Instead of taking one cigarette from my nightstand, I grabbed the whole pack. I was going to smoke every last one of them.
Her door was shut and the light was off as I passed her room. Annoyance flared in me that she hadn’t even come out to see the damage. The last time I’d thrown something at the wall was when I was young enough to be kicked in the ribs for it. Maybe she should take responsibility for how crazy she made me.
I opened the garage door and leaned against the worktable, taking a deep drag on a cigarette. I could still smell her on my hands, and every time I brought the smoke to my mouth a memory of fucking her rushed in.
Fuck, she was the best lay I’d ever had. A chill ran down my back from the thought of it. I gritted my teeth and tried to shake the strange feeling off. Nonetheless, my body was alive like she was still touching me—her pink little fingernails digging into my biceps, her hand wrapped around my cock, her smell all over me. So damn sweet. I braced my hands on the table and hung my head.
I should have taken Salvatore’s other offer when we’d found out Adriana was pregnant—a corner of his territory that would’ve filled my pockets, and one I’d wanted for a while—because Elena fucked with my head, made me destroy the furniture and smoke more than I should. And I had a bad, bad feeling that if this girl used the word please, I would give her anything she wanted.
I’d fucked her raw, so fucking raw.
I was twenty-nine and had never been stupid enough to fuck without a condom until today. Now I was ruined—with my little fiancée, anyway. I didn’t think I’d ever slept with a woman who I hadn’t found out my cousins were fucking as well, or even better—Tony. No chance I was trusting the lot of them to be clean, so I’d always wrapped it up. My jaw tightened as I wondered about Elena’s sexual history. I wanted to know how many men there’d been, their names, and everything they did to her, so I could do it twice as hard and make her forget they existed.
I wondered if she was on the pill, and in a disturbing way kind of hoped she wasn’t. I wanted an irrevocable tie to this woman. I wanted to write my name on her skin, to do all kinds of fucked-up shit so she knew she was mine. Like lock her in my room and hand-feed her. With indifference, I finished my cigarette and contemplated the logistics of that.
Luca’s headlights pulled into the drive. He tucked his shirt in and fixed his cuffs as he got out of his car. “I’m gonna take a wild guess. It was the little pink princess that pissed you off and ruined my night.”
I shook my head at his stupid nickname for her and lit another cigarette. “Surprising you could even find someone to fuck that ugly face of yours.”
A smile pulled on his lips, and he rubbed a hand across his mouth like there might still be something on it.
“Did you have to pay her?” I asked, listening to the city in the background. Sirens, tire noise, the neighbor John’s TV playing endless ballgame highlights through an open window. He was an enforcer of mine, and I considered giving him a raise to fix his goddamn air-conditioner. If I wanted to listen to MLB all day I would’ve turned it on.
Luca walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. “Might’ve been better if I had.” He cracked the can and took a seat in a lawn chair. “She fucking talked about you the whole time.”
“Interesting.” Inhaling deeply to get Elena’s scent out of my nose, it smelled like the end of summer. Like fresh-cut grass, motor oil, dying heat, and the urban sometimes bitter smell of the city.
A corner of his lips lifted. “Isabel.”
“Ah. If you think I know how to shut her up, you’re out of luck.”
He laughed.
I actually knew of a few ways, but I didn’t want to talk about Isabel. Agitation still rolled under my skin, and I stepped out of the garage and leaned against my Mustang in the drive.
The brief thought of Isabel reminded me that she would be here in the morning. She was just my cook and, to be honest, a shitty maid, though she used to be a regular fuck. Well, Mondays and Thursdays when she was here, anyway. She’d been a convenience, but then she fucked Tony and came with unwanted drama. I hadn’t touched her in a year and had only run into her a few times.
I considered what I should do about her. Not even a man in the Cosa Nostra would parade a mistress or ex-lover in front of his fiancée. And knowing Isabel, she would go out of her way to try and make Elena uncomfortable about our brief past. Would Elena even care? A burn radiated throughout my chest at the thought that she wouldn’t.