Chapter 33: Chapter Thirty-Three
Frankie pushed the mop along the bathroom floor. It took less than a minute for the fibers to become waterlogged. He squeezed the excess out into a bucket and continued onward. His phone started to buzz in his back pocket.
“Yo,” Frankie answered. He propped the phone between his cheek and shoulder before going back to mopping.
“I was supposed to get a call.”
Frankie smiled. “Aww, Baby, did you stay up all night waiting for me? Look, I told you, what happened the other night can’t happen again. It’s not even how small your dick is, it’s… it’s your personality. I hope there won’t be any hard feelings.”
Frankie’s humor was met with suffocated silence punctuated only by the rhythmic creak of the wooden mop handle and incessant typing from a keyboard.
“Are you done?” Matteo asked after a few more seconds.
“You know I’m not your secretary, right? If you missed a call maybe you should talk to Alexander,” Frankie prompted, dumping more water into the bucket.
“What happened at the meeting?” Accardi finally asked.
Frankie sighed. “It was as we expected. Bridget threw herself at me like I’m the only dick she’s ever gotten. It may have been funny if it weren’t so obvious.”
“Liam is up to something.”
“Yep,” Frankie said, popping the ‘p.’
“I’m supposed to be on the plane in a few hours, Frank.”
“Is that today?”
“Did you tell Bridget that I was leaving town?”
“It may have come up.”
“Dammit, Frankie,” Accardi said with a sigh.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Frankie argued. “I was distracted.”
“Distracted?”
“Yes.”
“You. Distracted.”
“That’s what I said.”
A beat of silence. “You took the Rubanov girl, didn’t you?”
“Sure did.”
“Fucking hell, Frank. That meeting was important. I needed you paying attention.”
“I was paying attention,” Frankie said. “I just happened to be paying more attention to something else.”
The floor was nearly mopped dry. Half an hour’s worth of work. Gloria had done a tremendous job flooding the room. Not that he could summon up a single complaint about the transgression.
“What are you even doing? It sounds… Are you beating your dick? What did I tell you about doing that while talking to me?”
Frankie barked out a laugh. “No. I’m mopping.”
“You’re mopping. Good, you finally got around to talking with the guy Salvadore caught,” Accardi surmised.
Frankie understood the train of thought. When he had a mop in his hand it usually was to clean up blood in the chamber.
Frankie chuckled. “No. I should probably check on that guy though. I’m mopping the bathroom.”
“You’re mopping the… Oh.”
“That’s right. Your boy got laid last night,” Frankie said with pride.
“Fuck, Frankie,” Accardi said with a sigh.
“That’s so funny, she said the exact same thing when I…”
“Stop,” Accardi warned. “This will certainly make things harder.”
“Now this is getting creepy. Did you hack my security feed?” Frankie quit mopping and leaned back against the counter. “She passed the test, btw. With flying colors, I might add.”
“What test?”
“My test. It’s kinda like your test, only more fun for me and if she lost she’d get fucked in the bathroom rather than the ring.”
“I thought you said she passed?”
“She did. That’s why I let her fuck me in the bathroom.”
“I see. Quite the prize.”
“As opposed to the prize of working for your tight ass for the rest of my days?”
“How’s that penthouse working out for you?”
“Touché.”
There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. “Sergei Vasiliev touched down at JFK thirty minutes ago, Frankie. That’s why I called.”
Frankie’s hands tightened on the wooden handle. He looked at the tub where he’d taken Gloria’s virginity. To say he was shocked that his little vixen was a virgin would be a massive understatement. The fact that she hadn’t told him, though, infuriated him to no end. What she had been so close to having stripped away by that Russian prick and his lover too made his skin crawl. They wouldn’t have been gentle. His fingers tightened further until a splinter cut into his palm. The slight sting was enough to quiet his mind.
Frankie had been a good boy. He’d taken care of her like some lovesick puppy in a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie. He’d gone against everything he’d ever known or desired to give her that measure of patience, that singular moment of control… It wouldn’t happen again.
