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After I did the basics in the bathroom, I dressed in a suit and took Leonora’s phone with me to the bedroom. I set it back on the nightstand and took a seat on the edge of the bed. I placed my hand in the dip of her hip and leaned in close to her ear.
I breathed her in, and before I could wake her up, she said, “That’s creepy, Big.”
A laugh tore out of me, and her eyes fluttered open.
“Why are you waking me up so early?”
“You set the alarm.”
She popped up like she’d been electrocuted and snatched her phone. Her face immediately relaxed when she realized she was ahead of the clock. “I need to see my brothers. They don’t like it when I’m late.”
I leaned in and pressed a hard kiss to her forehead. “I don’t either. Today is a big day. I need you ready by 5 o’clock.” I pulled my wallet out and set a card with no limit next to the bed. “You’ll need a dress. The designer store downstairs has plenty of options, but if none of those will do, the world is your playground. Do your worse with that card.” I lifted my arm and checked the time on my watch. “Lidia should be here now.”
She stopped me by calling my name before I left. “What about you? No breakfast?”
“I usually have a schedule, but I’m breaking it today. I have a few pressing issues that need to be taken care of.”
She nodded, getting comfortable in the bed again.
On my way out, a picture of me with my mother on a table stopped me.
My mom was half Greek, half Italian. Her mother and father still lived in Greece when she moved to Las Vegas and married my father. When things would get particularly bad between her and my father, she would take me to Greece with her.
It was the only peace I knew as a kid.
I even remembered Kitty taking me to Big the older when she thought they might kill each other. Big the older liked my mother more than he did his own son. He felt being reliant on anything was a severe weakness for a man.
Occasionally my mother would try to quit drinking, but he never did. Together, they were toxic. She knew it, but she always went back. He’d promise to quit, to get help, but he never did. And she’d hold all her frustration and anger inside until she started to drink again, and they would drive each other to the brink.
The fucking cycle would start again.
Those times when she’d take me to Greece, though, I had a mother, a parent, and Greece came to stand for more than a place.
It was a section of heaven.
It was home.
“Oh!” Leonora slid out of our bedroom when she realized I was still in the penthouse. She’d been rushing out and couldn’t put the brakes on fast enough. “I thought you’d left already.” Her eyes glanced down at the photo. She came to stand beside me. “That’s you and your mom?”
“Yeah.” I set it back.
“She’s such a natural beauty.” She studied the picture more carefully. “Are you in Greece here?”
“We’d go occasionally. Her mom was Greek.”
Her eyes stilled on the photo, but I could tell her mind was churning. She bit her lip for a second before she asked, “How was it? Greece? I’ve never left Nevada.”
“It’s warm. Smells like sea water, night-blooming jasmine, and fresh herbs—basil and rosemary. A place worthy of Aphrodite. It always felt like home to me.”
“Sounds like the description of my body wash. It even says something about Greece.” She smiled at me, and then her eyes froze on mine when she realized what it meant.
Home wasn’t an actual place but a person.
Her.
She was my home.
She carried with her all those things that makes a man like me tether himself to a woman.
