as I throw my arms around Antonio’s neck. There's something to be said about not having to worry about anything in a crisis. That’s who Antonio’s been from the start. He takes charge and takes care of me like we’ve always been meant to be.

“Fiancé, fake or not, Gemma, you belong to me. I’m going to take care of you. Are you working tomorrow?” he asks.

“I’m supposed to, but I have to be honest, I’m not exactly in the mood after today.” I let out a breath of exhaustion.

“You don’t have to work if you don’t want to,” he says as we wait for the tow truck to arrive.

I tip my head to the side, raising an eyebrow. “You want me to just stay home, bare foot and taking care of my soon-to-be wifely household duties?”

“No,” he chuckles. “I can take care of my house just fine. I meant that if you didn’t want to work while we stave off a war between rival mob families, you don’t have to. You can have some time to figure out if you want to stay where you’re at.”

“I just wanted time to figure out who I was away from my brothers. Any job will do. I just need to keep my mind off what I left behind.”

“Can you tell me more about that?” he asks. “Helping your family out of situations which have a tendency to rise out of the past happens to be one of my specialties.”

There’s nothing he can do with what I’ve done.

Instead of telling him everything, I rest my head on his shoulder. We wait in comfortable silence for a tow truck to pick up the remains of my car. The car was a symbol for me and Natalie going after our independence.

Natalie hates being beholden to the path her parents have laid out for her. I wanted to get away from my brothers because their lives bled into mine. Being a mafia princess forced me down a road I’m sure I would have never traveled had I been born into any other family. Yet here I am.

I had an eight-month head start on my brothers coming out here. Technically, they were never supposed to take over. It’s only after Armande relinquished his title as don and our cousin Julian refused to take the helm that Bash came out here to manage our family’s interests.

We were actually leading very separate lives until I decided to finger bullet holes and piss off the wrong soldier of a rival family. Where do I go from here?