I wasn’t sure I was that good an actress.
On the plane, Reeve sat with his men in the cabin nearest the pilots. Amber and I took seats in the next cabin, she at the window, and I at her side. Ginger, the stewardess who’d also been on the plane when I’d flown into Jackson, served us mimosas and then disappeared to take care of the men.
Amber and I chatted a bit, then, about half an hour after we’d been in flight, she yawned and said, “Dramamine always knocks me out.” She leaned her chair back and, with earbuds and the iPod that she’d borrowed from me, she turned to her side and fell asleep.
As if on cue, Reeve emerged from the first cabin, and every nerve in my body came to life. I buried my head in my Kindle and resumed the ignoring game from earlier. Or resumed pretending to ignore him. He was impossible to truly ignore.
I definitely couldn’t ignore him when he took the seat across from me, but I tried, keeping my eyes down as he silently studied me, his gaze lighting up every inch of my skin.
Finally, he spoke. “So. Are you officially not speaking to me?”
Officially, no, I was not speaking to him, except for when absolutely necessary. But that was childish. Even I recognized that.
“I’m speaking to you,” I said. “I spoke to you in the gift store earlier.”
“I think, counting that, you’ve said all of twenty-five words to me since Joe left.”
It had been forty-seven, to be precise. I’d counted.
With my chin still down, I shrugged. “There’s nothing to say.” It wasn’t exactly true. There was plenty to say, but I was tired of being the only one talking.
“Hmm,” he said. Then he went quiet, and I continued to stare at the screen in front of me, reading the same sentence over and over without comprehension. All I could focus on was his nearness. How his presence affected me so greatly that it felt like he was touching me. How he was only sitting a few feet away from me and yet was farther than he’d ever been.
I closed my eyes and wondered if it would ever end – this yearning for him. For all of him. For any of him at all. I’d grown so used to how that desire completed me, I wasn’t sure who I’d be if one day it actually did.
“The Vilanakis family – my family —”
I opened my eyes at the sound of his voice.
“Has been involved in organized crime of some sort or another since God knows when,” he continued, and I stopped breathing. “It’s a complete culture, like being raised in a religious family. A baby born into our family is automatically raised in the lifestyle. There’s no leaving. Vilanakis blood is a tie that can’t be undone.”
I lifted my head, slowly, afraid that if I moved too quickly, I’d interrupt the spell. It was the first time he’d admitted his connection to Michelis. The first time he’d volunteered information without me prodding.
His eyes grazed mine, but he quickly shifted his focus out the window. “My mother, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, was born Elena Vilanakis. Her grandfather was… a don, of sorts. Powerful. His children and their children were practically royalty. Crime was their birthright. It’s a patriarchal system, but women do have their places and their duties. My mother was the oldest of her siblings so her role was significant. Whoever she married would be adopted into the family business. It was expected that she would wed someone with economic or political strength. Someone like Daniel Sallis, who had built a fortune and name in luxury resorts. Their union was blessed and encouraged by her parents.”
“But your mother wanted to leave.” It came out before I could stop it, and his stare flew back to mine, his eyes wide as though he’d forgotten I was there.
Immediately I tensed, sure I’d spoiled his confession.
Instead, his lip curled up in an impressed smile. “Yes. She did want to leave.” He settled back into his chair and crossed his ankle over his knee. “Ironically, the level of power that her parents required in an intended husband was the same level capable of making a Mafia princess disappear.”
He seemed to have relaxed a bit, which made me less wary to ask, “Did your father know what he was getting into?”
“Yes. My father loved my mother. I believe that he would have committed to the Vilanakis Empire if she’d asked him to. But she wanted nothing to do with her family, and so he committed to that instead.”
His features brightened when he talked about his parents. So much that I felt warmth in my chest for the first time in days, like sun hitting a patch of snow.
“But your father was high profile. He obviously didn’t vanish.”
“Right. He couldn’t. But he managed to hide my mother. He arranged for her to take on a fake identity before they were ever wed so he was never officially tied to the Vilanakis name. He never traveled with her. Made sure he was never photographed with her. And he purchased the ranch in Wyoming secretly. It was a place no one would ever look for a businessman like Daniel Sallis. Certainly it wasn’t where anyone would look for the granddaughter of a Greek mob boss. Essentially, the only people who knew that my father’s young bride had any other name than Elena Kaya were her parents.”
“Her parents knew?” That surprised me, especially after he’d said there was no turning away from the mob. “Were they mad? Did they put out a hit on her or something?”
Reeve tilted his head, clearly amused. “Did you get that from television?”
“Excuse me for not having a lot of personal experience with the mob.”