Page 16 of Mafia’s Dirty Secret

“I was! I thought they’d suck all my blood out and I’d die before I even made it back to the house.” She laughed with him for a moment, until she remembered how her mother had slapped her and asked her if she’d been out there with boys.

The smile disappeared and she felt how her face fell. She took a deep breath and decided to change the subject instead of dwelling on the past.

“Is that an offer to swim?” she asked and looked at the beautiful blue tile that tinged the water delicately.

“If you’d like.” He glanced down at his watch and smiled. “We have an hour and 15 minutes before you have to go.”

“It would be nice.” She sat up and looked at him, uncertain. She’d never been in a pool that nice, or in a pool with a man at all.

“Then swim you shall, Marie.” He stood up, took her hand, and pulled her up to follow him to the small cabin at the end of the pool. Inside, there were three rooms: a private bathroom, a changing room, and the room where all the equipment and supplies for the pool’s maintenance were kept.

“There are new swimsuits there, just basic things, but they’re brand new.” He pointed at a closet and spoke again. “There are towels in there as well. Take whatever you like.”

“Thanks.” She looked away, uncertain of how to ask him to leave so she could change.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said before she could ask and left her in the room.

She breathed a sigh of relief and opened the cabinet doors. She found a simple black bathing suit in her size and took out a towel. She removed her clothes quickly, and carefully hid her undergarments in her dress. She put those down on a chair and slid into the bathing suit.

It fit her fine, without revealing too much so she put the towel around her waist and left the cabin. Matteo had on a pair of low-slung swimming trunks that went down to his mid-thigh. He was speaking to another tall man, but this one had black hair and scowled in her direction as she came out. The man’s face frowned even more as she came to a stop and stared at them.

She had time to take in the beauty of Matteo’s back before he turned to see what had made the other man frown so much. Marie was a little scared of that other man, but he left when Matteo made a quick gesture at the man to leave them. She smiled and focused on the man that really counted.

Matteo. She saw his hard chest with pronounced muscles and a tattoo of a crown on the right side. His chest narrowed down to his waist, with abs carved out of stone. He was a muscular man, from his calves and thighs to his biceps, but not in a frightening way. It was more like he’d sculpted each section of his body to perfection and had stopped there.

She went up to him and was glad the swimsuit was cut high. It made her legs look long and lithe. The top of the suit pressed her breasts together and gave her cleavage a boost. All in all, it was an appealing look, and she hoped he liked what he saw.

“Ready? The water is warm, but not too warm.” His deep voice soothed away the last of her frazzled nerves as they went into the water together.

She’d learned to swim on her own, so she wasn’t an expert at it, but she could remain above the water at least. Somebody gave her mom an above-ground pool one summer and Marie put it together, kept it clean, and spent most of the summer in the water. She’d loved it and could have never dreamed that she’d one day swim in something that looked like it belonged in an Italian villa, tucked away in some village somewhere that normal people could never afford to see.

There were marble statues around the pool and grapevines grew to one side, on an arbor that spanned the same length as the pool. The vines were burdened down with grapes and Marie wondered if the fruits would actually be harvested or left there to rot.

The water swirled around her feet as they walked down the steps into the pool. Despite Matteo’s reassurance, she was surprised to find it was warm, but not too warm. Just enough to make it comfortable. She waded further into the water, aware of Matteo the entire time. He dove into the water like a seal kept too long on land. He swam along the bottom for a long time, too long as far as Marie was concerned but came up for air with a splash.

“Are you alright?” he asked when he saw her surprised look.

“Yes, I just didn’t know people could hold their breath that long.” She’d made it to chest height and started to tread water.

“I was on the swim team in high school. I was also on the swim team for the university I went to in California. I’ve never quite got over my love of swimming.” He smiled and rolled his eyes at himself. She could only laugh because she’d not taken part in any sports while she was in school and hadn’t gone to a university.

Instead of answering, she pushed herself under the water and then came right back up. She came back up to find that Matteo had swum very close to her. She looked into his eyes as she swiped water from her face and saw… delight?

“What do you want from life, Marie? Obviously, you’d want your mother to be well, but if you could have more than that, what would you ask for?”

“Help. That’s about all. I’ve taken care of my mother for so long now help would be all I wanted,” she answered without thinking, she didn’t need to. She’d been drowning for years now, under the burden of taking care of her mother with very little training, and very little help. “Sometimes, I wonder if she’ll die because I did something wrong or forgot to give her one of her medications. At other times, I wonder what will happen if the power goes off for more than a week. She has to have oxygen and we have tanks that she can use just in case the power goes off, but it’s only a week’s supply. There are so many things to worry about, and it would be nice, even if it was just for one week, to not worry about it all on my own.”

That might have revealed far more than she had planned to, she worried as she looked up into his face. He wore a solemn expression, one that made his lively eyes sad. Regret tugged at her heart for making him sad, and she turned away, to swim out further into the deeper water.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, well, ruin the moment,” she murmured when she was far enough away from him. She’d had to escape the sadness in those eyes, it felt too much like pity.

“You didn’t. You just made me realize that not everyone wants a mansion in the hills and a million dollars to go with it.” He went back to the steps and sat down. “You are so different from most of the people I know, Marie.”

“That’s because I’m not rich.” Again, she’d spoken automatically, and felt her cheeks turn red. “Sorry, that sounded mean.”

“No, I suspect you’re right actually. I know poor people in New York, people from the projects, from the country too, the more rural areas where you can still find the working poor. But none of them are like you. They’d still want money and a mansion if I asked them that question.”

“Mansions require staff and energy to keep them warm and cool. Then there’s the furniture that goes inside of them, and everything else. The million dollars wouldn’t last long. But then, there are trade-offs. There are the taxes we pay. Take my house for example. It’s smaller than yours, much smaller, but I bet I pay more taxes on it than you do on this one.”