You Don't Own Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (The Russian Don Book 2) (10 page)

Dahlia Fury

W
hoa. That brings me out in goose bumps. ‘Ok, my turn now’ I say quickly. ‘My rest-of-my-life food is chocolate, pizza, warm brownie and ice cream, fried chicken, Peking duck, melted cheese on tacos, baked potatoes with cheese and beans—’

He starts laughing. ‘That’s cheating. You’re supposed to pick your favorites.’

‘Sorry. It is impossible to choose between them,’ I tell him.

‘Right.’

‘Favorite alcoholic drink?’

‘Vodka I suppose. Yours?’

‘I love champagne and ... Margaritas and ... Boozy Bubbly Sherbet Punch … and also … Baileys.’

He makes a face. ‘Do I want to know what a Boozy Bubbly Sherbet Punch is?’

‘Oh yes, you do. It’s frozen raspberries, ice-cream, vodka, ginger ale and pink lemonade, and all of that goodness is topped with champagne.’

He smiles. ‘I seem to remember you are partial to White Russians too.’

I grin. ‘That’s true, I have to admit a weakness for those.’ I pause. ‘Now favorite movie.’

‘Matrix.’

‘Really? Is that why you named your restaurant Matrix?’

‘Yeah. What about yours?’

‘Pretty Woman.’

He stares at me blankly.

‘Have you never seen it?’

‘Nooo,’ he says slowly.

‘Well, it’s a romantic comedy.’

‘That’ll be why I haven’t seen it.’

‘OK. Let’s get to serious stuff. Name a leader you admire.’

‘Putin,’ he answers promptly.

My eyes widen. ‘Putin? As in the Vladimir Putin? The President of Russia?’

He nods. ‘Uh … huh.’

I lean forward and wave my breadstick at him. ‘Are you kidding me?’

He shrugs. ‘He’s a strategic leader.’

‘You can’t be serious!’

‘Why not? He’s good for Russia.’

‘He’s a criminal,’ I exclaim passionately.

‘I really don’t think we should talk politics,’ he says mildly.

As Stella would say: ‘Why ever not?’

He grins lasciviously. ‘Unless you want to end up fighting and having rough make-up sex.’

I look at him with raised eyebrows. ‘Aren’t you able to have a civilized discussion about politics without fighting, then?’

He looks amused. ‘It’s not me I’m worried about, little fox. It’s you who won’t be able to control yourself.’

‘Whoa! I think I am perfectly capable of controlling myself. Perhaps you are afraid that I might destroy your untenable position that Putin is as pure as the driven snow.’

His amusement deepens. ‘I didn’t say that, but out of curiosity, how much do you know about him?’

‘Enough,’ I say confidently. ‘I read the newspapers and I catch the news on TV.’

‘Yes, I thought so.’

‘What the heck is that supposed to mean?’

‘It means you are not qualified to talk about the issue at hand.’

I jerk my head back. ‘Why not?’

‘All right, I’ll enter into a discussion about him with you if you can tell me one positive thing about him.’

‘Well, I … um, I don’t—’

‘See what I mean. Nothing in this world is either totally bad or totally good,
rybka
.’ He grins. ‘Yet all the material you seem to have read and heard about him is negative. It means you’re getting all your information from biased sources. That makes you unfit for a rational discussion of the subject at hand.’

I don’t know what I could have said to that, but thank God, divine smelling plates of food arrive. I’ll have to think about what he said later when my adventure as Zane’s wife is over. Now there is the matter of a food to deal with.

Luca himself comes over with a mini grater and a small truffle the size of a pigeon’s egg. He handles the truffle with the care and deference a jeweler might employ to show a rare and precious stone to a customer. He actually waves it slowly under my nose to let me have a whiff of the mushroom.

To be honest it doesn’t exactly endear me to it. Musky, earthy and kind of garlicky. Maybe even reminiscent of the faint odor of old sweat, or dare I say it, urine. With theatrical flourish he shaves a tiny amount of paper-thin flakes on the top of our pasta.

