Gloria was confused. “What do you mean?”
“You’re driving this car,” Oz said.
Gloria looked at him. “I’m driving it? Until when?”
“Until you decide what kind of car you want me to buy for you. Or, if you like, you can keep this one.”
Gloria wasn’t accustomed to any man showering her with a gift like that. “Oz, I can’t,” she said.
“Oh, you absolutely can. Remember what we said upstairs.”
About cars? What did they say about cars? “I don’t remember actually,” Gloria said. “What did we say?”
“You’re my lady, Gloria. My official girlfriend. And my girlfriend will not walk to work, or catch Ubers to airports.”
Gloria smiled. “There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with catching an Uber, Oz.”
“Get in,” Oz said, still holding the door open for her.
Gloria felt a sense of elation as she walked around and got into his car. “It smells brand new,” she said, and then looked at him. “How many times have you driven it?”
“I’ve taken it through its paces many times.”
Gloria looked at him.
“Okay, no times,” he admitted. “I had it delivered overnight.”
Gloria couldn’t believe it. “You had it delivered? You mean, you just bought this car?”
“Yes.”
Gloria began getting out. “I’m sure you want to be the first to drive it.”
“No, I don’t. I didn’t buy it for me.”
Gloria, standing within an inch of him, stared at him. “Who did you buy it for?”
Oz hesitated, but continued to stare at Gloria. “You,” he said.
“Me? Why would you buy a car for me?”
“Because I made up my mind about you. About us.”
“When did you make up your mind?”
“Last night.”
A frightening thought occurred to Gloria. “When last night?” she asked him. “After we made love?” Was it her body that was driving his need, or her, she wondered?
“After you saved my life,” said Oz. “And no, I didn’t feel as if I owed you a car.” Gloria smiled. “I felt as if I owed you a chance.”
Gloria didn’t expect him to say that. “A chance? A chance to do what?”
Oz had never been this bare with any woman ever before. “A chance to be a caretaker of my heart,” he said.
Gloria’s own heart fluttered.
“If you understand what I mean,” Oz added.
Gloria was nodding, and fighting back tears. “I understand,” she said.
“Then get in, try it on for size, and let me know.”
“What are you going to drive?”
She thought of him, which warmed his heart. But he could only smile. “You aren’t serious?” he asked. When she didn’t understand why he asked it, he motioned toward the myriad of luxury cars in that garage.
Gloria laughed. “I forgot,” she said, and got back in the Maserati.
Oz leaned in, and gave her a kiss. “I’ll call you later,” he said, she said okay, and then she drove off.
Oz smiled as she drove away, and stayed there staring at her until she was clean out of sight. Then he nodded at another car, a security detail on Oz’s payroll, and that car followed Gloria. But when he turned, his brother was standing right beside him and nearly scared him to death. He backed up, shocked.
“I could have kicked your ass!” he said, holding his heart.
“You could have tried,” Alex said far more calmly.
When Oz realized Alex was looking at his bullet-ridden Porsche, he exhaled. “Don’t start with me,” he said.
“Who did it?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Was it Sinatra?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“But yet,” Alex said and looked at his brother, “you fuck his daughter.”
Oz knew it was crazy. He couldn’t even try to justify it.
“You’re fucking your enemy’s daughter, Oz.”
“I don’t know Sinatra’s involved yet,” said Oz. “That hasn’t been established yet.”
“And if it becomes established?” Alex asked. “What are you going to do then, Oz? You can’t play with people’s hearts like this.”
Oz gave his brother a harsh look. “I’m not playing,” he said so convincingly that it shocked Alex. “I’m not playing,” he said again. And then he headed out of the garage.
Alex just stood there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The bullet-ridden Porsche stopped at the curb in front of the Greek restaurant Fotia, and Oz got out, buttoned his Armani suit coat, and made his way across the sidewalk and into his favorite eatery.
As soon as Oz walked in, Dody, the owner, had his arms wide open with disbelief in his eyes. “What are you doing, Odysseus?” he asked the younger man. “Driving around in that raggedy heap. That’s not you. But I tell you what. I’ll take it off your hands real cheap.”
“Because it’s you, right?” Oz asked, and some of the bar customers laughed. Dody laughed too.
Oz was about to ask if they were back there.
“Yeah, yeah, they’re back there. Why you ask every time I do not know.”
“But I didn’t ask,” Oz said with a grin, and made through a pair of curtains to a back room.
The heads of the Greek families were waiting when Oz walked into that back office, and all of them appeared mortified.
“Why didn’t you phone us?” Andreas decried as soon as Oz walked in. “Why did we have to find out what happened on our own?”
“Why should what happened last night concern you?” Oz asked.
“Mick the Tick launched a retaliatory strike against our leader and you don’t think it concerns us?” asked Andreas. “We have families, too, Odysseus! Sinatra could have just as easily came for the rest of us too.”
“If it was Sinatra,” Oz said.
They all looked at him. “Why wouldn’t it be Sinatra?” asked Holt Denasis. “Do you know something we don’t know? What are you not telling us, Odysseus?”
“I don’t know anything for certain yet. And neither do any of you. We will not settle on one person when it could be somebody entirely different.”
But they all continued to stare at him. “Why are you doing this?” Petrakis asked.
Oz frowned. “Doing what?”
“Why are you attempting to take us off of Sinatra’s scent?”
“Because we’re basing his involvement on slim-to-none information. We need more than maybes. We need more than more-likely-than-not. You don’t go to war with a man like that unless you are one-hundred-percent certain that he’s the culprit.”
“So, what are you telling us, Odysseus?” asked Andreas. “To not retaliate? To do nothing?”
“We retaliated already. We took out two men who would have been his men if he is the leader of that mob. And, if it was him, his men already tried to take me out.”
“You and his own daughter,” said Petrakis.