Page 9 of Captured Fantasy

“Pot, kettle,” said Federico.

My face was warm and I pressed the back of my fingers to my cheek. I’d suspected they were all like this, but it was worse hearing them in person. Shame flooded me and it was everything I could do to straighten my spine and head down the hall to the stairs.

Outside, I sat in the sweltering car with the door open, my heels propped on the curb. It had been years since I’d had to wait for anyone to drive me. When I was a little girl, my father took me to Atlanta every summer for a month. He said it did me good to get out of New York. I remembered being ten years old, sitting inside my father’s car with the window rolled down. The Georgia heat blistered my face and sent sweat down every part of me. I waited patiently as my father ducked into the bank or the café to get me a milkshake.

“You alright, Mrs. Russo?”

I looked up. Amadeo stood on the curb, my car keys hanging from his fingers. Squinting up at him, I shaded my eyes.

“Yes, just warm.”

He circled the car, settling himself in the seat I’d occupied less than an hour ago. I kept my eyes ahead, fingers clenched around my purse, while he turned the key and the Cadillac purred.

“Nice car,” he commented as he pulled out onto the street.

“It was Gino’s,” I said.

Almost as soon as we were back on the road, Amadeo applied the brake suddenly and swerved up to the curb on the opposite side of the street. I blinked in confusion as he leaned from the car, raising his hand to a man standing outside the courthouse. He had his back to us and he wore a dark blue suit, his jacket slung over his arm.

“Cosimo!” Amadeo called.

The man turned and my entire body froze for a moment. Hot blood rushed through me, a flush rising up my throat. It was the man from Gino’s repast, the one who had fingered me in the bathroom.

As the man put a hand in his pocket and strolled towards the car, panic rose in me. I swallowed, breathing deeply to keep control of myself, and lifted my gaze up, unsure of what to expect.

I hadn’t gotten a good look at him, even when we were both in the bathroom. Now I studied him carefully as he drew near. He was a good looking man and the way he walked belied that he was fully aware of it.

His black hair was cropped short, but left longer on top so that the tousled waves fell over his forehead. He had a heavy, aquiline nose over a thin-lipped mouth. There was a vibrancy to his face I’d missed before, a teasing light in his eyes that caught my attention and held it.

He came off as older than twenty-three, but that didn’t mean anything among the men of the outfit. Most made men were forced to grow up quickly and face the hard realities of life within the organization.

“I’m going to be late for our lunch meeting,” Amadeo said.

The man rested a hand on the edge of the car and my eyes flicked to the ring on his smallest finger. The memory of his fingers sliding into my pussy rose in my mind. I cleared my throat involuntarily, trying to keep my pulse steady.

“Apologies,” said Amadeo with a slight smirk. “This is Lorenza Russo. Lorenza, Cosimo Barone.”

He pushed his sunglasses down to fix his eyes on me over the rim. For a moment, I thought he was going to acknowledge our meeting the day before in some way, perhaps a nod or a knowing look, but he did neither. I could have been a stranger to him.

“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he drawled.

Then it hit me. He wasn’t ashamed of anything he’d done, he thought I was a whore for letting him do it. I couldn’t entirely blame him. He hadn’t witnessed the last year of Gino’s illness, the endless lonely days sitting beside my silent husband by the television, the only sound the faint puff of his oxygen.

He didn’t know how desperate I’d been to be touched, to feel the warm press of another body against mine. All he’d encountered was a woman loose enough to get fingered in a bathroom at her husband’s funeral.

“I have to take Lorenza back to her house, then I’ll be by the club,” Amadeo said.

“Fine by me,” Cosimo said, pushing his glasses back up.

They exchanged a few more words, but I had checked out, my eyes fixed on the heat waves rising from the street ahead. After a minute or two, Amadeo pulled back out onto the road. I forced myself to keep my eyes ahead and not look back at Cosimo’s figure behind us.

“How do you know him?” I asked, trying to keep my voice conversational.

“Cosimo? We go way back. He was the best man at my wedding, we went to school together. I take it you didn’t know him?”

I shook my head, glancing over. There was faint smirk playing at the corner of Amadeo’s mouth and I frowned, confused as to what was funny. Then it hit me in a wave of horror.

Cosimo had told him, of course he had. If they were as close as he claimed they were, he’d probably given Amadeo a rundown of the entire encounter. Who knows how many others they had told. He’d probably bragged about it, telling them how easy I was, how quick I’d pulled up my skirt for him.

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