‘
Bon appetito
,’ he cries gaily.

We thank him and he moves away looking extremely pleased with himself.

‘Have you had truffles before?’ Zane asks.

‘Only chocolate truffles.’

‘In that case,’ he says and lifts a fine shaving on his fork and moves it towards my mouth. Not wanting to let the side down I obligingly part my mouth. It lands on my tongue. The taste is well, strong and unique, but surely this is not what the fuss is all about. I move it between my teeth.

‘Well?’ Zane asks.

‘Unusual,’ I say vaguely.

‘Now try it with the pasta,’ he suggests.

I roll a bit of pasta on the tines of my fork making sure a few flecks of truffles get caught in the pasta, slip it between my lips and let it settle on my tongue. Suddenly my eyes widen with surprise.

He grins. ‘Good, huh?’

‘Fuuuuuck yeah,’ I say rolling the food around my tongue.

He laughs, as carefree and happy as I have ever seen him.

We leave the restaurant and walk down the street. The temperature is lovely and cool and stars stud the sky.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

‘Nowhere, but we might see some beautiful sights along the way.’

He is right. There is beauty everywhere; in the stone fountains, the cobblestones streets, the beautiful squares full of stylish Italian youth, the illuminated ruined buildings.

We stop to buy chestnuts from an elderly man roasting them in a huge round pan. His face is rosy from the fire and his hands are blackened with soot. He fills a paper cone with hot, sweet smelling nuts, and holds it out to us. Zane hands him two euros and we walk to a stone bench to eat the nuts.

‘You remind me of my grandmother,’ I tell him, peeling a nut and slipping it into my mouth.

‘Whoa! Don’t go overboard with the compliments, will you?’ he says.

I grin. ‘No, I mean the way you eat. Simple. Enjoying the taste of the ingredients fully. You know, not smothering things in ketchup and barbeque sauce. My grandmother used to eat from small plastic trays like what they use on airplanes, so she could enjoy each taste separately.’

‘That sounds more like OCD,’ he says.

I jostle him with my shoulder. ‘It wasn’t. She was a connoisseur of food.’

He gazes at me, a sudden softness in his eyes that makes my throat tighten. ‘The only thing I am a connoisseur of is your sweet pussy.’

I lift my face and kiss his mouth. ‘You’ve got me so wet I could do you right here,’ I whisper into his mouth.

His grin flashes in the night light, dazzling and dangerous. ‘What did we learn today?’

‘You like pussy and I’m wet?’

‘Drop ‘like’ and try ‘crazy for’ and you’d be there.’

I widen my eyes flirtatiously. ‘Prove it.’

‘Can you wait until I get you home and naked?’

‘Is this place too public for you?’ I taunt.

‘You just got me hard,’ he mutters, and shifts uncomfortably.

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, but he catches the laughter in my eyes.

‘It won’t be so funny young lady when you are at the end of my dick,’ he growls, his expression hot and sexy.

I snuggle up to the warmth of his big body. ‘Oh, Zane. I want you so damn much it’s not funny at all, and I’m terrified of losing you.’

I hear the sharp intake of his breath as his arm tightens protectively around me. ‘Let’s go back,’ he says gruffly.

When we get back to the car there is another vehicle double-parked and blocking us in.

‘I can’t believe someone did that,’ I say. ‘What do we do now?’

‘What the Romans do,’ he says, and opening his side of the door leans on the horn. Almost immediately a man sticks his head out of a first floor window and says something in Italian.

‘He’ll be down in a minute,’ Zane translates.

The man rushes out in less than a minute and, with an apologetic smile and a wave, gets into his car and drives off.

‘You sure know this city, don’t you?’

‘Like the back of my hand.’

You eat, and you eat well. What does it matter that that the world is bleeding and dying at your feet?

