Chapter Twenty-Five
S tepping out of my room, I rubbed the sleep and tears from my eyes.
I‘d spent the past few days steering clear and well away from my husband. Not because I looked like hell. It wasn’t even entirely because of Mum.
What kept me hidden was the realization I was falling for my monster.
Craving its claws. Missing its pointy, venomous teeth. Wanting to capture its stony, unmoving heart.
Clearly, I’d fallen down the Stockholm syndrome rabbit hole. Yay me.
He was callous, forbidding, not to mention a literal murderer, but he was oddly loyal to those he’d chosen to entwine his destiny with, and I found myself at the top of that list.
Before making it one step, my eyes landed on the elaborate gift Tate had brought me.
Cellophane-wrapped treats from all over the world—the UK, Cuba, Jamaica, Italy, France, and South Korea—individually wrapped and waiting to be consumed.
There were baskets of fruits and chocolates.
And something else. Something that made me pause.
No. No way. Where did he…?
My old photo albums.
The ones Mum kept in the attic back home.
Dozens of them, for me to leaf through.
Pictures of Dad and Elliott and Mum and me.
Of our pets throughout the years. Trips.
Birthdays. Christmases. I rushed to one of the albums and sank to my knees.
Flipped through the pages hungrily, cupping my mouth, tears of joy and laughter and sadness drifting from me.
Bliss poured from the pages. Nostalgia flooded me.
Smiling faces.
Goofy expressions.
Notes Mum scribbled on blank address labels and glued under every picture, lest we forget.
Disneyland 2014. Elliott was too scared to ride anything but the teacups! Claimed he had food poisoning but then ate seven waffles when we got to the hotel.
Christmas 2017. Gia accidentally set her dress on fire trying to light a scented candle. Insisted on wearing it and said the asymmetrical edges were a part of the design.
Boxing Day 2012. Dad lost a footie bet. Man U won. He had to get the result tattooed to his arm.
A rush of memories slammed into me all at once.
The way Elliott squinted in all the photos to hide what he was certain was a lazy eye.
Dad always deliberately ruined family pictures with silly faces just to make Mum exasperated so they could make up in the grossest, most adorable way.
The way Mum always tsked and shook her head whenever Nicole Kidman popped up on the telly and said, “This woman called her daughter Sunday Rose, which is too bloody close to Sunday roast.”
An unfeminine snort escaped me, and I shook my head.
Pressing the albums to my chest, I tucked them in my room, where they’d be safe.
My heart stammered as I made my way toward Tate’s bedroom. I stopped at the threshold.
Perched on the edge of his bed, he was solving equations in a textbook, thick brows crumpled in deep in concentration. He oozed gentle violence. This elegant, complex, Victorian creature.
His free hand tapped against the side of his leg.
Two, six, two.
Two, six, two.
Two, six, two.
I frowned, checking my Apple Watch.
Two, six, two.
Two, six, two.
Two, six, two.
His tapping was in a three-second increment exactly, just as I’d calculated in Dr. Stultz’s office.
The penny dropped.
All this time, his body whispered his secret to me when Tate wasn’t looking.
My husband has OCD.
He needed rituals, routines, and numbers. Soothing quotes from books he’d read and loved.
And he hid it from the world. I couldn’t imagine how suffocating it was for him to keep his rituals in check at work so that I—someone who spent almost every day with him for the past five years—wouldn’t notice.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder. It was right in front of me all along.
I now understood why he didn’t want anyone in his bed. I’d read somewhere that sometimes people living with the disorder were germophobes.
Why he checked his pocket watch every single hour.
All the times he rushed away after we fooled around to gain back his sense of control.
The way he drank his coffee in exactly nine sips. At exactly nine in the morning.
The way he wore his Valentino suit every Wednesday, the Prada every Thursday, and the golden engraved cuff links only to meetings that were at risk of being unfruitful.
He always entered rooms with his right foot. Wiped his utensils with the tablecloth at restaurants. Only drank from straws.
I knocked on the open door softly to make myself known. His head snapped up.
“Done sulking, I presume.” He clamped his teeth over the tip of his pen, looking up from his book.
“For the immediate future, yeah.” I stepped inside, ignoring his jab. “Might melt down later, though.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Of course he’d make it hard on me.
“Thank you, for…” I jerked my head to the hallway. I knew explicitly mentioning what he did would irritate him.
“Yeah.” He closed the textbook, setting it aside along with the pen. “I needed to lure you back out. Fuck knows how long this arrangement will last.”
“You do realize this is not how people think, right?” I cleared my throat.
