Chapter 30
Two months later
Dr. Bartholomew Shaw’s office
“My wife is cheating on me.”
Bartholomew chokes on the tea he’s been drinking; the spray projects three feet out of his mouth and covers the top of his desk.
“It’s been going on for over two months, ” I continue, ignoring his frantic wheezing.
“Are”—he tries to suck air into his lungs, but breaks out into another coughing fit instead—“are you sure?”
“Yes. She’s been seeing him at a private club every Saturday night.”
“Um…still? As in, present tense? And…her lover…remains alive?”
I nod.
“But, I assume, you’re planning on unaliving him soon?”
“No.”
“Slicing him into a thousand small strips while keeping him conscious, then?”
I shake my head.
“Nailing him to a wall and watching him starve to death?”
“Nope,” I growl. “I can’t do a thing to the son of a bitch.”
“Oh, shit.” Barty’s jaw hits the floor. “She’s cheating on you with the don?”
“She’s not cheating on me with the fucking don!” I snarl. “It’s me!”
If I weren’t pissed as hell, doc’s shocked expression would be hilarious.
“I don’t…uh…I’m not sure I’m following, Adriano.”
I yank my glasses off and pinch the bridge of my nose.
It takes about twenty minutes to bring Bartholomew fully up to speed.
I tell him everything, including how it all started at the Annex.
He listens without interrupting; his bushy eyebrows hitting his hairline every once in a while, and his eyes flaring wide as he chews on the yellow pencil in his hand.
I’m not sure why I’m explaining this to him now when I never had the inclination to share my clandestine meetings with Iris with him before.
Maybe I’m losing my fucking mind. Going insane because I spend the entire week feigning indifference before I can finally put my hands on my own wife for one night.
Seeing her daily but not touching her…is slowly killing me.
This morning, I nearly tackled her when she came down for breakfast. I would have fucked her on the table if it wasn’t for the damn dog.
I. Am. Turning. Into. A. Lunatic. And getting worse every fucking day.
“So, I’m the guy my wife has been seeing in secret,” I finish in a growl. “We’ve been fucking like rabbits every Saturday night, but she has no idea it’s me.”
Barty gapes at me; the pencil still in his mouth, chewed up to a misshapen stump. Charcoal is smeared all around his lips, and that, in combination with his wild white hair, makes him look like he, not I, belongs on the shrink’s sofa. He watches me in silence for a beat, then bursts out laughing.
“My apologies,” he snorts, his body shaking as he chuckles. “I know this is completely unprofessional, but I just can’t—”
“I fail to see what’s so damn funny.”
“You”—he hiccups—“are jealous of yourself. This is priceless!”
“You don’t get it, Bartholomew.” I grip the armrest on the sofa with enough strength to make the wood creak. “She thinks I’m someone else!”
“Then why don’t you just tell her the truth? You can stop being a walking hard-on the other six days of the week and actually have a real relationship with your wife.”
Pulling my wallet from my pocket, I take out a few hundred-dollar bills and drop them on the side table beside me. “I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
I stand and head toward the door. “I have to go.”
“That’s it?” he calls after me. “You’ll just continue with the charade?”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Adriano! Why won’t you tell her it’s you?”
I stop at the doorway. “Because she wants the other guy. Not me.”
As I’m heading out of Bartholomew’s, a couple of chimes inside my pocket alert me to incoming messages. The first ends up being from my wife’s driver, Theo, telling me they are on their way to Serafina Fabbri’s. The second is from an unknown number.
10:59 Unknown:
The warmth you never dared to name
May be too late to understand
What is yours will slip away
Like dust seeping through your hand.
Panic—instant and absolute—explodes in my chest.
***
The sleek black car pulls up to the front of a recently renovated six-story apartment building, and the driver rushes around to open the back passenger door.
My wife steps out, two Tupperware containers in her hands.
According to the report from my housekeeper, gnocchi Bolognese is in one, and a caprese salad is in the other.
Iris prepared both this morning for her mom.
She’s bringing her mother a homemade lunch, something she does at least three times a week.
Others might not bother driving an hour across town simply to bring food to their mother.
They would just order something and have it delivered.
Not Little Iris. She doesn’t view this as a bother at all.
