The Body #2: Lucio and Janie

Chapter 8 (Ginevra/Janie): Show Me Your Moves

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

For the last week since I'd come back with Lucio, I realized I was being watched like a hawk. It really shouldn't have been surprising that Lucio noticed things, but I'd been surprised at his close scrutiny. As Head of the Body, he'd have to be hyper-aware of the things going on around him, but I never imagined that he'd pay that much attention to his home life. To me. Now that he thought I was back and ready to be a good wife, I figured I'd be off his radar until he decided a sufficient amount of time had passed and we needed to move to the baby-making segment of our lives.

Good luck with that, Lucio.

"Who do you talk to every night, little ghost?" Once again, he was standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, drinking his coffee, his dark, serious eyes on me.

"Are you spying on me?" I asked. I knew he hadn't planted any bugs in my room because I swept it two or three times a day.

"No, I'm not spying on you. I hear your voice when I go to our room every night."

"Your room," I corrected him calmly. That edict he handed down five years ago was still as fresh in my mind as if it had been yesterday.

This is my room. Not yours. You're not to come in here ever.

He didn't take the bait and stuck with the subject that interested him. "Who are you talking to?"

"Just some old friends from school I've reconnected with since returning here," I lied to him, my tone casual.

"And what do you and your long-lost friends talk about for so long every night?"

How to take down a ring of traffickers operating right under the Body's nose? 

"Recipes," I prevaricated, blurting out the first thing that popped into my mind. Maybe a bit of a stretch, but it was kind of true? Fina had been telling us about a new powdered formula she'd been working on that could dissolve a body in two hours and leave behind almost no trace of the chemicals used. Unfortunately, the mixture was proving to be a tad unstable and could cause the bodies to explode. Since we really didn't want to have to be climbing trees to retrieve body parts, we'd decided Fina was going to have to go back to the drawing board. All of us were secretly wondering how she explained to her husband the roadkill she was bringing back to her house to experiment on.

"Recipes," he repeated so enthusiastically that I knew he didn't quite believe me. "Well, then, I'll have some good meals to look forward to from my wife."

"I'm not a good cook," I said to Lucio, being honest. I was passable but nowhere near the level of a good Body wife. But even if I'd been trained as a cordon bleu chef, I wouldn't have cooked for this man. 

Lucio surprised me by giving me a gentle smile. For a man who never smiled, it always took me by surprise when there was an expression on his face other than stern and scary as hell. "You don't ever have to cook, Ginevra. I have a cook, and I'll just call and tell her that her services will still be required."

"And, you also said you'd try to call me Janie, not Ginevra," I reminded him in an overly sweet voice since he seemed to be in an accommodating mood.

"I did say that," he agreed, "but I have to say, despite your dark hair color that makes your name a lie, to me you are Ginevra."

"But I prefer Janie," I pressed on, trying not to grind my molars into dust.

"A good little Body wife would tell her husband to call her whatever he prefers, Ginevra."

I flashed him a smile. "You're right. Of course she would." I turned to leave, then whispered, "You motherfucker."

"Oh, Ginevra?" he stopped me just before I made my escape.