Chapter Twenty-Two Lila #2
I wasn’t a violent person, but she knew he was married with a baby on the way. I was pretty sure I could kill her and get acquitted by the jury.
“Brandy?”
“What’s up?” She clicked her small mirror shut, batting her lashes at him.
“Get the fuck out. You’ve served your purpose.”
Her jaw hung open in shock. “Are you serious right now?”
“I’m always serious.”
“You didn’t even…we didn’t even…wait.” She held a finger up. “What was my purpose?”
“Making my wife yell at me.” He tugged his wallet out of his breast pocket, pulling a wad of rolled cash and patting her cheek with it. “Here. Use it to buy some self-respect.”
“I thought you said you aren’t together.”
At this point, I lost my patience. With a huff, I wrenched out Tiernan’s gun from his holster and pointed it at her.
She shrieked, stumbling backward and hitting the wall. For the first time in my life, I was glad I couldn’t hear.
“Stop this nonsense, Lila. The paperwork would be insane.” Tiernan touched my shoulder.
I gave him a shut-the-hell-up look.
He sighed. “If you want to kill her this much, at least let me drive us somewhere secluded.”
I swiveled toward him, pointing the gun at his face.
“Care for a rerun of our wedding night?” I spoke out the words.
He arched a sardonic eyebrow, posture as languid and laid-back as a big cat. “Don’t mind if I do. I’m not picky with the way you touch me, as long as you do.”
When I turned back to Brandy, she wasn’t there anymore. Probably ran off while I was contemplating blowing my husband’s head off.
“My gun?” He opened his palm for me to dispose of the weapon.
“No.” I tucked it into the waistband of my pink ensemble. I raised my hand to sign to him. “Next time you bring your whores to my apartment, I’ll just assume I walked into a suicide pact.”
He studied me with an approving sparkle in his eye, a wolfish grin on his face. He almost looked…proud.
“I mean it, Tiernan. No more sluts.”
“How about you sit your ass down and answer all my questions? If I find them sufficient, I might grant you your wish. If not, get ready to see me fucking the entire Northeast population.”
Even though he deserved his other eye plucked out for this answer, I did acknowledge he was entitled to some explanation. Deceiving your lawfully wedded husband wasn’t an ethical thing to do. Even if he was a bloodthirsty murderer.
I walked over to the couch and perched myself on its edge. He joined me on the opposite recliner.
“How do you compose music if you’re deaf?”
His question surprised me. First, because there were so many bigger questions to ask. Second, because he wasn’t supposed to know that.
“You’re going through my things?” I scowled.
“At least once a day,” he said easily.
“Why?”
“You fascinate me.”
I contemplated arguing with him, but that’d be hypocritical of me. I did the same thing. Came with the territory of living with a complete stranger.
“How did Beethoven?” I signed. “He was deaf, too.”
“He lost his hearing gradually. Did you?”
I shook my head. “No. But the principle is the same. You study the patterns, follow the cues, and come up with sequences that seem in sync. Writing music is analytical, more than anything else.”
“Do your brothers know you’re wicked smart?”
He thought I was smart?
I licked my lips, ignoring the heat spreading behind my rib cage. “Only Mama and Imma know the truth.”
“Why?”
“It’s better this way. I’ve been deaf since birth.
When I was two, they started running some tests to eliminate issues.
I didn’t respond to my own name and didn’t speak a word.
Their initial diagnosis was that I was on the spectrum.
It was extreme medical malpractice and completely changed the course of my life. ”
Opening up felt like stepping out to the sun and feeling its rays on my skin for the very first time. Oxygen hit the bottom of my lungs. There was freedom in claiming who you were.
“Mama and Imma loved me all the same. Mama took me to classes and therapists. She dedicated her whole life to taking care of me. Imma taught me how to cook, how to knit, how to bake, how to suture.”
Our eyes met, and something behind his mossy pupil softened.
“I was six when they found out I had been misdiagnosed. By then, I had taught myself to read, write, do a three-hundred-piece puzzle; Mama kept it all hush-hush. She and Imma were livid with the injustice and initially wanted to sue. But by then, people started noticing me. Powerful men in the underworld came knocking on Papa’s door, looking for an arranged marriage when I turned eighteen.
The Cosa Nostra. The Bratva. La Eme. Mama realized my fate would be as bleak as hers if I went that route—a cheating criminal husband with blood on his hands.
Someone who would bring me nothing but trouble and heartache.
She decided to spare me the woes of matrimony, so we kept my abilities a secret. ”
Tiernan’s face remained unreadable. He continued staring at me silently, fingers laced together.
“Because my brothers compete over the don’s throne, Mama said they couldn’t be trusted with my secret.
She worried they’d sell me out to our father to win points with him.
At some point during my adolescence, the lack of intellectual stimulation became too much for me.
That’s when Mama started taking me to Ischia.
It was close to our home base of Naples, but still far enough from Camorristi eyes for me to do the things I couldn’t do at home.