My wife simply cares. About her mother. Her friends.
Random people she doesn’t even know. I already knew this about her, but somehow, it’s only now become crystal clear.
She genuinely cares for everyone around her.
For crying out loud, the woman still volunteers at the homeless shelter. Something that almost sent Brahms into cardiac arrest the first time he needed to organize the security around her.
She even cares for me. Because of who she is. She still leaves containers filled with homemade meals in the fridge for me to find. Lunches. Dinners. Even overnight oats for breakfast. Delicious food for a man she’d probably rather see burn in hell.
Well, I don’t want her to merely care for me.
I want from her what he has. I want her to welcome me into her arms and tremble in mine as she does with him. I want her screams of pleasure to be for me. Her touches. Her whispered words. Everything! I want everything that is currently his.
My hands land on my temples, and I squeeze. Hating my desperate thoughts. These…feelings. Feelings I can no longer ignore.
I want my wife to love me.
But is she capable of loving Adriano Ruffo? The ruthless, heartless man? That man certainly doesn’t deserve love from her.
I lower the window just enough to have an unobstructed view, so I can watch as Iris enters the building and disappears behind the reinforced glass doors.
Theo follows at her side, never leaving his charge unprotected.
Two of the blacked-out SUVs with the rest of her security detail have taken positions across the street; the third should be parked at the back, where the fire escape from her mother’s apartment is located.
Yes, I increased her protection team. No, I’m not going overboard.
This is a justified response, a reasonable course of action to ensure my wife is safe, especially after another cryptic text arrived as I left Barty’s this morning.
I’m not risking that the rhymey asshole’s menacing promises will stay benign.
I swear, I’m going to bury the fucker alive when I find him.
The bastard really should have stuck with me and his attempts to mess with my business.
But he hasn’t, and for that he will pay.
He’ll rue the day he decided to turn his attention to my sweet flower.
“Sir,” Jim says over his shoulder, his hand on the Bluetooth earpiece on his right side. “Team Three is reporting what might be suspicious activity out back. A man in cable company gear has just entered the building, but there’s no sign of his vehicle nearby.”
I’m out of the limo and running toward the front entrance of the building before he even finishes his sentence.
The display above the shiny elevator door tells me the car is on the sixth floor, so I head directly to the stairwell, taking steps two at a time.
That damn thing is too slow. I’m aware because I personally checked out the renos after I quietly purchased the place a few months ago.
Iris saw the repaired elevator as a happy occasion that allowed her mother to be more mobile in her weakened state, but to me, the building upgrades were simply another way of ensuring Iris’s safety while she was still living here.
I get to the fourth floor in record time and run toward the door midway down the hall. Theo’s stance in front of that door goes from high alert to slight ease to locked-and-loaded again when he sees me charging.
“Mr. Ruffo? Is something—”
A woman’s shrill scream interrupts his question.
Shoving Theo to the side, I ram the door open with my shoulder and barge into the apartment, gun in hand. Theo is right on my heels, ready to obliterate—
An already beheaded victim on the TV screen.
“Adriano?” Iris gapes at me from the two-seater sofa, a steaming beverage suspended halfway to her mouth. Her mother is beside her, wearing an identical expression of surprise.
I scan the rest of the space to make sure there are no other dangers, no visible threats.
The aroma of fresh coffee permeates the small, scarcely furnished apartment, with only a worn couch against one wall and a small television stand by the other.
A short hallway leads to the bedrooms and a bathroom, I presume, while a cramped kitchen is visible toward the back.
It takes about three seconds for me to do the survey.
Although it’s tiny, the place is clean and inviting.
A neatly folded blanket lies over the back of the threadbare, brown sofa, providing a bit of cushion for its occupants.
A miniature lamp sits on the end table that’s been squeezed between that couch and another chair, an extra from a kitchen table, it seems. The walls are painted white, but their age is apparent in more than one place.
Still, a couple of pictures of young Iris and her parents make it abundantly clear that this is a loving home.
“My apologies.” I engage the safety and slip the gun back into the holster under my jacket. “I heard a scream.”
“Okay…” Iris blinks at me in confusion. “But, what are you doing here?”
Right. I should be at the office, not barging into her mother’s apartment with my gun out because the volume on the TV was too high.