Chapter 32
CHRISTIAN
W ell, Dante’s back and making good headway on fucking everything up.
I take Carmela to her mother’s grave and sit inside the car, fuming. I’m not qualified to deal with this shit. She’s been fucked over too many times. I’m pretty sure neither fucking her nor letting her slap me will bring her around this time.
Her lips are moving as she stands before the grave, talking to her mother.
I lost my father two years ago, but I’ve never once found myself talking to him.
We all deal with things differently, I suppose.
I think about him all the time and the strange gap he left when he went.
His passing was different from her mother’s, a heart condition he ignored until it was too late.
Death had been sitting on his shoulder for a while, and, when he died, I felt more relief than sorrow.
He wasn’t gunned down in cold blood the way Carmela’s mother was… and the way my uncle was. Then in the same breath, her father was run off the road. Maybe he should have died, too. No one returned to finish the job, so I assume outcomes were achieved with him still alive.
Ettore became the don.
Carmela became his wife.
I’ve never had a problem compartmentalizing life. Knowing someone is a bastard that I could happily end, yet still smile to their face. I worked for Ettore because my father and then Dante told me it was the right thing to do. They were the ones with the big picture.
Carmela is just collateral.
I rub absently at the center of my chest as she pauses her monologue to brush tears from her cheeks. Heavy clouds have settled in and it’s spitting with rain.
She’s only got a light jacket on. She’s going to catch a cold… Can you get a cold from being cold and wet, or is that one of those urban myths?
The rain starts to come down heavier.
I lower the window. “Carmela. Babe, it’s raining. Get in the car, yeah?”
She turns and glares at me, then goes right back to talking to the grave, only now her hands are getting involved and animated.
“Hey! Time out. Get your ass in the car.”
“Fuck off, Christian.”
I get out of the car, irritated as fuck that I left the umbrella in the trunk. By the time I get it, she’ll be soaked. Better to just get her ass in the car.
“Get in the car, Carmela. Now.” I get right up next to her and stab my finger in the direction of the car.
“Fuck you!” She turns and runs.
“For fuck’s sake! Are you insane?” I call after her.
She’s still running… In her sensible two-inch heels. What is that even about? I remember when she used to wear sexy, fuck-me heels.
Why the fuck am I thinking about her shoes?
I rake my fingers through my wet hair. “Fuck it.” I take off after her, but I’m wearing a suit and dress shoes, and the grass is slippery as fuck. “Jesus Christ! What the fuck?”
I catch up with her at a big oak tree, snagging her around the waist. She’s in full fight mode, wriggles out of my slippery grip, and pummels me… not with the slaps I usually get, but her fists and everything she’s got.
“You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Fuck me, Christian, right now. Take this away. I can’t stand it. I can’t take anymore!”
I manage to catch her wrists and pin her against the tree with my body. She bucks and strains. I let her have at it until she wears herself out. We’re both fucking soaking, shaking, and breathing heavily by the time she finally calms.
“Fuck me, Christian,” she whispers, her big deep blue eyes staring up at me with hurt. “Please.”
“No.”
“Why not? Because Dante is back? Because he says not to? Do you always do what he says?”
She kicks off her thrashing again, but I’ve got a good grip this time, and she growls in frustration.
Only her pain is palpable. It manifests like a hammer pounding at the back of my skull. “I’m not going to fuck you in a cemetery in sight of your mother’s grave,” I say softly. “And you don’t really want me to.”
Eventually, her sobbing peters out. By this time, we’re both fucking soaked, and she is shivering against me.
She lifts her head and pins me with a tear-ravaged look. “Does Dante know about us?”
I swallow. “No…” Yeah, I can’t lie to her. “He might have suspicions.”
“Is that why he’s doing this? Marrying Helena? To get back at me for not waiting? To punish me?”
“Huh?” I frown. “No. No way. He fucking hates Helena. He wouldn’t get his dick anywhere near her skanky ass.”
“Then why is he marrying her?”
I asked him the same question. I didn’t buy into his answer at the time, but now I think I do. “Because it gives him a pathway back into the family and a reason to visit the city. Because it gives him a reason to see you.”
