Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance (6 page)

Tentatively, I take another sip of the Manhattan, only taking a teeny-weeny bit between my lips. The cherry rolls down the glass and bounces against my teeth. The sweetness there is a relief. I actually just want to eat the cherry, if I’m telling the truth. But it makes the drink a lot easier to take.

I set the glass back down and stare at it suspiciously for a second. I don't shudder, and I don't want to gag or anything so it must be working. After giving it a few more seconds for good measure, I pick the glass back up and bring it to my lips, but before I take a sip I let the cherry roll back toward me and then drink around that.

Okay, this is totally working. Excellent. What's in a Manhattan anyway? From the look of it, I sort of thought it was going to be all cherry. Like maybe a rum and Coke sort of thing. It's not, though. It's, like, all booze, and not your smooth vodka booze either. Dark, scary, old man booze. The cherry was really deceptive.

But, okay, I'm feeling pretty good about this now. The piano man starts playing something I think I know, some song I've heard before. Oh yeah, it was used on a commercial. Shoot, I can't place it, but pretty soon I'm humming along anyway. I hope he gets to the part of the song where I remember the words.

There's only a sip or two left in this glass, and now I'm totally goal-oriented about it. I know once I drink this, that bartender is going to bring me another one and then I'm going to be relatively tipsy. But if I finish just this one drink, then I should be okay. I can ask him for a Diet Coke or something instead. Something with cherries, lots of cherries.

I close my eyes and tip the glass back. The cherry drops against my upper lip and I let the liquid swirl around it and then against the roof of my mouth. Then, as a reward, I let that sweet, cartoonish fruit roll over my tongue and bite down on my molars.

There you go. That's why they put the cherry in there. It's dessert.

I finally get that last bit of the drink past my tongue when suddenly I'm jerking forward, practically falling over the table. I turn in my seat, careful not to choke on the bits of cherry that are still at the back of my mouth. For a second, what I'm seeing does not make any sense.

It's a man, that much I know. He's enormous. He's built like a stone pillar, and he's got his hands up like he thinks he ran me over with his car. Which honestly, is not that far from the truth. I feel like I just got clubbed with a tree.

And then it’s another man, too, from the other direction. They look almost alike. Brothers, maybe. They both offer apologies but the sounds get crossed, cancelling each other out.

The first man stares at me hard as the room sort of swims back and forth in front of my eyes. Carefully, I swallow the rest of the cherry and just wait to catch my breath for a second, but the way he's looking at me makes my heart beat really hard. We seem to stare at each other for quite a long time before the other guy nudges him and they both drop into the booth, across the table from me.

My mouth opens as if to say something, but then nothing comes out. I bite my lips closed again. I look at the one on the left, who seems intent not to look back. He’s staring at the backs of his hands, made purple from the lights.

I've never quite seen anything like him. Is he handsome? I can't tell. It's like I can't look right at him, like meeting his eyes is physically difficult. I feel my heartbeat in my throat all of a sudden and swallow twice, trying to get it back where it belongs.

The other one is smiling at me like we already know each other, like we’re friends. He’s not hard to look at, not one bit.

The bartender slides over and places another Manhattan in front of me. The second stranger scowls at it, tipping his head to one side like a great dane. He turns his head diagonally up to the bartender.

“Not that,” he says in a low, clipped voice that seems to shoot through me like a series of arrows. “Something else. Wine. No…Champagne. Yes?”

I nod, mute and stunned.

The bartender shoots me a petulant scowl and walks away. The second stranger pooches his lips out in a contemplative expression. My eyes keep going back to the first stranger. There’s something uncanny about him. I feel naughty, just staring like this. He raises his eyes and looks back at me.

He barely blinks. His hair is close to his head, cut very short. I can still see that it's wavy, sort of coarse. It forms a kind of thick helmet over his head. One tiny piece at the top of his forehead curls back the other way, but the rest of it is so orderly it almost looks fake.

His face is broad and strong. Charcoal black eyes appraise me calmly from beneath heavy brows. His mouth is a curved, sculptural shape that forms a sort of scowling crescent over his cleft chin. I think he might be ugly. A web of scars stretches from the corner of his mouth, up and over one eye. Now that I'm looking at it, it seems as the one eyebrow was half lost in the scar. Maybe a burn or something. But it's so old that it's not discolored, maybe just slightly more silver.

He's either the most handsome or the most repulsive man I've ever seen. I can't decide which.

He folds his hands in front of him on the tabletop, basketing his fingers. His thumbs drum against each other as he waits patiently for me to stop staring at him, which I can't seem to do. Cutting his eyes toward the second stranger, he clears his throat softly.

Oh my God. I have to stop.

“I apologize for being so clumsy,” the second stranger says slowly. I tear my eyes away from his companion and focus on his face. At first I don't remember what he's talking about and then I recall that he actually did bump into me. That was the first thing. It feels like a month ago.

They must be brothers, but this one is beautiful. Same dark grey eyes, same coarse hair. This one is smiling, though, and the other one doesn’t look like he knows how.

The bartender comes back with three glasses of champagne and places them on the table. I don't even glance up to him to see what kind of scowl he's giving me.

The second stranger picks up the glass by the stem and tips it toward me. I pick mine up too and then pause, waiting for the first stranger to join us. He pauses for a moment, staring at me as though surprised, then raises his glass too.

Out of habit I clink my glass against each of theirs and take a sip. It's an absolute relief to have that semi sweet liquid on my tongue, the bubbles bursting against my teeth. That is definitely what I should have ordered in the first place.

“There now, isn’t that a better?” he says. I can't tell if he's reading my mind or what. Maybe I'm just that obvious. I nod politely.

