I sighed and rubbed my face. I came out here to get away from him, not to sit around daydreaming about getting fucked by him.
The pool, the lounge chair, the grounds, it was like an entirely different world. For the last two years, I lived on concrete, in broken houses with missing windows and partial walls, where the elements were a constant problem, and keeping warm in the winter was a constant worry. I lived near trash fires with men that hadn’t seen a warm meal in months, if not years, where screams at night were common, where bodies appeared then went away again. I knew what it felt like to be so hungry my head felt disconnected from my body and so scared that I couldn’t move a single muscle.
It was strange, how places like this could exist, with so much space and comfort, while a half hour away in the city, people struggled to find enough blankets to keep from freezing to death in January. This house could’ve kept a hundred people warm or more during those months and saved the lives of half the homeless population in the entire city, and yet none of it mattered, this place was another world.
The back door opened suddenly and I opened my eyes. The mug of tea was on the ground, the tea itself spilled in a long pool. I coughed once and realized I was drooling. I wiped it away with my sleeve quickly as Don Valentino walked down the grass shading his eyes toward me. I looked up at the sky and realized I must’ve fallen asleep, possibly for hours.
He stood and looked at me for a full five seconds before he sat down on the lounger next to me. I blinked rapidly, trying to get myself together. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but I’d been on edge and exhausted ever since I was nearly killed by Ronan.
“Bea told me you were out here,” he said, not looking at me. “You know, I have no clue who put that giraffe thing in the pool.”
“Oh,” I said, and then, “I can head back into the city if I’m bothering you, Don Valentino.”
“No, no, stay,” he said. “And call me Dean, please.” He closed his eyes and sighed slowly. “I get that Don Valentino shit all day long. I almost forget what my own name is. Of course, my wife Mags reminds me.”
“You’re married?” I asked.
He laughed softly. “I’m married,” he said. “Started out as a political thing, but you know how life goes.” He glanced at me, squinting a little. “How’s Cam doing?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen him yet today.”
“I hear you had some problems.”
I shrugged a little. “Nothing he can’t handle,” I said, not wanting to go into that whole thing, not without Cam here to lead things. I didn’t know what he wanted me to say and what I should avoid, so I chose to skip the topic entirely.
“That’s true,” Dean said and gazed out at the water again. “He’s one of my more promising soldiers. Hell, I should make him a Capo already, for all he’s done.”
“I didn’t want him to join the family,” I said, the words coming out before I could stop them. I didn’t know what the hell I was thinking, blurting that out, but Dean only laughed.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I thought he’d get killed.”
He touched his cheek. “It’s entirely possible,” he said. “It happens. Not as often as you might think, but it happens.”
“I wanted him to stay with me,” I said, looking down at my hands. “We knew each other growing up.”
“I understand there’s a complicated story there.”
“Not exactly,” I said, not looking at him. “I had shitty parents. He had shitty parents. We hated them. End of story.”
He laughed again and I smiled at him. Outside of his office, away from the trappings of the Don, he seemed like a regular guy. He was big and handsome, and his suit probably cost more money than I’d seen in the last two years, but I liked his laugh and his smile seemed genuine. And I liked that he asked me to call him Dean.
“You’d be surprised how many people in the mafia have that same story,” he said. “You don’t turn to this life if you had a normal upbringing.”
“What about you?” I asked. “You probably had it pretty good out here.”
“You’d think,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. I didn’t know what he wanted from me, but as I relaxed back into the chair, I got the sense that he only wanted to come outside and get a break from whatever was happening in the house. He had some kind of lunch meeting, and maybe more meetings after that, and I could imagine it was exhausting and stressful running a powerful crime family.