“And where does that leave us, Christian? What am I to you? Just a fuck-buddy with a slice of danger on the side because I’m the don’s wife?”
“I don’t know what we are,” I say honestly. “I only know I don’t want it to stop.”
She starts shivering in earnest.
“Please don’t take me back to him, Christian.”
I draw a sharp breath. I want so badly to do what she wants, but I’d be dead before nightfall, and she’d be wishing she was, so I do the right thing, the only thing, and take her back to her home.
Ettore is waiting when we step through the front door… I guess someone tipped him off. Both Carmela and I are soaked, and our shoes are covered in mud. Ettore’s face says I won’t make it past the next hour.
She throws herself at him, sobbing.
My eyes feel wide and wild as I take this in.
“I’m sorry,” she says between sobs. “I went to my mother’s grave.
I don’t know why it upset me today. It started to rain.
Christian asked me to get into the car. I refused.
I wouldn’t even let him put the umbrella over me.
I was acting spiteful and cruel because I knew he couldn’t touch me…
. After… After what happened last time.”
Ettore’s eyes sear me where I stand. Two of his men move to flank me. I don’t fucking blink. His arms surround her, comforting her—I want to snap them off.
He nods to his men. “Leave us.” Then he looks me in the eyes. “Get yourself cleaned up. I don’t want to see you in this house again until you take her to her father’s.”
I leave. But the look of satisfaction that blazed in his face lingers.
I know why she did what she just did. She was saving my ass.
Only I’d rather take a fucking beating than see her in his arms. For the first time since Dante left, I get an insight into what it must have cost him when he walked away.
If I were sensible, I’d go to Ettore’s strip club and get one of the dancers I haven’t been near in forever to give me head.
Maybe that would take my mind off the woman I can’t have.
I do go to the club, but I brush off the dancers and sit at the bar with a drink. I’m underage, but everyone here knows me, and Joey, who is on bar duty, doesn’t hesitate to slide the bottle across.
A dark shape slips onto the stool beside me, one far too big to be of the female variety.
“Hey.” I nod my head at Jero then go back to staring at the rows of bottles behind the bar.
“You alright, mate?”
“Fucking amazing,” I say.
“He had me following you.”
I don’t move as that settles in. Just keep staring straight ahead.
“When?”
“Today, yesterday… For the whole of last week.”
I take another drink of my beer. It might be my last. “Yeah? Anything interesting happen that I should know about?”
He chuckles.
Bastard.
I chuckle, too.
“Boring as fuck.”
I take another sip of beer. “So, nothing to report, then?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him shrug.
“I got a couple of nice photos of you standing a few paces away, trying to get her in the car today. Got some pictures of her heading into the coffee shop and sitting on her own, while you watched her from a seat by the counter. Definitely didn’t see her talking to anyone there.
Nor you putting your hands all over her under the tree… ”
I put the bottle down slowly, my focus still straight ahead. My amusement has gone and something dark and unwholesome takes its place. No wonder Ettore was waiting for us when we got back to the house.
“He wanted photos?”
“Yeah.”
The ants are crawling up the center of my spine. I can’t pretend that Jero doesn’t know about me and Carmela anymore. And there is a real possibility he recognized Dante speaking to her.
“Sometimes you don’t get to pick a side, ya know?” Jero says. The words are familiar. He has said them to me before. “I’ve covered for you. That makes me complicit. That makes me a man who has picked a side.”
“Did you recognize who she was talking to in the coffee shop?”
“Not at first. But after. I’m guessing it was Dante.”
He might be playing me for information. Might have already sent evidence to Ettore. I’m here. At the club where all the interrogation rooms are. Driven myself right over. Very convenient of me. Only the ants are in retreat.
I trust Jero.
“Yeah. It was Dante.”
“He knows about the two of you?”
“Maybe.” I take another drink of beer. “Maybe not.”
“How’s that going to play out then, mate?”
“I don’t have a clue. I only know she’s addictive, and I can’t give her up.”