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Instead, I breathe his smell and dream about what it’ll be like to do this every night, to listen to the rhythm of his body and imagine him crossing that invisible line between us. In the morning, he’s up early and showered by the time I roll out of bed.
“Big day today,” he says without smiling. “You should shower. I’ll have room service bring up coffee.”
“Right. Move-in day.” A pit of dread opens in my belly. I knew this was coming, but why am I still so nervous?
“I’ll supervise everything.”
My eyebrows raise. “I didn’t think you planned on being here. I figured you’d fly back to Philly to get things settled there?”
He shakes his head and stares at me with his overly intense scowl. “I can’t do that anymore, not with Panagos sniffing around you. I’ll make sure you’re settled and I have a good security team in place before I leave you alone.”
I grind my jaw for a moment, trying to imagine my life for the next few days with Carmine hovering around like an overprotective bear, and find the whole thing is completely absurd. This is a gangster, the Don of a powerful mafia family, and he wants to help me move my stuff into his house? He’s got to have more important things demanding his time.
But I let him sweep me along. Carmine finds movers last minute and probably pays them a freaking fortune, but at least we have a bunch of big men to carry all my stuff, which really isn’t that much—I planned on carrying it all myself anyway. I shower, dress, and meet Cassidy downstairs in the lounge for breakfast while Carmine makes a dozen more phone calls holed up in the extra bedroom, which I didn’t know existed until he casually mentioned it this morning. The bastard, he probably hid it from me so I’d be forced to sleep in the same bed as him.
“What are you going to do?” I ask Cassidy as I drink coffee and pick at some fruit. “When we’re gone, I mean.”
“I’ll hang around here for a few more days, I think. Carmine says the room’s all paid up for a week and room service is on him, so I figure I might as well enjoy it.”
“Just when I was ready to write him off, here he is doing something nice.”
“Ah, he’s not so bad.” She clears her throat at the look I give her. “Okay, I mean, he’s not so bad for one ofthem.”
“For a violent mobster? He’s repulsive, Cassidy. I get he’s doing the bare minimum right now, but—” I shake my head, unable to finish that sentence. This small kindness doesn’t erase everything else. It doesn’t erase the way he talks to me and the way he looks at me, and it sure as heck doesn’t erase him blackmailing me into this.
“Is that really how you feel?” she asks softly and the note of sadness in her tone breaks my heart.
I give her a quick sideways hug and shake my head. “No, it’s fine, I’m just tired.” It’s not fine, and it is how I feel, but what’s the point of telling her that? Cassidy can’t help me, nobody can help me, and it’ll only make her depressed knowing I’m about to marry a man I loathe all for the sake of my family.
Instead, I’ll ignore my pain and smile and hide behind easy platitudes and try not to let everyone around me know how much I’m suffering just like I was always taught. Swallow it up, bottle it down, and soldier on, that’s the Rowe family way.
After breakfast, Carmine drives us over to the apartment where we meet with the movers. They get to work ferrying my stuff out of there, and it feels like watching a piece of me get stabbed over and over again. Carmine helps out, even though I can tell the movers don’t want him to, and I can’t stop staring at the way he wipes his sweaty brow and how much his arms flex as he lifts the boxes. Despite being the guy with the checkbook, he decided to pitch in, which was just overkill. I didn’t need four big, strong men to carry, like, eight boxes worth of stuff.
When it’s all packed up, we hit the road again and head to the new house. Carmine’s quiet on the drive out through the city as we follow the movers in his Range Rover. Halfway there, I can’t stand the heavy silence, and decide I might as well use this opportunity to get something out of him. “Tell me about these Panagos guys,” I say, trying to sound casual, even though this isn’t exactly a nice topic. “Since they’re going to kill me and all.”
He glances at me with a frown. “The less you know, the better.”
“Carmine. They knocked on my door and threatened me. You made a big thing about saying they’re going to rape me or whatever. You think that’s the last time I’ll see them?”
“I’ll make sure of it. Nobody fucks with what’s mine.”
“Stop the macho stuff for a second and tell me about them. I deserve to know.” He gives me another look and I add, “Please.”
He runs his hands along the steering wheel. “There’s not much to tell. Typical Greek mafia. They deal mostly in drugs and extortion. They’re big down South though and growing all the time. Lots of Greek immigrants are coming over and bolstering their numbers, probably because they hear the Panagos family is paying well and there aren’t any jobs back home in Greece. These days, mafia families prefer to do business as peacefully as possible to avoid getting attention from law enforcement, but the Panagos family hasn’t been so quiet. They like to do shit like knock on doors and yell about paying debts like a bunch of fucking children, and it makes things harder for everyone. If your father had ripped off one of a dozen other families, I wouldn’t be so worried, but he had to go choose the one goddamn group that’s still actively killing people.”
“Do you think he knew? My father, I mean. Do you think he knew who he was taking money from?”
“Hard to say. I can’t pretend like I know everything about crypto. It’s entirely possible the Greeks bought in on their own and he had no clue they were on the other end, but I sort of doubt it. Families like the Panagos don’t invest in things on a whim, and I suspect your father reached out to set up a deal with them.”
“That makes it so much worse. Heknewwho he was selling to and he did it anyway.”
“Your father torched your company and pissed on your family’s finances, and you’re only just realizing he’s a colossal piece of garbage?”
“He’s still my father.”
“And he’s going to get you killed. If I were you, I’d forget your old man exists and move the fuck on.”
I’m silent for a second. “Would you do that? Forget about your family, I mean. Could you do that?”
