Page 19 of Married to the Mafia

“I have no doubts.” He’d never been able to imagine himself in love, anyway. Brandi was a smart, beautiful, and strong-willed woman who could potentially be a great benefit to their family. If she stayed.

Brandi jerked awake at an unexpected sound, her body immediately protesting the sudden movement. She choked on a cry from the pain but managed to swing her feet around to the floor. Mikey’s sofa was too comfortable for how little sleep she’d gotten the night before, and even if she was supposed to at least be available for email consultation, she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes open. It didn’t help that they were half-swollen shut, anyway.

“Are you all right, Ms. Richardson?”

The voice startled her so bad she let out a short-lived shriek as her head whipped toward the doorway, her heart like a jackhammer in her chest. It took her several seconds to recognize the female from the team who’d come to help her the day before. Brandi lifted a hand to her chest, sucking in steadying breaths. “Sorry,” she gasped, embarrassment flooding her. “You startled me.”

The woman’s expression softened and she inclined her head. “I apologize, ma’am.” Her brown eyes, a lighter shade than Brandi’s own, flicked over Brandi’s form briefly. “You didn’t answer when I knocked, and it sounded like you were in pain, so I let myself in.”

Brandi self-consciously tugged on a sleeve, realizing the knocking must have been what roused her. “I fell asleep. I didn’t hear you.” She cleared her throat. “Did you, um, need something?” She had told Mikey she didn’t need a guard, and he’d only mentioned a chef coming in later in the afternoon. She hadn’t expected anyone coming to check on her.

The woman inclined her head, turned, and disappeared out the door for a single second before reappearing with a reusable bag in hand. “Mr. De Salvo asked me to bring this to you.” She held it out patiently.

Brandi took the bag and obligingly dug inside. Another knot untangled from somewhere deep inside and a smile tugged at her lips. It was a new cellphone, as well as a new Bluetooth earpiece in addition to the standard accessories. She hadn’t signed anything yet. This felt more like a gift, a promise of freedom or reason to trust. She blamed her tiredness and poor physical state for the tears that briefly burned behind her eyes as she pulled the phone from the box.

Of course, it was already set up and several numbers were programmed in. Numbers for Mikey, his brothers Romeo and Dante, his cousin Cristiano, all three of their wives, and two numbers for his mother, Eleonora, in addition to a handful of others. She recognized Berto’s name, and the name of the Japanese man she’d met the day before, but there were a few others that were unfamiliar. She suspected it was not an oversight that her father’s number was absent, too.

“Forgive me for asking,” the woman who remained standing in the center of the room said almost hesitantly, “but are you all right, Ms. Richardson? Is there anything I can do for you?”

Brandi clutched the phone a little tighter and looked up. “I know I’m a mess right now,” she said, because there was no sense in trying to deny the obvious, “but I’ll be okay. Mikey’s taking care of me.” She blinked as her own words echoed in her ears. It just … rolled off my tongue. Was she even supposed to use his name? She had agreed to marry him, he couldn’t possibly expect her to keep addressing him as Mr. De Salvo.

The other woman stared at her for a split-second before composing herself. “Should I stick around until Mr. De Salvo comes home?”

Brandi smiled. “That won’t be necessary. I’m not going out unless this place catches fire.” She paused. “Thank you for offering….”

“Alessa,” the woman said. “Alessa Adimari.” She bent at the shoulders. “I’m sure I’ll see you later, then. Take care, ma’am.” And with that, Alessa let herself out.

Brandi released a breath as the door clicked shut almost silently. She looked down at her new phone, stroked her thumb over the smooth surface, and opened the messaging app. The least she could do was express her gratitude. The phone chimed with a response not even a minute later, reminding her also that she would need to take a little time to personalize more than the aesthetics.

Mikey: You’re welcome. How are you feeling? We have a doctor on-call I can bring by the house if you need one.

Of course they did. She quickly assured him that would be unnecessary, promised that what she really needed was rest and nutrients, and reached for her laptop. Now that she was awake, she should see about doing the job she was still being paid to do. A detail which may or may not become controversial in the coming days.

She went through the three waiting emails before her mind wandered again.

When Mikey came back, he’d be bringing with him a contract for her to sign stating that she agreed to marry him for no less than one year. It was maybe the strangest contractual arrangement she had ever imagined for herself, but if she were being honest, it wasn’t the most unpleasant. Certainly her father had threatened her with worse.

The piece of paper didn’t automatically save her from anything, though. She would have to tell her father eventually. Definitely better to hold off on that until it’s done. Her father was liable to lock her up and ship her off to some dirty underground auction if she told him before the marriage was official. At least if it was done first, he’d hesitate. Her father was a bastard, and obsessive about money, but he wasn’t a complete fool. Only complete fools fucked with the De Salvos.

The bigger problem, as she saw it, was her stalker. That man was dangerous. He had no qualms with doing terrible things for no reason. She didn’t know if he even had an employer, or if that was just a convenient cover story.

Brandi frowned and adjusted on the loveseat, pulling her laptop carefully over her lap so that it balanced without resting on the wound from where she’d been dragged across the shards of her last phone. Mikey wanted information on the man who’d hurt her, and frankly so did she. There was no reason she had to wait until her new fiancé came home to get started.

She had no surveillance footage of him, of course. If he showed himself on camera, he did it somewhere she didn’t know to look. Unfortunately for him, he’d fucked with a woman with a brain.

Brandi clicked around until she had opened her own image generating software. It was great for sketching outlines of things that needed printing, not designed to paint the next Mona Lisa. Still, she could tweak the base program a little until it was capable of rendering facial sketches as easily as structural. She played with that first, testing it every few changes with the same simple prompts until she was satisfied with the output.

Then she went to work putting in as much technical detail as she could remember. She treated it like she imagined she would if she were explaining to a police sketch artist, except she was her own artist. She moved the ears into position, then the nose and eyes, and input prompts to add the characteristics. The result was imperfect, to be sure, but close enough to be accurate by the time she was done that it sent a chill up her spine.

Once she had the face outlined, with the ripped earlobe and permanently dislocated nose properly figured in, she moved on to proportioning the shoulders. It was harder to get that right thanks to his unnatural muscle mass. She might have failed if she didn’t have herself for a point of reference.

Her headache had returned and Mikey was walking through the door by the time she was completely done, but she had a shoulders-up outline style render of her stalker ready to go. She also had a respectable estimate of his height and overall size, calculated in large part by the system. It was a strange combination of self-assuring to have accomplished this much on her own and disconcerting to have to see even this sort of image of him again so soon.

“Whatever you’re doing, you clearly need to stop,” Mikey said.

Brandi lifted her computer and sat upright, ignoring her renewed surge of emotions to pat the spot beside her. “Come look.”

Mikey dropped a folder on the desk and strode over, lowering to the loveseat beside her. Only then did Brandi realize how small the sofa was, and it was far too late to change her mind. “What is it?” he asked, sounding entirely unaware or unbothered by the way his shoulder brushed against hers.

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