And then I surprised myself. I laughed.
He wasn’t wrong, was he? There are things I know and things I don’t know, and one of the things I don’t know is clothes. I can see my outfits aren’t up to scratch, I just don’t know how to fix it. They’re a damn sight better than anything Fuscone’s brainless puppets wear, but they’re still holding me back.
Most of the Family still sees me as an outsider. If I want to climb the ladder I need to make myself check every box I can. I need the right watch and the right shoes and the right clothes. I need to speak Italian a damn sight better than I do, and I need to be able to pick a bottle of wine because I know it’ll fit the meal, not just because I like the name of it.
At the wedding, Finch actuallysent backthe bottle of table wine and asked for something different, some French name I didn’t catch, and specified the 2008—notthe 2009. I had to turn my snort of laughter into a cough at the look on the sommelier’s face.
All these little things a kid like Howard Fincher Donovan the Third takes for granted, because he’s part of that world. And right now that complex, contradictory rich kid is humping away on top of me like he’s a Jersey hooker and I’m his last customer for the night.
“Fuck, Luca,” he whispers. “I want you so bad. Take me to bed.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I murmur back to him.
Finch lets out a frustrated moan and bends down to talk right in my ear. “You still worried about the power differential? That’s what makes it sohot.” He’s close to creaming in his booty shorts; I can hear his breath hitch.
“This isn’t a game,” I tell him. “This isn’t some fantasy we’re living out where we get away with any shit we like because we’re the main characters. Sam Fuscone hates my guts, and he wants me dead, and he wants youdouble-dead, angel, because you got away from him once already.”
“Then shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves while we can?” he says. He’s still grinding, like giving me a lap dance is his one mission in life right now.
I tighten my fingers on his hips, move him back off me so he can’t get any friction. “You think you’re free to enjoy life, baby bird? You haven’t thought about what any of this actually means. You’ve been high since the day we pulled you out of that house with a bag over your head. Someday soon you’re gonna wish I’d killed you that day, when it dawns on you what all this means.” I lift him off me and place him down on the deck so I can get up. “You’re right. The sun’s too hot for me. I’m gonna go take a cold shower. Maybe you should do the same.”
His mouth drops open and, for once, no words come out of it. He’s leaning back on his elbows, the leaking pink tip of his cock peeking out over the waistband of those ludicrous shorts, breathing hard. His dark glasses are askew under his captain’s hat, and I see those green-gold eyes are narrowing, whether against me or against the sun, I can’t tell.
“You fucking idiot,” he says then.
I figure I must have a touch of the sun, because I don’t care when people call me names, not usually, since they’ve done it all my life. But those three words hit me like you wouldn’t believe, and I see red, instantly. “What did you say to me?”
He gathers himself up off the deck and stands in front of me, shaking. Is it DTs? Is he scared? I wonder. Then he pokes me in the middle of my chest with an iron finger, his mouth trembling as much as the rest of him. It’s not the drugs and it’s not fear.
He’s furious.
“You. Fucking. Idiot.”
I can’t touch him. If I touch him, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m a man of violence, I always have been, but it’s a cold violence, calculated, not this fireball rising up in me, and I’m the only one standing between him and death as it is. But it’s a strange, conflicted feeling: do I want to kill him, or kiss him?
I just stare at him.
“Don’t you know I’ve loved you since the day we met?” he says.
The thought of anyone on this boat overhearingthatis like an ice bucket. I take a step back. “I married you because I owed you a debt, and marrying you was the way to repay that debt. It was also a way to get control over your father and his money.” I say it loud and clear so any lurking spies can pick up exactly what I’m saying. “You’re only alive until the Boss says otherwise. Don’t get it twisted,Howie. This is a business deal, nothing more. I won’t ever love you.”
I pause to see how he’s taking it. He’s pushed the glasses back up his nose so I can’t see his eyes, but I stare at those black shields without blinking. His cock has retreated, at least. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t speak.
“Dinner is at eight tonight,” I tell him. “I’ll see you then.”
Chapter Thirteen
FINCH
TheMaddalenais a big fucking boat, but even so, it has finite space. It’s hard for me to find a place where I don’t think Luca will be able to find me. Not that the fucker will come looking for me, but I don’t want to chance him stumbling over me again.
God.
He hit me right in myfeelings.
I didn’t even know I had any left. I’ve chased enough highs to get rid of any of them, or so I thought. But no. A few nasty words and I’m a little kid again when my sisters told me they didn’t want to play with me that day. Only it felt worse than that, so much fucking worse. Like the day Mom died.
I push that fucking thought right out the porthole I’m looking through. I try to never think about shit that makes me sad, because it just brings on that black wave, and then I drown. I’m a party boy at heart, and hey, I can handle some guy turning me down.
