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She looked into my eyes, her gaze piercing through the walls I’d built and penetrating my soul. “Let me, please.”
I nodded.
She undid my button and helped me out of my shirt. “Take a shower. I’ll get dinner ready by the time you finish.”
I nodded again and entered the bathroom to wash out all the blood and anger. I was home now with my wife and unborn baby, I couldn’t bring the darkness and anger from the mafia home too.
After taking a shower, I wore a white shirt and sweatpants, then I joined Giselle in the dining room. She’d had the maids set up the table with chicken burritos and fresh pineapple juice. Giselle watched me silently as I ate.
We returned to our room after dinner and tucked ourselves in our bed. Giselle rolled over, placing her head on my chest and snaking her hand around me.
“Is it always like this?” she asked quietly.
I patted her head. “Like how?”
She shrugged. “The mafia. Is it always this sad for you?”
I sat up and leaned my back against the headboard and she did the same. “It is,” I answered honestly. “Some days are better. Somedays are easier because of my brothers and other days are just…”
“Like this one,” she helped me complete. “What do you do on days like this one? I mean, what would you have done if I weren’t here?”
I thought back to all the nights I’d come home, bloody, murderous thoughts running through my veins. Those nights were always the darkest and hardest to scale through, not because I was sad but because I was thirsty for blood.
Giselle probably thought otherwise, but I was just as much of a monster as Angelo and every other person in the mafia. I wasn’t going to feed her that truth though. “I wash the blood out and go to sleep.”
That was a lie. On nights like that, I take a shower and stroll down to the basement afterward to torture my prisoners. I had two new collections to choose from, one of which was someone she knew very well.
I couldn’t fathom her reaction if she discovered what evil lurked beneath our bed. It was better to keep her in the dark.
“Alone?”
“Alone.” I’d always been afraid I would take out my anger on whatever woman I chose to sleep with whenever I was in a mood like that, so I avoided bringing them home. Whenever I finished in the basement, I came up and fell asleep thinking of all the ways I would torture my enemies.
She patted my head. “You don’t have to do that now.” A flicker of a smile flashed through her face when I twisted my neck to look at her. “You have me now, so you’ll never be alone again.”
“I thought you hated me.”
“I do, but I don’t have a choice now. Do I?”
I didn’t give her an answer because she was right. She didn’t have a choice.
“Yesterday, before we had sex, I saw a tattoo on you.” She glued her eyes to my torso where I had the tattoo. “It’s a date, right? What does it mean?”
My blood froze. I’d never spoken about my tattoos, especially not the one on my torso, mostly because no one had ever asked. The women I brought home knew better than to stick their noses where it didn’t belong, and my brothers already knew what it stood for.
Giselle was the first person to dare and ask me. “It’s the day my parents died.”
Her breath hitched beside me. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.” But that didn’t stop her from asking more questions. “How did they die?”
“In a car accident. It was murder.”
Her jaw flexed as she struggled not to show her shock. “I’m sorry about that. I—uh.” She curled the hem of her nightgown between her middle and index finger. “My mom died a year ago. It wasn’t murder, but it hurts so much. I can’t begin to think of how painful that must’ve been for you and your brothers.”
Her voice shook as she said it, her tone low as if she was holding herself from crying. My parents died years ago, and I’d had time to mourn so my heart didn’t ache as much when I spoke of them, but Giselle lost her mother only a year ago.
I could sense she was still broken from it. “How did she die?” I asked. I’d never taken an interest in other people’s emotions before now, but I found myself wanting to know everything that hurt her.
And I wanted to make it right.
