Page 32 of Hidden Ties

After finally calming her heart rate, she made a worried face. “I’m sorry, did I wake you? I thought I heard the shower running, so I decided it was safe to get up ’cause I’m starving.”

How she was so small was another thing he’d never understand. Valerie had found the old shirt he’d left out for her, revealing more of her shape than her usual baggy attire. While it swallowed her in height, it fell against her tiny hourglass frame, and it slightly bothered him that he noticed.

“You didn’t,” he agreed, not wanting her to feeltoobad. Taking a seat at the counter, he ran a ragged hand through his hair.

“Bad dream?” Valerie asked.

“Yeah, something like that.”

After listening to her abuse another one of his cabinets, he finally gave up and got up from his seat to move toward a door that didn’t really look like one since it blended into a cabinet seamlessly and revealed a secret pantry.

Her eyes grew in wonder. “No wonder I couldn’t find any of the good shit!” After contemplating her options for a few minutes, it was obvious she still couldn’t find what she wanted. “Have you ever heard of MSGs? Where do you shop?Whole Foods?”

Internally groaning, he leaned over her frame from behind her, causing him to internally groan for another reason. Grabbing a bag from the top shelf that she probably couldn’t see, he held it out for her. “Try these.”

When she wrinkled her nose, he found the action kind of cute as she sniffed the opened bag of cheese puffs that were, in fact, organic. Reaching in the perfectly small-portioned bag, she popped one in her mouth. “Not bad,” Valerie said, going for another.

“Glad you like them,” he commented, already heading back upstairs. Sal didn’t trust himself this close to her so late at night in just a shirt if he found the action of her eating a cheese puff attractive.

The night he’d spent with Samantha had been so unsatisfactory. Sal wanted to blame Valerie for working himself up in anger and not being able to perform, but he was starting to realize that the truth was, Samantha wasn’t the girl he had wanted that night.

There was no one on this Earth that made Sal as hard as he was right now, except the unbearable, aggravating woman standing in front of him.

“Wait,” she said, causing him to curse internally.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.Christ, even her potty mouth was rubbing off on him.

“You don’t happen to have any video games, do you? I’m usually wide awake at this time, working on my game or playing. I’m a night owl,” she politely added, stating the obvious.

He nodded before going up to his bedroom, and she annoyingly followed behind.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

Sal flexed his jaw. “Guess not.”

Seeing the loft-like bedroom upstairs, then the huge walk-in closet, she couldn’t help but appreciate the amenities. “Damn, it just keeps getting better and better.”

Going to the back of his closet, he pulled out an old storage tub that, when he opened it, sent dust particles flying. Inside were all the old video games he and Terry used to play when he was a kid at the Internet café. It was a box of memories he hadn’t opened since the day he’d placed the items in there. After his haunting dream, it gave him a bittersweet feeling to see them again.

“A Nintendo 64!” Valerie squealed, grabbing the system up carefully, along with the controllers.

He could instantly tell she looked at it the same way he did—with bittersweet memories of her own.

“I’m jealous you kept yours. I had to sell mine after I got kicked out of my home.”

Sal felt for the poor girl, knowing if it weren’t for Terry, he wouldn’t have had a single thing from his childhood. While the car he drove was the Coupe de Ville his mom had owned for that short period of time, he knew it wasn’t the exact one as the original that had gotten impounded. There was just something about still owning the original you had as a child that made the nostalgia of something so much better.

“Oh my God, you have Mario Kart for it, too,” she gasped, catching sight of the game in the bottom of the tub. “I could kick anyone’s ass on Rainbow Road.”

Sal couldn’t help but let his inner child take that as a threat. “Wanna bet?”

Valerie had officially diedand gone to heaven.

Here she was, in a sick-ass penthouse that overlooked the city, with a man who looked hot as hell right about now as he began plugging the old gaming system into the TV,andshe was about to play Nintendo 64? This was a gamer girl’s fantasy.

If this was what the mafia was like, she wanted to sign on the dotted line. Even if she had to do it in blood, she didn’t give a fuck. This was great! Going to jail was the best thing that had ever happened to her in all her life!

“Does the mafia accept women?”