Page 106 of Salvatore

“Please don’t go,” she begs. “My son is the only one who visits and those occasions don’t happen often enough.”

“Which son?” I croak.

“Salvatore. Do you know him?”

Oh, shitty. Shit. Shit.

Bile scrambles up my throat. “Yes.”

She’s quiet a moment. Long enough for me to swallow in a vain attempt to relieve my tightening windpipe.

“Is he the reason you’re a guest here?” she asks.

I swallow harder. “Yes.”

“Well then, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Is he upstairs?”

“No.” I shake my head in the darkness, wishing the opposite were true.

If Salvatore were here I wouldn’t have been snooping. Nope. No way in hell. My dumb ass would’ve been completely occupied taunting that stunning oxygen thief.

“He was distracted last time he visited,” she continues as if to herself. “Now I think I understand why.”

She’s blaming me?“Um, no, I definitely don’t have any type of distracting effect on your son.”

Well, not apart from the incessant flirtation, but at this point I think that’s a personality flaw.

She chuckles. “You don’t like my son?”

Great. Now I have to navigate a delightful minefield.

I can either praise the obnoxiously annoying Satan wannabe or insult him to what seems to be his sweet, loving mother.

She chuckles again, this time more wholesome and hearty. “You don’t need to answer that. Sometimes that boy is someone only a mother can love.”

I rub my knuckles against my sternum, trying to alleviate the tightness in my chest. “I’m not going to argue with you on that.”

“Will you tell me how you two met?”

I’m so fucking dumb.

Like, I’m in the final quarter of the game, having already secured a Guinness record for highest points scored in the history of stupid, then I decide to shoot a three-pointer from the parking lot.

Not only do I remain in the darkness chatting with Salvatore’s mom for hours, but my moronic ass does exactly as she requests and spills the tea on how me and her son met at Smoke & Mirrors. I tell her he took me for a French martini drinker because they are—and I quote—sophisticated, embodied elegance, and are far more intoxicating than a Bay Breeze.

I mention how he swooped in to rescue me from a chauvinist. I even allude to our first kiss.

And the only reason for the mind melt is that it’s just really nice to have someone to talk to. Chatting with Olivia on the phone hasn’t been enough. I’ve craved being in the same space as someone—having the presence of company—especially a woman who isn’t concerned about blurring the lines between staff and guest like Catarina.

The densest part about the whole situation is that in an attempt to hide my family history and any connection to the cartel, I may have given our story a sprinkle of fiction and a fucking romantic arc.

Now, I’m pretty sure she’s down in her prison cell contemplating whether or not I’ll be a future mother to her grandchildren, which is going to be fun to explain to Salvatore if she goes back on our promise not to tell anyone about my basement discovery.

I don’t sleep much.

I spend the rest of the night replaying my idiocy and realizing how one-sided the conversation had been. Talking to Lorenzo’s sister had been easy. It didn’t help that it was dark, and she had an accent that reminded me of my mother. It made it way too easy to pretend I was a child again. That I had somehow travelled back in time to a place where the woman who gave birth to me was hanging off my every word and devoted to nothing but my well-being.

“Fucking moron,” I mutter under my breath.

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