I learned Latin and math and physics every summer.
Attended soccer games and played tennis.
Ischia holds my only good memories,” I admitted.
“I want to go back. Maybe with the baby. I wouldn’t mind living with security, if that’s your requirement.
And we wouldn’t have to put up with each other. I just want to be free.”
He flicked invisible lint from his charcoal slacks, ignoring my words completely.
“Your mother wanted to spare you marriage with a mobster. That ship has sailed. Why did you keep pretending?”
I pressed my lips together, wondering if I should be completely honest with him.
Yes. I was so tired of keeping everything inside.
“She said if you found out that I’m sentient, you would insist on consummating our marriage. And that you’d try to extract Camorra secrets from me. I don’t know any, by the way.”
Tiernan stroked his chin.
“Will you?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. A born strategist, and he still hadn’t made up his mind.
“Are you in love with Tate Blackthorn?” he asked out of the blue.
“No, but I’m fond of him.”
“Why?”
“He gave me a dance. My first taste of normalcy. My dream is to listen and dance to music. And he made a part of it come true. Whether he knew how much it meant to me or not, I’ll never forget his kindness.”
“That’s your dream?” he asked. “To hear music, and dance to it?”
I nodded. Surprisingly, I wasn’t shy or embarrassed about it. Even though it felt like stripping my soul naked, for him to know something intimate about me.
“And your art?”
Another rush of heat spread across my chest.
No one had ever referred to my sketches as art. Mama called them my little doodles.
“I sketch because it passes the time. But I’m no artist.”
“To define is to limit.”
Tiernan stood up and strolled to the alcohol cart, flipping two tumblers and pouring brandy into them. There was a real bullet in the decanter. He returned to our seats and handed me a drink.
“I’m not twenty-one,” I signed, which seemed ridiculous, seeing as giving an underage person alcohol was the least of my husband’s lawbreaking history.
“But you’re eighteen.”
“Yes.”
“Legal in Italy. You’re Italian. I see no flaw in this logic.”
“I’m pregnant.” I stared at him in disbelief.
“You don’t have to be.” He took a sip of his brandy, studying me hawkishly.
“I won’t stop you from getting an abortion.
We can tell your father it was a miscarriage.
It will free you from the burden of motherhood.
From doting over your rapist’s bastard. The only thing you need to be aware of is that you’d still be bound to me by marriage.
I won’t let you go. Too much is riding on my Bratva operation to give up the Camorra’s alliance. ”
I swallowed hard as I considered his proposition. There was room for deliberation. The baby belonged to a violent rapist. I was too young…
“If you keep it, I’ll never love it. Never regard it as my own.” His lips moved, piercing through my thoughts. I swallowed hard.
“I want to keep it.” I placed the brandy on the coffee table between us. “I’ve always wanted a child of my own.”
He shrugged, tossing his drink back in one gulp and staring at the bottom of his empty glass.
He seemed lost in thought for a moment, and I wanted to draw him back to me. As much as his attention unsettled me, it also reminded me I was alive in some strange, amorphic way.
“How am I supposed to sleep in my bed after you screwed someone inside it?”
Tiernan threw me a distant glance. “I didn’t fuck her. Didn’t even touch her. She was an interrogation device, and it worked. As for your question—as a matter of fact, you shouldn’t sleep there at all. Your place is in my bed.”
“You cheat on me and you want me to sleep in your bed?”
“You cannot cheat on someone who isn’t yours.”
“Do you want me to be yours?” I blinked in disbelief.
“Not particularly.” His words dripped pragmatism. “We’re not sexually compatible.”
“Why?”
“You require tenderness and warmth. I only fuck women in the ass and, if I’m feeling benevolent, let them blow me instead.”
“Does this mean I can take a lover, too?”
“Sure.” He motioned with his hand to the door. “Knock yourself out.”
I scowled, realizing his game.
“No one would touch me because I’m your wife.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. The world has no shortage of idiots.
” He stood up, unbuttoning his shirt. “But you should know that there’s a bounty on the head of anyone stupid enough to look in your direction, your own bodyguards included.
Six million dollars, to be exact. Now, I suggest you move your shit to my bedroom if you want to sleep anywhere untouched by other women.
I never let my hookups into my bed. Or.” He peered around us.
“You can sleep on the bathroom floor again. Avoid the sofa, though. Some heinous things happened on it.”
“Aw.” I stood up quickly, scrunching my nose in disgust.
With that, the bastard sailed toward the hallway. He stopped before disappearing inside the corridor, snapping his fingers as he glanced at me over his shoulder.
“Oh, two more things. One—you’re never to miss dinner again without a good reason. This is a sacred time between us.”
Sacred, my ass. We spend the entire duration of it every night trying to kill each other with hate glares.
“And the second thing?”
“Don’t feel so sorry for yourself. Tragedies are excellent teachers, Lila. Learn, absorb, and conquer.”