Meeting The Don - II
“After I spent an hour in my room, I was thrown in one of his holding cells for a week. I was given bread and water until I divulged the name of the man I allowed to defile me.” She grimaced with the memory. “Unfortunately, I made sure I kept no way to give them details as I met with a man online. It was a hook-up. I did everything online to ensure my father, and his cronies couldn’t interfere with my plans. I’m pretty good with a computer, if I say so myself, and I set everything up to disappear the minute I finished what I set out to do. Even Dad’s top computer expert couldn’t trace my actions. Dad wanted to kill the guy I slept with in front of me as punishment, but the joke was on him. I didn’t even know the guy’s name.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get a bullet in the back of the head for your actions,” the man’s voice was closer now as he exited the bathroom.
Curiosity made her want to turn around and look at him, but self-preservation made her stick where she was, looking down at the city and the people small as ants milling about.
“It was worth it.” She said quietly. “If he’d put the bullet in my head at least I was going out on my own terms and not forced into a marriage with a man rumored to be an abusive barbarian who killed his last lover.”
“Ouch,” he said with a hint of humor layering his tone.
She’d forgotten for a moment to whom she’d been speaking and her eyes widened, “I’m sorry, Don Lozano. I –”
“It’s fine. You’re not wrong. I did kill the lover I was with prior to cancelling our engagement. She cheated on me with a stripper in a club and I ended up on a lot of penicillin. I made certain she didn’t spread her disease or her legs to anyone else ever again.”
She flinched but the words made her think of Bruno. He’d given her a similar reason for why he’d purchased her virginity.
“When your father cast you out of the family, he simply threw you out of the house or?”
“Cut me completely off. No trust fund. No credit cards. No bank account. I am not allowed to contact my family for anything. I’d graduated college the week before, and my job was already lined up. I stashed money away before which allowed me to get a place to live.”
“You hid money. How did you? Did you steal from your father? Use your hacking skills to embezzle?”
The accusation made her grimace, “no, I did not. I sold something valuable which was mine and mine alone and was able to tuck the money away. I expected my father would throw me out once he knew, so I made sure I stashed the money away beforehand. My father and I never saw eye-to-eye on the matter of a woman’s bodily autonomy, Don Lozano,” she was trying to keep her head on her neck and addressed him formally. “Even attending college for my computer program was against his wishes but I did it anyway and he was pissed. He told me if I attended, I was to pay for it myself and I did so with loans. He wanted me to do nothing but lay on my back for the future Don of the Lozano family and push out powerful little boys. He said my education was a waste of resources.”
She looked over her shoulder and noticed he was rifling through his suitcase on the sofa. His shoulders were broad and his waist narrow. His legs were incredibly long, where her torso started his legs were still going. The only other man she’d ever met as tall as the one in front of her right now was the one who bought her innocence. Her head turned away again as her stomach flipped.
“I saw your employment file when we took over the company three years ago. I expected you’d resign, or your father would force you to quit but it seems he simply doesn’t give a fuck about you at all. I didn’t realize the impact my decision of terminating the engagement would hold. Though it seems you played a role as well. I could have made it clearer to your father my decision was nothing to do with you in the least, but hindsight is twenty-twenty I guess and truthfully, I never gave you a second thought after I called things off.”
The word “asshole” was on the tip of her tongue, but she turned away again and looked down at the city. “Well, I’ve resigned now.”
“I’d rather you didn’t. It’s clear you don’t hide an agenda for your father and according to Tank and Kylen, you’re worth your weight in gold. They tell me not only do they use you to keep the in-house operations running day-to-day, but you’ve also assisted on some of the more,” he searched for the word, “delicate operations of our business.”
“You mean they use my hacking skills. Yeah, they do. I’m not as good as Tank but he and I work well together on special projects.”
“You got something going on with Tank?”
“No!” she grimaced with disgust. “Not even remotely.”
“Not your type?”
She shuddered, “I once saw him put an entire half a sandwich in his mouth, chew it and swallow it down like a seagull.”
“You judge your potential love interests on their eating habits?”
“I judge my potential love interests as if they might be the one I’m stuck with until death do us part. I carry baggage and I don’t entertain relationships lightly. If I’m going to put myself out there it’s going to be with someone who hasn’t made me gag right off the hop.”
He chuckled this time and it drew her curiosity as she shot him a sideways glance, he was fidgeting now with his tie, but his back was still to her. Fuck he was tall. Memories long forced to the dark recesses of her mind surfaced.
All of her sweet memories of the initial gentle lovemaking which were followed by frantic fucking for hours were forever tainted by murder and mayhem. Now every time she thought of the man who spoiled her for any other lover, it was with the image of him standing over a dead man unscrewing a silencer from a revolver. She shook her head forcing the memory away.
“Look, Kylen wants you to stay. Genevra has been warned to keep her mouth shut where you’re concerned. You should stay.”
He marched back to the bathroom to she presumed fix his tie in the mirror. She caught his face in the glass of the window in front of her and felt her knees buckle. Bruno.