Who he had been the night before? Was not who he was at his core. He did not strew flower petals over fragranced tub water. He did not stroke a woman’s arms as she fell asleep in the warmth surrounding them. He did not carry her to bed and massage her skin dry, brush her hair and curl into her arms as he tried to fall asleep only to realize what he was doing. No. He was Frankie fucking Donati, for Christ’s sake. He fucked hard. He fucked where ever he wanted… in whatever way he wanted it. He didn’t understand what made him shift his entire personality in a single night but he needed to get back to the old Frank. And quick.
The door to the bathroom slowly opened and Gloria peeked her head inside. Her honey eyes caught sight of him by the counter holding a phone and a mop. They traveled across the freshly cleaned floor to the tub where her cheeks pinkened in a rare moment of embarrassment. Then her gaze flicked back to Frankie who remained rooted to the floor.
Gloria smiled, a small shift in expression that softened the corner of her eyes. She ran her hand through her chestnut hair which flowed over the sheet she had haphazardly wrapped around her body. Though he’d done a good job making her look presentable before leaving her in bed, there was nothing he could do for the barely sated lust seated in her eyes, the flush of her skin, the way her body seemed to have become attuned to him in a single act where he’d driven her over the edge from girl to woman. All at once the blood drained from his brain. Gloria Rubanov looked supremely and utterly ruined.
“Frankie? Did you hear me?”
“Yeah. Vasiliev. Touch down. Got it.”
“Meet me at the apartment so we can discuss this before Gen and I leave. Come alone,” Accardi ordered.
“Sure thing, Boss Man,” Frankie said, hanging up before Accardi could add anything else.
Frankie set the phone down, keeping his eyes on Gloria who had paled when hearing her "fiance’s" name.
“Good morning, Vixen. I had thought it would take God longer to send you back from your trip to heaven,” Frankie teased, making the color return to Gloria’s face.
“I have to pee,” she said, glancing at the toilet.
“Go for it,” Frankie said with a challenging smirk.
Gloria raised a brow, and her chin, and walked toward the toilet. He watched as she finagled the sheets from around her waist and plopped down with a sigh. She winced slightly as she started peeing and he tried to hide the smile of pride at the sight of her in discomfort from what he’d done to her.
“Sore?”
“Do you have to watch?” she asked, her eyes closed.
“I like seeing people at their most vulnerable.”
“You’re just a major perv.”
“You are avoiding answering the question.”
Her eyes opened and she glared. “Turn around.”
Frankie rolled his eyes and looked down at his phone as she stood up and finished her business. A moment later she was beside him, washing her hands. He looked down at her. She was avoiding eye contact. Her eyelashes were fluttering at a faster rate than usual. Her skin was flushed and the thrumming in the pulse point of her neck was more rapid than considered normal for an early morning pee. Frankie set his phone down and pivoted.
“It wasn’t that bad,” he whispered, tilting her chin upward. “You had to enjoy some of it, at least. Don’t tell me you’re regretting it.”
Her eyes flashed up, sparking disbelief. “No, of course not.”
“Then why won’t you look me in the eye, Vixen?”
“I suppose I’m not sure how to act the morning after an… incident,” she admitted.
“Incident. Is that what the kids are calling it these days? I have to say the lingo is getting a bit drab with you younger folks,” Frankie taunted.
“You know what I mean,” she hissed.
Frankie ran his hand through her hair. “Normally,” Frankie began, pulling her closer. “I wake a girl up so we can go another round before I kick her to the curb.”
“Such a gentleman.”
“I’m a giver. But… as much as I would love to show you how I normally treat a woman after a night spent with me…”
Frankie decided to illustrate his point through show-and-tell. He skimmed his hand down her side to cup her ass. He bent forward and took her lips with his. Gloria shivered under him, encouraging him to continue. As her tongue dipped out to meet his, his hand found its way through the opening of the sheet she wore and his index finger slid through the folds of her core. Gloria pulled back and hissed through her teeth. Frankie smirked down at her bruised lips.
“You’re sore,” Frankie confirmed with a nod.