Chapter Seven
What am I doing here?
He was parked at the far end of the lot, his eyes trained on the door to the restaurant.
What is she doing in there?
From where he sat, he could clearly see Alex’s Mercedes parked out front, but the tinted windows ensured he couldn’t make out what his counterpart was doing inside the vehicle.
Probably jerking off to porn vids, Ariano thought, rolling his burning eyes.
He knew he had no right to be tailing Alex. There was a reason he had been granted a night off and he needed the sleep.
Moreover, he needed a break from the blonde who had consumed his every waking – and sleeping – moment for the past weeks.
The last thing he needed was to see Celina that night.
Or so he kept telling himself.
But the longer he sat around in his apartment in Little Havana, near the Miami River, the more he found his concern for Celina mounting.
The feeling was inexplicable and just fucking annoying.
Alex had been around much longer than he had. There was no reason to think that the fucker couldn’t manage one night of babysitting.
“I need fucking therapy,” he muttered to himself aloud. “I’m outta here.”
He started the Audi, looking up just as the passenger side door opened.
“You’re crazy, caro,” Celina declared, slipping inside the car. “Lucky for you, Alex has the IQ of a bag of bricks. You better drive.”
Ariano stared at her but no words escaped his lips.
“I suggest you go now before my date leaves and Alex realizes I haven’t come out with him. You don’t want to explain why you’ve been following him, do you?”
It was a sound enough argument for Ariano to put the car in drive and drive out of the parking lot, his tired mind buzzing with questions.
“You were on a date?” he asked, cursing himself for choosing that particular inquiry to lead with.
What the fuck do you care if she was on a date? He growled to himself, but he found he did care and he cast her a sidelong look.
To his annoyance, she was grinning.
“Does that make you jealous?” she asked coquettishly.
He scowled lightly, pursing his lips together.
“How did you know I was following Alex?” he demanded, steering the car toward I-1 and heading south toward Cutler.
“Because no matter how good you are at following, you’ll never be as good as I am at detecting,” she replied flatly. “This is my life. Why are you here tonight?”
Ariano didn’t reply, his eyes more grey than blue in the evening light, his mind clouded as he tried to think of an adequately evasive answer to her question.
If she rats me out to Giovanni, my promotion is as good as gone. God only knows what he’ll do to me if he thinks I’m some snitch, tailing his men.
But how could he explain to her that something just hadn’t felt right, that he had been worried about her and wanted to ensure she was safe?
Even if I told her that, she’s far too cynical to believe it, he reasoned.
“You don’t trust that greasy little rat either, do you?” she asked and Ariano’s eyebrows lowered in surprise.
Careful, he told himself. This could be a trap.
“He’s a good guy,” Ariano answered generically. “He’s – “
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped. “Sorry - I thought I could actually…talk to you like a normal person. Not my father’s lackey.”
He was taken aback by her tone, his teeth grinding together as he bit back a scathing retort.
“Hang on,” Celina said, looking at the scenery with alarm. “Where are you taking me?”
“Your place,” he answered flatly. “Where did you think we were going?”
“You can’t take me home, you ass. That’s the first place Alex will come looking for me.”
“Would you rather I drop you off at the Vizcaya Museum?” he asked sarcastically. “So he can tear through all of Miami-Dade while you read ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’?”
He could feel her eyes on him.
“It was ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, but brownie points for remembering it was Dumas,” she answered, an amused lilt in her voice. “And no, I’d prefer it if he didn’t find me at all tonight.”
Fatigue colored her voice, as she sighed just under her breath.
Her tone drew his eye and he realized she was just as tired of this as he was. I guess it would really suck to be followed every minute of every day, never having a moment alone, or a secret place to go to unwind. Suddenly he could understand how much her spot at the museum must mean to her.
Then he realized what she might have meant by her statement about Alex not being able to find her. He slowed the car slightly, pulling off the interstate at Chapman Field Drive before pulling off onto a side street and stopping to look at her with serious eyes.
“Why?” he demanded, dread filling his chest. “Did he do something to you?”
It was hard to be reasonable when his common sense was disappearing into a ball of fury.
If he laid a hand on her, I’ll fucking –
Celina shifted her eyes away and shook her head.
“No,” she replied. “But I’d just prefer not to have him on my watch.”
She’s lying. He did something that scared her but she’s too proud and stubborn to admit it. He was damn sure of it.
“I’ll find you a hotel,” Ariano gritted out, fury boiling through his system. “But you need to ensure you’re back in his sight in the morning for when I arrive. Your father – “
“No one will know anything,” she interrupted, glancing up at him with bright eyes. “Especially if I stay at your house tonight.”
“No fucking way, Celina. I don’t know what your game is, and why you’re so determined to make my life hell but it’s not worth losing my balls over, capish?”
“This isn’t a trap,” she sighed, shaking her platinum head, her mouth turning down into a grimace. “I just don’t want to be alone tonight and I have to go back and pick up my car from the restaurant before I go home. Your place is closer than any hotel around.”
“How do you know where I live?” he choked. “What the fuck, Celina?”
“Oh what? You can know where I live and have a key to my apartment but when the tables are turned, it’s a big deal? Dammit, this sucks!”
Fuck! She looks so innocent right now, so much like a lost little girl who needs my protection and yet I’m sure she would sell me out for a bag of chips.