“Have I ever claimed to be normal?”
“No.”
He spread his arms as if to say, And there you have it .
Filled with fresh compassion toward him, I let him ramble on.
And on he went.
“In lieu of a functioning daughter, I hired a certified nurse to check on your mother.” He stood up, waltzing over to his walk-in closet.
I followed him, realizing it didn’t really surprise me that Tate did this. He did a lot of thoughtful things for me when I wasn’t even paying attention.
He began undressing from his casual suit in the vast mahogany room. A freshly pressed tux hung on the mirror across from him. “You’d be happy to know your mother’s pneumonia is almost gone. The rest of her infections are being treated now. She is going to pull through.”
I knew that. I had been texting with Dr. Stultz every day, getting reports from him. He made the trip to ICU to keep me in the loop. My mother was unconscious and heavily drugged. Dr. Stultz insisted there was no point in me coming in. She wouldn’t know.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I appreciate your concern and your thoughtfulness.”
He produced a barely human grunt.
“Where are you going?” I asked when his dress shirt sailed down his arms onto the floor.
His torso was a work of the gods. Sculpted to its last inch, his abs prominent, each muscle in his arms defined and molded to perfection.
A rush of heat found its way to my core, reminding me it was so very empty.
“Luca’s engagement party.” He unzipped his pants.
I didn’t look away. A bit late to play coy.
“Oh, lovely. Sounds like fun.”
“He begs to fucking differ,” he muttered sarcastically, sauntering in nothing but his black Armani briefs toward his suit. “It’s a marriage of convenience to strengthen the ties with the Chicago Outfit. As far as I’m aware, he finds her mousy and unattractive.”
“Why?”
He unhooked his dress shirt from the hanger. “Because she is mousy and unattractive.”
“That’s not nice,” I chided. I was now inside his walk-in closet, leaning against the central island, staring at him with fascination.
“I’d be pissed off too if I had to commit to an eternity fucking a woman I wasn’t attracted to.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Maybe getting out of the flat would do me good.
“Unnecessary.”
“I could use the fresh air.”
“You won’t get it in a hotel ballroom full of people.”
“Do you not want me to come?”
“I do not want you to leave ,” he snapped, turning around to stare me down with fire in his eyes. “You’re already flaking on this deal, and I’m tired of getting fucked over.”
I ate the space between us so we stood toe-to-toe, pressing my palm to his cheek. His gaze narrowed into slits. Both our hearts galloped, beating against one another.
“I will not run,” I whispered.
“I know.” His jaw twitched.
“How do you know?”
“Because I run fucking faster, Gia,” he deadpanned. “I’ll catch you, and you’ll regret it.”
“Not until our contract is expired anyway.” I ignored his threat, not missing his flared nostrils and the muscle jumping in his jaw. “I’ll fulfill my duties to you.”
“That’s very charitable of you.”
“I’ll go put something on,” I smiled.
He clasped my wrist before I could spin around, jerking me back to his sphere. “You’re not coming unless I am.”
“Excuse me?” My breath stuttered in my lungs.
“You heard me.” He stood up, towering over me, making me fight my instinct to shrink and cower. “I’ve eaten you out, fingered you to oblivion, and awarded you with a hundred and thirty-two orgasms now.”
A hundred and forty, actually. And here I thought he was the math genius.
“Your point?”
“You’re using me, and I’m over it. You want to play wife—we fuck. Otherwise, you can stay here, and we’ll resume our little cat-and-mouse game when I’m in a better mood.”
My jaw went slack. “Are you telling me that if I want to come with you, I have to fuck you now ?”
He trailed a thumb over my eyebrow affectionately. “Not necessarily now now. I’ll choose the time and place. But it’ll be in the next twelve hours.”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
“ Now she is getting it.”
Yet I didn’t leave. I didn’t say no. I didn’t argue.
Deep down, I wanted it. Knew it was inevitable.
And I loved the way he pulled me out of my comfort zone.
How he molded me into this fearless, feisty creature.
One who pressed daggers to his throat and outsmarted mobsters.
He lured me into his own Wonderland, into a sink-or-swim situation, and I swam.
“Glad we’re on the same page.” Tate interpreted my silence as compliance, giving me his back. “Get dressed. Something with easy access, of course.”
“E-easy access?”
“No tights,” he explained. “Unless you don’t mind them being ruined.”
I was already halfway across the room when he asked, “Oh, and, Gia?”
“Yes?” I turned around to see he still had his back to me.
“Wear something modest, unless you want your dress stained by other people’s blood.”