Page 28 of Married to the Mafia

Her hands briefly clutched at the excess skin around her belly and hips, a frown bending her lips. “I need to exercise more…” Most of the time she didn’t have an issue with her body, or care what other people said, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew she wasn’t conventionally attractive. And she knew that putting herself—a clinically overweight female—next to a wealthy, gorgeous man who had also been the last eligible bachelor of his family was going to earn her undeserved criticism. It was just something she was going to have to endure.

Brandi released her skin and shoved the thought aside as she angled her head to get a better look at the wound she’d unbandaged in order to take her shower that morning. It looked so much better than the last time she’d seen it. The skin was no longer an aggressive, puffy red and the slice mark was so thin it actually looked as though it had started to heal up. She knew from her shower that it was still a bit sore to the touch, but that was okay. She’d wear something long enough to shield it, and maybe get more help with another thorough bandage job.

Not that it mattered if it scarred, even. She was about to be married, and then who would ever see her body, anyway?

Her gaze dragged back up the mirror. Would my husband even want to— Brandi gave herself a hard shake before she could finish the thought. She was plenty capable of taking care of her own needs for the next year.

More importantly, she had to figure out a way to twist around and crane her neck in order to see what had become of the bruise on her back. It had been unbearably tender on Wednesday, that was the real reason she’d worn a full dress. She also knew some of that might have been psychological. But contorting herself enough to see what might remain of the boot-print bruise proved harder than expected, and the third time Brandi nearly fell on her ass, she finally gave up. It would hurt or it wouldn’t, and eventually it would heal. It was just a bruise.

“Brandi?” Mikey’s voice called from beyond the bathroom.

She shrieked, startled, and had to catch herself on the vanity counter to keep from crashing. Again.

His voice was closer this time, and warmed with something like amusement. “Bad time?”

“Is there a good time for giving someone a heart attack?” She sucked in a breath, scrunched up her nose at the crumpled-up mess she’d managed to make of her shower towel, and glanced around the room. “What is it?” Robe! She hurried to snatch up the soft, fluffy thing that felt like it belonged in a luxury hotel and wrap it around herself.

“Daria said to tell you breakfast’s in ten minutes. Thought I should make sure you’d make it in time.”

Finally adequately covered, Brandi held the top of the robe closed for an extra buffer and unlocked the door. She cracked it open, somehow still startled to find her fiancé leaning against the wall not a foot away.

In jeans. Casual, faded, black jeans accompanied by a surely more expensive button-up with sleeves he’d already shoved to his elbows. Also black. Who was he trying to impress?

She nearly missed the way his own eyes roved over her.

“You okay?” The teasing amusement was gone from his voice, but the question was far from cold.

Brandi swallowed a very different kind of nerves. “I was just taking stock,” she said.

Mikey straightened, stepped directly in front of her, and curled his fingers around the inside of the door in a way that would prevent her from moving it at all. He reached up with his other hand and gently stroked the tips of his fingers over the shoulder of her robe. “The only thing you need to worry about,” he said, “is what might happen if you ever open the door to me like this again.”

The breath rushed from her lungs at his rumbled words, and the next thing she knew, he’d swept his hand up to curve around the back of her neck and tug her forward. His lips crashed over hers, his tongue pushing into her mouth. The kiss was intense, demanding and relentless, and then it was over.

By the time Brandi blinked her eyes open, her mind still completely scrambled, Mikey had left the room.

What … the hell just happened?

nine

Need

Eleonora De Salvo was not what Brandi had pictured, in the best of ways. Brandi had been doing her best to brace herself for a hardened woman who surely had not taken kindly to the idea of her baby boy marrying for any reason other than fanciful bliss or perhaps political gain. In Brandi’s mind, Eleonora had become some Elizabethan figure draped in luxury, with all the diamond edges she would obviously have needed to raise the three most powerful and dangerous men in New Jersey—possibly in the entire United States.

The barely five-foot, three-inch woman in a dress so dark it was more black than green was not the terrifying mafia matron of Brandi’s nightmares. She chased Mikey away after barely ten minutes, insisting she needed to get to know her new daughter-in-law, and planted herself on the sofa in the den for close to two hours. Simply talking.

Brandi probably apologized three times over for not attending the De Salvo family dinner the night before by the time Eleonora left. She genuinely hadn’t wanted her introduction to the family as a whole to be with her face half covered in bruises. She stood by her reasoning. But now that she’d met the woman they all gathered to keep close to, the woman who’d taught them the value of that closeness, she felt as if she’d committed some grave sin.

Mostly, she felt an old, familiar pang of envy and blended sadness.

Her mother had remarried, several years after running from her father and her. Had her mother created a newer, better family? Did her mother’s new family consider her some fabulous motherly figure? They weren’t questions Brandi liked contemplating.

She watched from the front stoop as Eleonora was driven off, presumably home.

She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt and nearly jumped out of her skin when her phone buzzed in her back pocket. The buzzing continued, so she knew it was a call, and guessed it was Mikey. She hadn’t exactly given out her new number. “Are you just sitting somewhere staring at your security feed?”

“Not this time.”

“That’s such a shady answer.” Brandi turned and wiggled her fingers in the direction of the front veranda’s camera.

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