Chapter 44: Chapter Forty-Four

PLEASE READ!! I made an adjustment to the last chapter. Please reread the last couple pages of Chapter Forty-Three before continuing with Chapter Forty-Four or you will miss something important!! Thank you for your patience! I will be uploading FOUR chapters today and will continue to upload every day from here on out. Thank you so much for your patience. I think you all will LOVE what is to come!! Again, please reread the last few pages of Chapter Forty-Three before continuing!!!!

“Conor?” Gloria asked.

“That’s interesting,” Frankie said, trying to take stock of the strange feeling stirring in his gut at the fact that Conor’s eyes had lingered along with the roaring in his ears at her confession.

“That a strange man broke into your apartment when you said it was impenetrable?” Gloria questioned, a note of fear lacing her words.

Frankie smirked and looked back at her. “No, Vixen. Conor designed the security system for this place. He owns a security company for the rich, famous and criminally inclined. I asked him to come by to add a few new features he recently developed.”

“Oh.”

“What’s interesting is… It doesn’t look like I’ll be willing to share you,” Frankie explained, kissing her tenderly before letting her drop to the floor. Her brows furrowed and her mouth opened to question what he meant. He placed a finger over her lips. “Go upstairs and I’ll get rid of him.”

Her honey eyes flicked to the room Conor had disappeared into and back before she nodded. “Give me your shirt so I don’t give him a show.” Frankie turned to do just that. “More of a show I should say.”

Frankie’s hand paused midair as he reached down for his shirt. “Hm.” He picked the shirt up and walked back to her though his eyes were unfocused as he considered the ramifications of the feelings rolling through his entire being.

“Thank you,” Gloria said, taking the shirt.

“For the shirt or the fuck?” he asked, coming back to reality and remembering who the fuck he was.

“Both,” Gloria said with a sly wink that threatened to make him hard again.

He watched her walk away and up the stairs, maintaining eye contact until she was out of sight. He ran his hand through his hair and tied the top half back in a bun to keep it from getting in his eyes and annoying the hell out of him. Frankie pivoted on his heel and headed for the security room.

Love? Did she just confess that she might be in love? No. Certainly not. No, he just had a great dick. Yeah, that made sense. Why else would she say that after he’d fucked her against the wall? Damn, he really was good in the sack. Then again… no other woman had ever confessed to loving him after sex. He shook his head as he reached for the doorknob. It was the sex. That’s what she loved.

Frankie ripped the door open, emptying his mind of the problem as he did. Easy enough to do when he noticed what Conor was up to. He watched Conor lower his head and take a line of coke up his nose.

“The fuck are you doing?” Frankie roared.

Conor sat back, his eyes bloodshot as he wiped his nose. “What?”

Frankie stalked forward and swiped the remaining white powder off the desk. He used Conor’s shirt to clean his palm. “Don’t do that shit in my home! The fuck is the matter with you? You know how fucking hard it is for me to stay clean from that shit?!”

Conor watched him for a moment and used his fists to rub his eyes. “Huh, we need to tell the Russos that someone is lacing the new shipment. I’ve never had this reaction before.”

“Your family’s been running drugs for three hundred years and you don’t understand what sticking it under an addict’s nose will…”

“No, no, no, Man, I mean the fact that I’m still seeing you naked.”

Frankie glanced down and scoffed. “So?”

He shoved Conor away from the security monitors and shut them off before Gloria could strip. Then he gripped Conor by the back of the head and slammed it against the desk. Conor sat back with a groan, his nerve-endings numbed by the various drugs he’d started taking. Conor leaned his head back and pinched his nose to try to stall the blood gushing out of it.

“Jesus, it’s just coke. That was the last of it anyway,” Conor whined, his voice higher as he held his nose.

“That wasn’t for the coke. It was for lingering.”

“Lingering?” Realization dawned over his expression. His grey eyes creased in confusion and a blond brow rose in curiosity. “You have never had an issue with people watching before.”

Frankie busied himself with checking over Conor’s work… His incredibly sloppy work. “Yeah, well, I do now. What the fuck is this, Man? Did you upload this right?”

Conor waved a distracted hand at the screen. “Of course I did. I’m the one who designed it. The system is infrared. It’ll pick up any traces of heat that comes through the entrance of the downstairs door, elevator and the door up here. I also installed the weight distribution feature in the elevator and a discreet metal detector at the front door.”

