Chapter 20
TWENTY
NASH
I have Ellie in my grip to make sure she doesn’t hit Cello again. She leans down and growls to Marcello, “Look at me when I say this, Marcello Barone. The only way I will ever have a child will be at my will!”
? * She kicks at him, but he’s caught his whereabouts and dodges it before getting a foot to the face. The smile pulling at my lips shouldn’t be there, but I can’t help myself. I fucking love this woman so much.
I slowly reach down, grab the oversized marble from her hands, and toss it over to a shocked-looking Zamir. He schools his look and puts it back into its decorative bowl where it belongs. We’re going to have to put those out of reach.
Marcello will have fond memories of those marbles now.
Ellie practically purrs to me while rubbing her ass up against my cock, “Big Boy, could you let me go, please… ” There’s a beat of silence as she waits for my answer, which never comes because I know she will be right back at his throat, so she seethes, “I’m not finished with you, Barone.”
I place my hand in front of Marcello’s face, silently asking for his phone after I forced him to sit at the oversized table. With how he’s acting, you would think I was wanting the deed to this goddamn building. “To call the fucking dentist, Barone, come on.”
He fishes his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, and hands it over without saying a word. I’m scrolling through his contacts looking for the dentist that I hope to god he has the number to, stopping abruptly when I find what has to be the funniest shit. “Dentist Barbie? Like, does she look like a Barbie, or is her name Barbie?”
He looks at me like I’m stupid and again, doesn’t say a word. I hit the call button. It rings twice, and a tired-sounding woman answers the phone. “Mr. Barone, of what pleasure do I owe the devil for needing to speak to you this late at night? And before you ask, again , I am not pulling teeth for torture or telling you how to make them bleed the most.”
Why did my stomach fall to my ass when she called me Mr. Barone? I like the way that sounds way too much.
Finally picking my stomach up out of my ass, I start to tell this dentist what has happened, “Hi, this is Nash Hayden, not Marcello… ”
She clears her throat and asks, “The Nash Hayden?!”
“Rookie quarterback? Yep, that’s me.”
The glee in her response is enough for me to no longer feel bad for calling her so late into the night. She will pass out when she sees that Zamir is also here if she’s a football fan. “I’m kind of scared to ask why you need me now… Please tell me someone didn’t knock your teeth out. I’m no orthodontist, but I could kiss the one who straightened those teeth in your head.”
I give her a shy chuckle, and that grabs Ellie’s attention, causing her to raise a brow at me in a silent question. “Well, you see… Marcello has had a bit of an accident with a marble ball, and his two front teeth are chipped. I’m sure we could have let him suffer, but the teeth are bleeding from what looks like inside the tooth… and research says that’s not good.” Research as in me typing a dumbass sentence into a search engine and reading the first couple of sentences in the articles. They said if the tooth itself was bleeding and not the gum, then it’s a big emergency. And now here I am with some fancy dentist trying not to tell her about the whole damn story because I’m sure that would have her running for the hills.
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” is all she says before she hangs up.
I yell out to Zamir, who is now standing behind Ellie protectively with his arms wrapped around her shoulders, “ Bebé , the dentist said she’ll be here in thirty minutes. Can you call down to the desk and make sure they know she’s cleared to come up?”
“Yeah! Is Cello okay?” he questions while pulling his phone out to send a text to our front desk folks downstairs.
“I’m fine,” Marcello grumbles and doesn’t even lift his head to look at them like the pouting pissed off child he is. He’s holding a rag to his mouth, trying to slow the bleeding. We both turn towards the kitchen when we hear the freezer slam harder than necessary. Ellie comes strolling towards us like she doesn’t have a care in the world with a tub of ice cream and a spoon. Why this image scares me, I’ll never know.
She sits down right beside Marcello, pops the top off, and starts to dig in. After a couple of bites, her eyes dart to Marcello’s, and she says, “Ice cream will make boo-boos better.”
Yep, this is what I was scared of…
Marcello narrows his eyes at her, but that doesn’t slow her down one bit. “Open up, Cello,” she spits his name, and that has me internally giggling.
He does exactly as asked, pulling the rag away, and I cringe, cowering immediately. The pulps of both of his teeth are completely exposed, and they’re gushing blood.
In a baby voice, Ellie starts as she tilts her head side to side with each word, “Oh, they’re bleeding. How very sad.” She takes her hands, rubbing them under her eyes, mocking somebody crying while still holding the spoonful of ice cream. “This should make them all better.”
She presses the spoon into his mouth, not careful of his teeth and their exposed state at all, shoving the ice cream right into them. “FUCKKKK!” Marcello screams and pulls away quicker than I’ve ever seen that man move.
He’s up and running to the sink, trying to rinse his mouth out, but I think that might make it worse… If the scream that comes from him when that first splash of water hits his mouth is any indication, I would say it hurts just as bad.
All this chaos is unfolding around us, and what’s Ellie doing? Enjoying her cookie dough ice cream completely unbothered.
A half-hour flies by in no time. Well, for me, it flew by. I’m sure it was slowly creeping for Marcello from the pain I know he’s in. There’s a quick, quiet knock on the door, and I open it to let the dentist in. When I swing the door open and see the woman on the other side, I’m shocked she was such a powerhouse on the phone.
She’s short, can’t be over five-one, petite, middle-aged woman of some Asian descent. The fact that she’s so small in size but talks to Marcello like she did when I answered the phone sends so much joy through me, it’s not even funny.
That is one thing I love about Marcello. He may stalk and do some questionable things to women—well, one woman—but he does respect them.
I walk her into the kitchen that looks slightly shy of a murder scene with Marcello’s tooth blood all over the place and wave my hand out in front of him, telling her, “Here’s your problem child for the night. He’s very moody. Be cautious.”
* ? Breakin’ Dishes - Rhianna