Page 22 of Married to the Mafia

“Only in certain rooms. I wasn’t expecting your call.”

Brandi made a mental note to figure out the certain rooms and put the issue aside. “I decided to check my email, and the son of a bitch emailed me. I’m not set up to open whatever the hell he sent, especially with an attachment.”

“You’re sure it’s him? He didn’t show at your condo last night.”

She leaned back in the office chair. “What? He didn’t?” She gave herself a shake. “Do I want to know how you’re sure?”

“I had a couple people sit on it, just in case. Now you.”

Okay, that’s not unreasonable, actually. It would certainly have made fast work of one problem if he’d shown up. She really wasn’t prepared for that disappointment. Brandi pulled in and slowly released a breath, knowing what she’d have to say. “He … calls me ‘sweet Brandi.’ The email subject is ‘miss you, sweet B.’”

Mikey was silent for several seconds. She had no way of seeing him, let alone what he might have been doing, but the silence felt off. Heavier than she might have expected. Then, finally, he said, “Let me finish up what I’m doing and I’ll come home. I’ve got the tech to tackle that in my office.”

“You’re at work.”

“Good thing I own the company, then. Give me half an hour.”

She opened her mouth to ask about the meeting, which she knew was at two, but he’d already hung up. All she could do was glare at the taunting email in her inbox, feeling stupidly intimidated by it until she finally closed out altogether.

Forty minutes passed before Mikey strode in, and Brandi had moved to a common area to avoid letting herself become some kind of hermit even within the boundaries of her new residence. If she never got used to other spaces, she would never use them. Not that perching on the edge of a seat and absently scrolling through ringtone options for fifteen minutes was much of a use of space.

She looked up as he entered the room, feeling somewhere between self-conscious and oddly grateful at the way his gaze swept over her. It wasn’t a lingering, lustful look or a broody, angry glare. For that moment in time he genuinely seemed to be trying to ascertain the changes to her physical state, and it wasn’t hard to convince herself it was because he wanted to see her get better. If there was more of a reason beyond the inconvenience or ugliness of her injuries, Brandi couldn’t gauge it. Nor could she blame him if there wasn’t.

“I heard the cut on your leg didn’t look too bad,” he said.

She tried to give him a pointed look, but wasn’t entirely sure if her eyes and eyebrows moved in such precise ways yet. “I wondered if that would get back to you. I guess there’s no ‘patient privilege’ here.”

“There is not.” He held out his hand. “Let’s go take a look at that email. Did you eat lunch yet?”

“Sort of lost my appetite.”

He frowned at her.

“I had a late breakfast, anyway, and it was like twice what I’m used to. I’m fine.” All of that was true, and she suspected the truth of it was why he dropped the subject. She might even have been flattered if their relationship was real. She’d never known a man who cared so damn much about her actually eating.

He led the way to his office, which was on the other side of the wall from the one he’d given her and twice as large. It was also the only room he kept locked up that she’d discovered, and considering what she imagined was hidden within the physical and digital walls of the space, she couldn’t be upset about that. Even less so when she saw inside, and saw the setup that at least rivaled if not outclassed the one he had at his office at work.

A veritable wall of monitors that surely shielded him entirely from view when he sat at his desk, making the beautiful window wall horrendously pointless. A cram-packed built-in bookcase, a curved leather sofa, a pair of chairs that were tufted to match the sofa but positioned between the sofa and desk. And still so much space, it wouldn’t have been hard to slip a bed in. She wondered if perhaps he did sometimes sleep here, or if perhaps he usually slept there, and she would eventually come to think of this room as his home and the manor as his firewall.

She laughed at herself for the thought, even though it also felt a little too plausible.

Mikey grabbed hold of one of the nice leather chairs and dragged it around to rest behind the desk, indicating for her to take a seat as he himself settled into the overpriced desk chair. “Remote access okay?”

“You break it, you buy it.” She mostly meant it as a joke. All her important things were already quadruple protected, anyway.

Mikey chuckled and went to work. In just a couple of minutes, Brandi was watching—her eyes darting repeatedly between her laptop screen and the monitor he was mainly using—as he clicked open her email. She knew enough to understand the technicalities of how it worked, but sometimes seeing it done to her own stuff was surreal.

He hovered the curser over the spam-like email she’d previously described to him. “This one?”

Her skin crawled and she averted her gaze. “I really thought I was stronger than this, but just looking at that sitting in my email feels violating.”

“Do you need to leave the room?”

She was tempted. More than tempted. To keep herself from taking the coward’s way out, Brandi leaned closer to him, until she had to fight to keep from resting her still swollen and bruised face on his shoulder. “Just let me hide a little.”

Mikey’s hand left the mouse and he reached down, resting his palm fully over her half-bare knee. The squeeze he offered was brief and still light, but in its own way tender and warm. “Do you want a safe word?”

The question jerked her upright and heat rushed to her face. All of a sudden, she was reminded of how tempted she’d been to pleasure herself to thoughts of this specific man just two nights prior—and not for the first time. “I beg your pardon?” She tried to sound indignant, but the words escaped her in something much more like a breathy whisper that was far, far too telling.

---