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While Tony and Marcello were my subordinates, it was a fact that all of us were under my father. No matter what, they would answer to my father before answering to me, and I understood it, but I hated being left in the dark.
I sighed and rolled my neck to work out its kinks, and my eyes fell upon Aryana, who was currently taking a nap—poor girl. My mind rewound to when she had a panic attack, and I took her into my arms. Remembering her body in my arms brought up unsolicited memories of that night. I recalled her soft skin under my touch and how I played her like a fiddle, wringing out moans from her.
I was struggling with what to feel about Aryana. There were no feelings, yet I couldn’t stop thinking about her. What was it about her that she wouldn’t leave my thoughts? She was like a plague that wouldn’t leave me be. She was not the first woman I had been with, and they never haunted my mind as she did. What exactly made her special?
My eyes roamed over her face, taking note of her delicate features, from her finely trimmed eyebrows to her plump lips that seemed pale, probably due to fear.
I mentally kicked myself and forced my gaze away. Despite how often she wandered into my mind, I held no other feelings towards her except sexual attraction. That had to be it. I knew nothing about her, but yet…
“Are you okay,fratello?” I heard Tony ask me from the driver’s seat.
The sound of a crinkling leather seat could be heard, and Marcello’s face appeared in my peripheral vision. He raised an eyebrow at me.
“Is everything all right?”
“I am fine,” I replied with no change in tone.
“Are you sure?” Marcello repeated.
The question I wanted to ask was burning at the tip of my tongue. Since Marcello was insisting, then I wasn’t going to hold back.
“What exactly did my father…. “
“We’re here.” Tony interrupted.
I looked out the window in muted shock. Were we here already? So fast? The ride was around thirty minutes counting from when we switched cars. We were driving through a secluded neighborhood. Each house was a stand-alone, with plenty of space in between each place to guarantee privacy. I whipped back to look at Tony, but he refused to look at me and drove up the driveway of an unremarkable-looking detached house. My eyebrows lifted in doubt.
Tony and Marcello exited the car, meaning I had to wake Aryana. I sighed and reached over to gently tap her arm. I didn’t know if she was still traumatized from what had happened earlier or because she had only settled into a light doze. Still, I watched with no expression as she jumped in panic.
“We’ve arrived,” I informed her, ignoring her small outburst, and exited the car without waiting for her so I could give her some time to compose herself. I doubted she would have appreciated my presence. We were not familiar with each other, and our relationship was complicated.
I walked to Tony and Marcello, who were whispering to one another, unaware of my presence. When I stood before them, they ceased whatever they were saying.
“Hai finito di sussurrare adesso? Are you ready to tell me the truth now?” I asked with a lifted eyebrow. This time I was not going to take no for an answer.
Marcello opened his mouth, probably to answer me, but then Tony interfered. I gave him a questioning gaze, but he looked over my shoulder.
“Dopo. We will talk about this later.” He said in place of an answer.
Feeling a presence appear by my side. I looked over to see that it was Aryana. Ah. That would explain why Tony had stopped Marcello from speaking. I nodded to show that I understood, and we turned to enter the house.
The house was welcoming, from the open door to the wide hallway. The floor was an old-fashioned parquet with a blend of deep homely browns, and the walls were the greens of summer gardens meeting a bold white baseboard. The banister was a twirl of a branch, tamed by the carpenter's hand that led to the floor above, its grain flowing as water might in waves of comforting woodland hues. Under the mini chandelier that hung in the foyer, it was nature's art, something that soothed right to the soul.
As ordinary as the house looked, I couldn’t help but feel touched by its homeliness.
“Where are we?” Aryana asked, and I was thankful for Tony speaking up as I had not been paying attention to the road during the short journey.
“Queens.”
Aryana and I shot my second-in-command incredulous looks but for what I believed to be different reasons. Queens was just twenty minutes by car from Manhattan. I was baffled because I would not have expected the hideout to be so close! I was hoping that I would have… that we would have had to travel to another country.
What was my father thinking? Placing us so close to the battlefront was a risky move. If my father wanted to move us away from Manhattan to keep us safe, sending us here only achieved the opposite result.
“Queens? I thought we were going to go somewhere pretty far. Not just a twenty-minute drive.” Aryana spoke up before I could, with a tinge of anger on her beautiful face. She directed her statement at me, but I could say nothing because I was just as clueless as she was.
“What exactly is going on? I thought my father was sending us to a hideout.” I questioned with a serious expression.
“This is the hideout your father asked us to bring you and yourmistress,” Tony answered. Hearing him refer to Aryana as my mistress made me give him an unimpressed glance.