Dahlia Fury

W
e are woken up the next morning by the sound of the Rossis arriving in their old Mazda.

‘Don’t get out. They’re just bringing our breakfast,’ Zane says, vaulting out of bed.

He pulls on a pair of old track bottoms and heads out to meet them. I move over to where the warmth and smell of Zane still remains and listen to him talking to them. There are no carpets on the floors and I can hear the echo of their conversation. Just when I start to think I should get out of bed, Zane comes back carrying a tray. There is a vase with a rose in it on the tray, steaming mugs of cappuccino and pastries.

I sit up. ‘Wow, breakfast in bed. I can’t remember the last time anyone did that for me.’

The pastries are still-warm Maritozzis; delicious, yeasty buns thickly filled with fresh cream and studded with raisins, candied orange peel, or pine nuts. Another appropriate name for them would be sugar bombs. I dip my finger in the cream, smear it on Zane’s nose, and smile at my handiwork. He looks surprisingly cute.

‘Lick it off,’ he says sternly.

‘Thought you’d never ask,’ I say, and resting on my palms, extend my tongue to the maximum and lick him, making it wet and sloppy, the way an overeager hound would.

He jerks back. ‘Are you looking for trouble?’

‘Take your pants off and I’ll tell you what I’m looking for,’ I counter.

He puts the tray on the floor and, catching me by the shoulders, rolls me onto my back. I look into his eyes. ‘I have to freaking spell everything out to you, but damn you’re still my dream man,’ I tell him, and clawing my fingers into his hair, I pull his sweet mouth down to mine.

Later that morning, Zane takes me to the ruins of the Coliseum. Of the three concentric ovals only a third of the original stone exterior remains and it is the inner oval that is most intact. The sheer immensity of the structure gives me the unsettling feeling that these ruins were the dwellings of beings much larger than me.

Standing on the moss-covered bricks at ground level I look up at the huge stone stadium, and for a second I get the feeling for what it must have been like to stand in the stadium during ancient times. To hear thousands of people baying for your death.

‘Ten years to build, using sixty thousand Jewish slaves with eighty entrances, thirty-six traps doors, accommodating fifty-thousand spectators for festivals that lasted up to one hundred days. During which half-a-million people were slaughtered and a million animals were brutally killed. It is one of the greatest and most unashamed celebrations of human violence. I guess we were all more honest in those days,’ Zane says.

‘Humanity has come a long way since then,’ I tell him quietly.

He sits on the stone seat. ‘Don’t you see the sheer ferocity that runs your world?’

I shake my head. ‘No. I see it run by law and order, by democratic governments.’

He sighs. ‘Your government is the biggest example of naked ferocity.’

‘What?’ I say with a laugh.

‘In fact, I’d go so far as to say there is no difference between what your government does and what I do.’

I snort contemptuously. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Why is it ridiculous?’ he queries. His eyes are watchful and I realize that he is very serious about what he is saying. As bizarre as it sounds to me he actually believes what he is telling me.

‘OK,’ I say slowly and go to sit next to him. ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but agents of state don’t lie, extort money, murder rivals, train and initiate uniform enforcers, constantly go to war with their neighbors to protect their borders, and enforce protection rackets. I could go on …’

His mouth twists into a smile. Sexy or Cruel? Maybe both. The arrogant tilt to his chin tells me I have walked directly into his trap.

‘I hate to break it to you, my innocent little fish,’ he says, his voice a sly caress, ‘but governments routinely undertake all those activities you mentioned and more. Governments do protect their borders, they lie all the time, and they extort money through taxes. Try not paying your taxes and see how ferocious your government really is. What are extrajudicial killings and kill lists, but the state assassinating its enemies and rivals? Just as I have enforcers they have their police and army to implement their policies. They provide their citizens protection for reasons I maintain law and order on my turf. The only real difference between them and me is my borders are smaller and more fluid.’