“Fine,” he growled. “You can sleep on the couch.”
She snickered.
“Sure,” she replied in a tone which told him in no uncertain terms that she was claiming his bed.
Putting the car back in gear, he exhaled loudly.
If anyone finds out about this, I am a dead, dead, DEAD man, he thought. It’s not too late to refuse. You can take her home and sit on the house to make sure Alex doesn’t step out of line, he reasoned but he also knew if Alex tried something while inside Celina’s place, he wouldn’t be able to see it or help her at all.
Am I doing this because I’m jealous? He asked himself, the idea filling him with horror. It was not an emotion he knew well. After all, Ariano had never had to compete for anything concerning women in his life.
But Alex was only my competition for this promotion. I’ve got the job if I can keep Celina safe for the next few months. Doing this might be part of keeping her safe, right? She obviously didn’t trust him either.
Somehow, Ari knew that this would be a turning point if he let Celina stay at his place. And that scared him. The last thing he needed was to get involved with another boss’s daughter. Fuck!
“Why don’t you talk to your father about finding someone other than Alex to watch you when I’m off?” he muttered. “I mean, if the guy makes you uncomfortable – “
“My father doesn’t give a rat’s ass about my comfort,” Celina interjected, a sad look on her face. “I learned that a long time ago. I also learned that if he liked one of the meatheads he brought into the fold, there was nothing I could say to change his mind…no matter what they may have done to me.”
Ariano’s head whipped toward her, detecting a hint of hurt that he had never heard before.
“What have they done to you?” he asked quietly as Celina stared straight ahead.
She chuckled without humor.
“Doesn’t really matter now, does it? You can’t change the past. That’s what Papa always says. It’s kind of his way of telling me to suck it up and shut up.”
Resentment toward Giovanni bubbled in Ariano’s stomach as his imagination began to run wild with the abuses that this woman must have suffered.
At least Cambrini kept Lucia in a bubble so she could never be touched by the thugs he worked with. Giovanni threw his daughter to the wolves for her to fend for herself. Both of them were wrong, he supposed, but at least Lucia felt her father’s love.
“Where is your mother?” he asked.
It was obviously the wrong question to ask and she became rigid in the passenger seat.
“She died when I was twelve. I miss her. She always thought I was going to do so much more than my Dad did. She had high hopes and a naïve optimism – which was probably the cause of her death, in hindsight. Even though the coroner swore it was an aneurism. I think she finally got a full dose of reality, saw my father for what he really was and it was all too much for her to handle.”
Celina laughed harshly and he glanced at her inappropriate reaction.
“What?” he asked.
“I just realized that she’s been dead exactly half my life now. Sometimes it seems much fresher than that. Other times, I have a hard time remembering exactly what she sounded like.”
The sharpened edge of pain in her voice pierced through Ari as he realized how truly alone Celina must have felt throughout her life.
He thought of his own mother in New Jersey and suddenly had an overwhelming desire to call her. They weren’t overly close, but at that moment he missed her sharply.
But Celina had no one. No one but a bunch of men invading her privacy and breathing down her neck.
She had learned to deal with it in her own way, building a wall around herself and growing more isolated in the process.
It was so clear to him, now that he knew these things about her, but when was the last time anyone had bothered to talk to her like the intelligent, beautiful woman she was?
“Did I depress you?” she asked wryly. “I didn’t mean to.”
He shook his head as they slipped back into Little Havana, trying to formulate the right words to say in light of her confession.
“I’m just wondering how you managed to go at it alone for so long,” he replied. “Most people would have turned to something…else, to cope with their pain. As far as I can see, your only vice is torturing your detail.”
Celina stared at him, her pupils lighting up a moment before she burst into laughter.
“I never realized that torturing my detail was a crutch until right now,” she giggled. “But I suppose you’re right.”
Slowly she stopped laughing and sighed.
“It’s a fucked-up life we lead,” she said sincerely. “This business is not for everyone and sometimes I like to prove to my father that he chose wrong, because God knows he won’t listen to his brat daughter. He’s more of a ‘show me, don’t tell me’ kinda guy.”
“Especially to those who didn’t choose to be in it,” he replied, steering the Audi into his underground parking as he glanced toward her.
She nodded slowly, appreciatively, as if she was looking at him with new eyes. The connection they had just formed lit up the interior of the car somehow.
“But whatcha gonna do?” Celina asked lightly, breaking the moment. “There’s no escaping it.”
They fell into silence as Ariano parked and as they exited the car, he gently placed his hand on the small of her back, guiding Celina toward the elevators.
As if he had pushed a button, she melted against him, pressing herself against him as if he was the strength she needed at that moment.
I’ll keep her safe, Ariano told himself firmly. And I can even be her friend. But we can’t let it go past this, no matter what happens. She may be vulnerable, but she is also deadly.
But a taunting voice in the back of his head asked him if maybe she didn’t just need someone to connect with. Give her a supportive hand. The chemistry between them was undeniable and it was getting harder and harder to turn her down.
I could be that hand, he thought, adjusting himself through the pockets of his pants as they entered the lift.
Something told him that no matter what, lessons were going to be learned between the two of them.
The only question was going to be, who was the teacher and who was the student?