Sugar Daddy Season (ONC 2024)

Chapter 6.5 ~ ENZO

                It's rare that I get nervous. Perhaps it's due to being raised by a strong mother who never took shit from anyone. She taught me to walk with my head held high, but that kind of confidence can make others uncomfortable. Some consider me arrogant while others gravitate toward my phlegmatic nature. However, at this moment, I'm far from relaxed as I sit in a wingback chair in the private dining room of the House of Prime Rib, rubbing my knuckles and bouncing my foot. The little dot on my GPS tracker blinks as my driver's location moves across the screen at a snail's pace.

He's transporting precious cargo by the name of Mara Santiago.

It's not like me to spend a day anxiously waiting for an event or business meeting to arrive, yet I'm eager to see how amazing Mara will look in the dress I picked out for her. She's usually in a uniform at Penthouse, and as great as she looks in the shorts and tank top, I'd much rather see her dolled up in a cocktail dress. I already know she'll be stunning.

"If you shake your foot any harder, your ankle will snap off," my uncle Sammy says.

I stop jiggling my leg. "Right..."

"What is it? A client giving you hell?"

"No."

"Is it that kid?"

"Mara isn't a kid." I swirl the cognac in my glass.

"You know she's too young for you, right?"

"I'm aware she's young."

"Listen, I get it," my uncle says. "I took Angie under my wing, and she's become like a daughter to me."

"You already have daughters," I laugh.

The old man has a habit of adopting strays into his fold. The latest person is a woman named Angelina Mendoza. According to him, her ex-husband is an abusive prick and needs to be taught a lesson. My uncle means well, but I'm not so sure about his relationship with her. It seems like he's always bailing Angie out of trouble, and I worry she'll drag him back into the violent life he left behind.

"You know my daughters don't speak to me," my uncle says. "Anyway, my point is, it's one thing to look at someone as young as Mara and treat her like family, but it's quite another to develop romantic feelings."

"Oh, lighten up!" his friend Carmine says. "You forget my wife is fifteen years younger than me, and she's the best thing that's ever happened since Virginia died."

My uncle crosses himself with a sigh, "Virginia was a hell of a woman."

"One of a kind," I add.

"She was." Carmine nods. "My daughter, Noelle, looks just like her."

"Good because I'd hate for her to look like you!" Dominic, their business partner, laughs as he plops into the seat next to me. "So, tell us about this girl. What makes her so special that Enzo Esposito would bring her around to dine with us?"

"She simply... caught my attention." I shrug.

"Ah, it's that, je ne sais quoi." Dominic nods. "That's how it was with my wife."

"Was?" I quirk a brow.

"Oh, you know how it goes." He takes a puff of his cigar. "Audrey used to have this natural aura that made everyone stop and pay attention to her when she walked into a room. Now the first thing you notice is her ridiculously oversized breasts and lips that are swollen like a baboon's ass."

I nearly choke on my cognac and cough out, "Dominic!"

This is the first time he's ever spoken so negatively about his wife's plastic surgery.

"Listen, I love my wife, and wouldn't trade her for the world, but a few years ago, she got it in her head that she has to compete with younger women at the country club. She became so focussed on cosmetic shit, that she's lost the uniqueness that made her gorgeous in the first place."

"Are you sure it wasn't the tennis instructor that inspired her to supersize her breasts?" Carmine chuckles.

"Oh, I don't doubt that Audrey has her flings. Hell, I have mine too, but we always come back to each other. It's an unspoken rule between us and it works."

"I could never do it." I shake my head. "I'm too loyal and I don't like to share. Unfortunately, Evelyn left me without a choice. She decided for me."

"What a mess..." my uncle flicks ash from his cigar. "Never in a million years did I think Evelyn would cheat on you."

"We were all real sorry to hear about the kind of woman she turned out to be," Carmine adds.

Everyone falls silent as the weight of her infidelity hangs over us like the cigar smoke in the air. I was a wreck when I learned about her sexcapades. We had been together since college, and she was my biggest cheerleader as I grew my business into an empire. The worst part is we were still regularly having sex because we wanted to start a family—or so I thought. Later on, I learned Evelyn never got off birth control, but allowed me to believe the problem was me.

For the longest time, I wondered if it was the mushrooms I did in high school or the weed I smoked in college to keep the stress down that made me sterile.

But no, it was her.

It was her deceit.

My swimmers are fine.

The ugly truth is Evelyn wanted to have her cake and eat it too. In the end, she claimed she didn't want to be tied down with children, which made it sting so much more when I found out she was pregnant with her lover's baby. They had a shotgun wedding before the ink was dry on our divorce papers. It still aches to know that she did want kids. Just not with me.

Now, Evelyn lives the life I wanted for us, but with another man.

"Anyway, enough talk about affairs and exes." The GPS on my phone shows that my driver, Charlie, has arrived with Mara, so I get to my feet. "Gentlemen, my date is here."

Excusing myself, I exit the private room to meet Mara at the door. When I reach the entrance, Charlie's car pulls up, so I take a deep breath and step outside where the busy street pulses with brake lights crawling up the hill. There are so many people in a hurry to get to their destinations. Some even honk at the double-parked cars while trying to weave around them, and I'm the lucky one who no longer has to wait.

Every part of me buzzes as I open the passenger side door. Our eyes meet and her beautiful face brightens with a smile. I smile, too. At this point, it's a natural reflex my body cannot deny anytime I look at her, and it's going to be difficult not to develop feelings for her.

Who am I kidding?

I already have a crush on this tiny dancer.

There was zero doubt Mara would be beautiful tonight, but I wasn't prepared for my heart to stop beating, and for time to stand still. I've seen her gorgeous legs countless times at Penthouse, yet there is something so much more sexy about the peekaboo of thigh her dress reveals when she steps onto the curb and takes my elbow.

If I was a man with no morals, I'd skip the dinner, and whisk her away to my apartment.

But Mara is too young for me.

So I'll have to stick to spoiling her with my admiration, and nothing more.