I frown. ‘It’s not the same,’ I insist, but as always when he speaks, he shows another side to an argument that I have never even considered might exist.

‘There is none so blind as she who will not see,’ he says, and taking my hand pulls me to my feet.

He takes me to one of the trap doors through which the slaves and animals that were held underground were unleashed into the arena and I feel a chill in my body. I turn towards him.

‘Even if the whole world is violent. Even if the very government we look upon as our protectors is violent, I never want to use that as a justification for my own violence.’

He gazes at me with unreadable eyes.

We have lunch at a sidewalk café and I order exactly what I had the night before. Pasta with cheese and pepper. There are no truffle shavings on it, but it is still incredibly good. Zane has the same.

Afterwards, we go to the Borghese Park and walk in the fallen leaves. It is very beautiful with the changing colors of fall. I look up at Zane and can hardly believe that this is my life. This is the kind of dreamy fantasy existence I expect to find in my favorite books.

We eat
gelato
, soft Italian ice cream, in the fresh air. Then the highlight of our trip: Zane has arranged a private tour for us of the Sistine Chapel.

We arrive as all the other tourists are leaving. A woman in a green trouser suit carrying a clipboard comes up to us. She looks at it and haltingly pronounces our incognito surname.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Zhivanescskaya?’

‘
Si,
’ Zane and I say, and she smiles.

Her name is Claudia. Friendly and chatty, she leads us down the one-way system through the long corridors of the main buildings towards the Sistine Chapel.  Her voice echoes down the empty corridors, and as we get closer she starts telling us about the chapel’s eight thousand square feet of restored frescoes depicting stories of Genesis, Moses, Jesus, and the famous Last Judgment.

She informs us that far from being elated, Michelangelo regarded his Sistine Chapel commission from the Pope with the utmost suspicion, because he believed that his enemies and rivals had concocted the idea to see him fail on a grand scale. As far as he was concerned God had chosen him to be a sculptor and not a painter.

Finally we reach the chapel.

She is still speaking, telling us about how the challenge of painting at a height of sixty-five feet required a certain amount of ingenuity with scaffolds and platforms slotted into the specially made wall opening, but her voice has become just an echo. I stand and stare in awe at the ceiling.

Michelangelo might not have thought he was a painter, but he created a transcendent work of genius. It is completely magnificent and grand in a way that no photo can ever do it justice. I could have stood there for hours.

Realizing that her explanations are no longer necessary Claudia falls silent and moves to the door. I turn to look at Zane, and he is watching me. Neither of us says anything. I am not a religious person, but while standing there with Zane in complete silence the power of Michelangelo’s painting of God reached out and touched me. I swear I could almost feel his hand in mine.

‘Look,’ Zane whispers and points to a section of the painting where a robust bearded man is holding a knife in one hand and from his other hangs something that looks like a dripping garment with a sad face.

‘See that big figure there,’ he says. ‘That’s Saint Bartholomew. He was skinned alive and beheaded in Armenia, and that’s a portrayal of him holding the knife of his martyrdom and his own flayed skin.’

‘Oh wow,’ I whisper.

‘But here’s the fascinating thing. The face in that empty envelope of skin is meant to be Michelangelo’s self-portrait.’

I exhale my breath at that piece of strange knowledge.

‘Why did he do that?’

He shrugs. ‘It’s a metaphor for the artist’s tortured soul.’

I stared at the grotesque skin. It is hideous and yet I’m not sorry I saw it. It adds a fascinating new layer to the stunning beauty stretched out above and around me. I know Michelangelo’s tragic and anguished skin will haunt my dreams, but then again so will the splendor of his creation.

I take Zane’s hand in mine. ‘Thank you for this experience,’ I whisper and tears come into my eyes.

He frowns down at me. ‘Are you OK?’

My face cracks a wobbly smile. ‘Yes. Just happy.’

When it is time to leave I can’t resist looking back one last time, knowing that this moment will last in my mind forever.