She’d also mentioned that she left her father and brother in the underworld. I didn’t want to remind her of that specific detail, but I was certain it would come out in her story if I pressed the right places in her memory.
Poppy drew her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them. “My last name isn’t Greenbriar. I took my uncle’s name about six months after I ran away from home.”
“Why?”
She shrugged, then wrapped her arms tighter around her bent legs. “Everyone assumed I was another Greenbriar in Carrington. It was easier to blend in.”
That made sense. “If you’re not a Greenbriar, then who are you?”
Maybe that was the key to why she wasn’t yet mine.
I dashed that thought away with a vicious slap.
My fingers pushed into the crown of her head. I rubbed and massaged, tipping her chin to the left and right as my touch pressed into the muscles of her neck.
“Caravello. My Christened name is Francesca Isabella Maria Caravello, but my mama called me Poppy. It stuck.”
The scorching rain drops seemed to turn to ice. Cold slithered through my veins.
“As in Massimo Caravello?” My throat was suddenly raw, words sticking to the sides as the air forced them out.
“He’s my brother,” Poppy whispered. “My late father was Don Tito.”
That vile sonofabitch who ruled east of us was a legend—just like his father. But Tito’s father, if I remembered my history, was one of the men who overthrew the Purple Gang in the beginnings of the Detroit Mob. It would take a horrifying bastard to undermine that crew back in the day.
No wonder….This explained a lot. Her reluctance to be in the underworld wasn’t just preference, it was biology. A survival instinct that threaded through her very being.
I began to rinse the suds from her hair. There were too fucking many.
“There,” I said after a good five minutes.
Poppy turned her head and placed a gentle kiss on my shoulder. “Thank you, Ivan.”
I traced my thumb along the high point of her cheek, pushing a ball of suds out of the way. “You’re welcome, flower.”
She smiled. We lingered in the moment. What must she see when she looked at me? When she thought about what I was capable of? Her imagination couldn’t be too far wrong. I might not have Don Tito’s fascination with unnecessary violence, but my soul was every bit as black as her family’s.
This woman was the one good thing that came from the hell that was the Detroit Underworld.
I understood.
Poppy sighed and rose. Shutting off the water, she pulled back the glass door to collect a towel. Instead of drying herself, her arms wrapped around my waist as she smothered me with it.
Gentle hands brushed the water away. She patted over my muscles, and I gave her time to study my body close up. She seemed to be reading my history in the lines of ink and the faded scars. If she asked for details, I would’ve told her. But she never did.
“That was…nice.” Her cheeks were dark again.
Nice? Nice!“I’ve got to do better if the only word you can come up with is nice,” I teased.
“Run along and give me some privacy. Please.” She shifted the towel, draping it over her middle.
I shuffled into my boxers then scooped my clothes off the floor. Once in the kitchen, I toweled off my hair with the green cotton towel hanging from the stove. The late don’s daughter was in my house. That conversation needed to be continued. Why was she in the middle of nowhere? Her father would have used her. He would have—
Red tinted the room.
What had that old, fat Italian bastard done to her?
She ran away.
