Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance(102)

He laughed, showing off a perfect arch of white teeth. “Kind of,” he admitted. “We negotiate deals. We buy things, sell them to other buyers. Land, businesses, whatever. Our father worked. Our grandfather worked like crazy. He was a mad industrialist, the sort you see in movies clobbering striking workers and whatnot. What he made became what we have today.”

“Are you also a mad industrialist?”

“No, I am a fiction-avenging Mother Teresa,” he reminded me.

“Oh, right, haha,” I laughed, swaying against his side. Every time his hip brushed the back of my hand I got a little jolt of electricity.

“Declan works, I guess you could say,” he mused. “Though I think he works at things he creates out of thin air. But there’s always a deadline in his mind. Always. We always have somewhere new to go.”

“You go together?”

He nodded, he lips pressed together. “Yes, always, since we were young. Our father even held me back a year in school so we would be together. He said it would balance our competition, so we would always be neck-in-neck. He thought it would make us better partners.”

“And did it?”

“Almost always,” he said with a smirk. “And what about you... only child?”

“Yes, just me,” I replied, sort of sorry that he seemed unwilling to tell me more about his life. “And I’ve been in the same house since my mom passed when I was five. My aunt took me in but then she died when I was a teenager. I was old enough so I kept the house and the car and the gardener and just started working before the cash ran out.”

“That’s so sad, to have your whole life upended like that, twice.”

I shrugged, as usual. It was always weird to me when people commented on Aunt Winnie and my mother. The whole thing was as immutable as a stone block in my mind. Something twinged in my gut reminding me that the cash had, in fact, run out but I knew he wouldn’t understand so I tried to spackle over that thought and just move on.

“So,” I continued, “pretty much the opposite of how you were brought up in every way.”

“No, I think I can see similarities,” he said. “You’re a self-starter, I’m a self-starter. You live in the hills of LA, and I sometimes live in the hills of LA.”

“Ha, yes that’s true,” I admitted.

“Actually the very same hill of LA, to be precise,” he continued.

“Can’t disagree with you there,” I chuckled, wondering again how I had been there so long without ever knowing anything really about it. Not about Edna and her collection, and not about my aunt in any meaningful way. I had been so focused, it was like I had tunnel vision. I’d missed a lot.

The tram came to a stop and we got off and walked out onto the wide, white pavillion. The views of the mountains and valley were dizzying and glorious from this height. LA could be so frustratingly congested, it was nice to get above it sometimes.

Edna’s rejection hung over me like a dark cloud that Jackson seemed willfully determined to ignore. He made small conversation about people we saw as he guided me gently toward the wide, marble steps that stretched up to the building. I walked slowly, loving the formality of dozens of steps that I had walked dozens, even hundreds of times. The whole place really was very church-like, I realized. It struck me as funny that he knew that.

“Do we need a map?” he asked as we stood in the huge, cavernous entryway. We could see downtown LA in the valley below us through the far windows, blanketed under a soupy, green-grey layer of smog.

“No, we don’t need a map,” I said, looking over the rack of maps and brochures for exhibitions in the different wings of the massive buildings.

“OK, then lead on. Where do we start?”

I began walking across the marble foyer and to the left, to my favorite galleries.

“Let’s just start at the beginning,” I suggested.

I didn’t feel like talking, and we settled immediately into an easy, comfortable silence as we entered the gallery with the oldest oil paintings. They were small, detailed likeness on wood with realistic skin tones and sad, attentive expressions.

“What are these?” he asked in appropriately hushed voice.

“They’re funeral pieces, like snapshots of the deceased. They were buried with the dead so that their faces would remain forever. And since they were in the middle east, the dry weather preserved them.”

“That’s an oil painting?” he said.

I nodded. “Pretty much. The process hasn’t changed a whole lot in 2000 years. There were innovations, of course, and styles… religious and political ideas about how and why something should be depicted… but the basic materials and process have been around for as long as this.”