“Are you waiting for someone?” he asks. I realize I haven't actually said anything yet, which is totally unlike me.

“I'm just… I'm not from here,” I say in a rush, making up the words milliseconds before they come off my tongue. “I just thought I would get a drink.”

“Do you usually drink bourbon?” he says, quirking a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me. Gianna would be totally impressed with that eyebrow.

“Oh my God, was that bourbon? Really?”

The first stranger finally makes a noise that sounds like a coughing laugh. He smiles out of one side of his mouth and squints me. There's a big, dark gap between two of his teeth where I think there’s supposed to be a whole other tooth.

The second stranger chuckles in a friendly way. “But the champagne is better?”

I nod and look back at the first man, then away. Then back. At first it's a relief to stop staring, and then I am desperate to stare at him again. He hardly seems real. He's too thick, too big. His skin is so strange. Those charcoal grey eyes are like the shiny eyes of a mannequin or a doll. He looks like he was inked in, like a superhero.

“You seem like a champagne sort of woman.”

And here is his companion, looking like he exists just to be in contrast. Just to frame up how truly strange the first stranger is.

I practice keeping my eyes down. To my surprise, I’ve already drunk half of this glass of champagne. Okay. This seems about right. One and a half drinks. Two at the most.

“Where are you from?”

“Does your friend talk?” I interrupt.

He looks at the first man. “Roman? No. Not much. When he does, it’s pretty good though.”

“Okay,” I say, pausing.

“So, where are you from?”

I wince, remembering that I just said it wasn't from here. Then where am I from?

“New York… Queens,” I stumble. Just in case he is also from Queens, I picked a place that I've actually been to a few times and could probably fake my way through a discussion about if I have to.

“Oh,” he says, nodding. “New York. That's an interesting city.”

Oh good. They’re not from New York. “And you?” I ask politely.

“Atlanta,” he explains.

Excellent. They’re not from Chicago either. They’re not family, that much is obvious. Probably just passing through. From the look of them, this one is an eyebrow model. And the other one is a lumberjack. Maybe a circus strongman. Perhaps a professional pylon or something.

His fingertips tap against each other, one at a time. It's nice that he’s showing me his hands. In my family, the men either hide their hands because they’re about to do something bad with them, or they wave them in the air when they’re talking. That's another Italian thing, the hand-waving. It's not a racist cliché if it's true, right?

The piano man is joined by a violinist, and they begin an energetic duet of another song that I think I know. This time I think it's actually some kind of country tune, and the two blonde ladies at the end of the bar start clapping and singing words I don't understand.

“What's your name?”

I'm not sure if I actually heard him say those words, or if he spoke them directly into the middle of my brain. It's getting kind of loud in here, and yet I know he was speaking to me.

“Marie,” I answer honestly. I should probably have given him a fake name, but I forgot. That's probably good, now that I'm thinking about it. What if he called me by a fake name and I forgot to answer? It's probably better to stick to as much of the truth is I can.

The first man inhales deeply through his nose, flaring his nostrils. It's like I can't stop looking at him. Still on the fence. Beautiful? Tragic? I don’t know.

“Roman?” I say tentatively. His eyes flicker up to mine and he nods once. I look at the other one. “And you?”

The second stranger smiles broadly. He has all his teeth, and they’ve been polished to a healthy gleam. “Alek,” he answers in a low voice that gives me shivers.

“Roman and Alek,” I repeat to myself, turning the names over on my tongue. “You’re brothers?”

Alek barks a charming laugh. “Very much so. Roman got the good looks, I got the brains.”

I laugh in spite of myself. They’re terribly cheesy lines, and yet something about his voice is very magnetic. I want to hear more of it.

The ladies at the bar start singing loudly with the violin’s melody. When I glance toward them, I see all the way to the front of the foyer. The revolving doors swing and a group of gangly women sort of tumble in. A bachelorette party, it looks like.

Right after them, two tall, dark-haired men come in. They pause for a moment just inside the lobby and look around, their eyes sweeping over the room in a practiced gesture that I've seen a million times.

They’re family. Oh my God. They already found me.

I turned back toward the stranger and take a short, hiccuping breath. “And are you staying here?”

Too fast, I realize. But oh geez, I'm about to get dragged out of here by my elbow with my mission aborted.

Roman squints toward the lobby, apparently reading my mind again. Then without changing his expression, his eyes slide back to me and I think he nudges his brother.

“We are,” Alek answers simply. “Are the rooms nice?”

My fingers pluck at the edge of the paper napkin again. I'm going to start tearing that thing in the shreds of something doesn't happen soon.

Or maybe I should just go. I mean, if Daddy sent them all the way here to find me, maybe I should just go with them. This is sort of a crazy scheme, right? I should probably just go.

“I, uhm, I don't know if the rooms are nice. I'm not staying here… Exactly. I've never seen the rooms.”

His eyes twitch back toward the lobby just for a millisecond, so fast I don't even see it. But I'm almost certain that he looked.

“What did you say?” he leans forward.

I shake my head, indicating that the music is too loud for me to explain myself again. I don't want to be raising my voice and drawing the attention of those guys in the lobby.

Alek purses his lips again and does that head cocking thing. “It's too loud in here,” he shrugs. “Will you come with us?”

My stomach jumps, instantly knotting itself into a tangle. Like go with them? Both of them? Just like that?

I can feel Daddy’s guys behind me. I know they’re there. I absolutely know it. I stick my hand into the bottom of my purse, but Alek already has a couple hundred dollar bills tucked under the base of his champagne glass.

Roman slides out of the booth after Alek and they both stand behind me, conveniently enough. When I rise up out of my seat, I don’t think anybody can see me. They’re so big, they totally shield me from anything in the direction of the lobby.