“Yeah, I noticed your discreet metal detector,” Frankie said with a sigh. Sure, most people wouldn’t notice the metallic bar that would alarm if anyone tried to bring a weapon into his home. But Frankie had. And if he did, then someone like Sergei Vasiliev would. “Just get the hell out. I’ll call Charlie.”

“You don’t need to fucking call Charlie!” Conor protested.

Frankie grabbed Conor by the shirt collar and hauled him to his feet before shoving him against the door. “The fuck is the matter with you, huh? What is this shit? You don’t do your own drugs. You don’t linger. What the…” Frankie sighed and dropped his head. “It’s Mira. Isn’t it?”

Conor visibly gulped. His red-rimmed eyes lowered in shame. “I miss her.”

“You need to get laid and forget…”

“No!” Conor yelled, succeeding in pushing Frankie back. “It’s Mira or no one, do you hear me!”

“Yeah, this volatile reaction you’re having?” Frankie said, gesturing up and down Conor’s body. “It’s the drugs. We have a drop in two days and I need you on your feet and your head unclouded. Stop the drugs. Now. Or I’ll make sure Accardi knows you’ve become unstable and he’ll kick you out of his good graces before you have a chance to say, ‘boo hoo.’ This drop is too important and we’re only doing it because it was your family’s business and we are helping you transition away from it. Got it? I’d rather go alone than have a liability like you at my back.”

Frankie walked to the monitors and started going over everything Conor had done while shaking his head in disapproval at what he was seeing. “Have you heard from the Phelans?” Frankie asked as he started fixing the coding himself.

Conor snorted. “Yeah, they sent a gift basket to Dad’s funeral.”

“You attended Michele’s funeral?” Frankie asked, surprised.

“No, Charlie brought it over after.”

“What was in it?” Frankie asked, remembering the disturbing thing they’d sent Michele: Mira’s womb giftwrapped with a bow.

“Cryptic shit. A positive pregnancy test, wedding announcement with the names redacted, Beluga Vodka, some kind of lily and the movie ‘Ronin.’”

Frankie stopped what he was doing to look at him. “When was the wedding on the save the date?”

Conor scrubbed his hands over his face and laced his hands through his hair. “Frankie, I don’t remember how I got here, let alone what the date was on a gift clearly meant to elicit a reaction from my family’s oldest rival, mmkay?”

Frankie sighed. “What did you do with it?”

“Fuck if I know. Probably threw it out.”

Frankie dropped his head forward over the keyboard. “Find it, you fucking idiot.”

“Hey, don’t forget who you’re talking to. I’m a Galante, one of the three most powerful Italian families in…”

“Not anymore you’re not,” Frankie growled, pushing away from the desk to stare the twenty-one-year old kid down. “Now you’re just a sorry addict failing to keep a small business afloat and if you keep at it like you are now, you’ll destroy everything and be left in the gutter cause you’ve burned every bridge your prestigious family ever built.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you,” Conor threw back, making Frankie’s fists clench and Conor’s eyes drop to see if he meant to use them.

“Walk away.”

“Whatever,” Conor growled, stalking from the room. Frankie followed after him and watched as he disengaged the locks and stepped out. Just before he left, he turned and smirked. “Your girl has a tight ass, by the way.”

Frankie yanked a picture frame off the wall and hurled it at him. The frame smashed against the closed door Conor had gotten through just in time. Frankie pulled his jeans up from the floor and dug his phone out of his back pocket. He dialed Conor’s business partner and waited.

“Hello?”

“Charlie, it’s Frank.”

“Oh, hey, Dude. How’s the new system working out?” Charlie asked.

“Conor is high. I need you to come and check over his work.”

There was a long sigh on the other end. “Shit. Alright. I’ll be over in an hour.”

“When did he start getting into coke? I thought he was clean?”

“When Mira left and he went to visit that scumbag Palladino in Italy,” Charlie explained. Frankie could hear keys being picked up and a security system being deactivated.

“Well, get his shit together or you’ll both be out of a job.”

“Trust me. I’m working on it.”

Frankie hung up his phone and went upstairs to check on his woman. Gloria was already in bed, curled up on her side. She must have been exhausted because she didn’t react as Frankie walked up to her and squatted down. He brushed some loose hair behind her ear and she sighed in contentment. He brushed a finger over her cheek yet she still didn’t stir. His heart constricted in his chest, tightening to a painful degree as he stared at her peaceful face framed by her golden hair.

“You don’t love me, Vixen,” he whispered. “No one can love me.”