8. A Queen on a throne
The next day, I’m out with Amber and Nico, meeting with the chairwoman of The West Hill Hospital Burns Department while Andrea and Mike polish his fundraiser speech. The Capaldis have been benefactors for years.
Andrea doesn’t have any pictures of his father in our home and neither he nor Nico spoke of the man who raised them. They don’t need to. While being here, meeting with people of all ages and listening to their stories, I catch a glimpse of what matters to them both, of how they honour his memory. Andrea hides his scars behind a smirk and his careless attitude, but I see him.
His need to be part of something bigger than him, to be in the high spheres of West Hill, I’d bet it stems from a dream he shared with his father, Mario.
My mind’s occupied with thoughts of Andrea as we exit the hospital when we get accosted by a kid no older than fourteen years old, handing me a bouquet of wildflowers. I take it and find a card stapled to the side.
Giulia, beware the company you keep.
My head snaps up to look around us, but the boy already scurried away, probably intimidated by Nico’s dark demeanour.
I don’t like this.
The card looks eerily similar to the one I got after my shopping trip, but it could also be from another person. The carton paper is white and the letters have been typed on a computer, giving nothing away on their sender.
Nico looks over my shoulder at the card and takes the bouquet, throwing it in a garbage bin close by. “This isn’t safe. We need to tell Andrea. Now come on, let’s move.”
Without another word, he directs me to the car and drives me back to the cottage in absolute silence. The card burns a hole in my bag. The only people I’ve met are Nico, Mike and Amber, all on Andrea’s team. I don’t exclude them from my list of suspects altogether and promise myself to gather a file on them too. It seems unlikely they’d alert me on “the company I keep.” The only other person that comes to mind is Addams, but I met him for a total of two minutes.
When we arrive back at the cottage, I don’t look too closely as to why I’d choose to settle in Andrea’s office to plug in my USB key and start my programs, foregoing my own computer. I tell myself it’s because the black wallpaper and thick white plush carpet on the floor soothes my anxiety.
I bypass his password and scour all my resources for information on Parker Addams. No credit card charge for flowers shows up, but that doesn’t mean much.
I wonder why Andrea would need me when he already compiled a huge database of information on Addams as well as on the many people he’s been interacting with. He has dirt on everyone, but Addams is squeaky clean and we can both agree on one thing.
That’s impossible.
I know when he arrives before I even see him, his aura preceding him and his scent of bitter oranges suffocating the air around me. The breath I take fills up my lungs with him. I close my eyes behind the computer screen that hides me from him, in an effort to control my reaction to him. I fail.
“Making yourself at home, sweetheart?”
I barely raise my eyes to him, focusing on the screen in front of me to avoid his intense amber eyes. I sit on his throne and expect him to chase me off it, but he doesn’t move from where he leans on the doorframe, arms crossed and taunt with muscles.
“The decor is left to be desired and your security is abysmal. For someone with your background, it’s laughable, but I make due.”
I raise my eyes then, giving him the sweetest smile that isn’t fooling anyone. He doesn’t take the bait and simply smiles back. It takes my breath away. He’s free with his emotions, unlike most leaders I’ve met before, and now he just looks content to have me sitting here like a Queen.
He looks so casual, so different from the image I had of a politician campaigning for elections. Jeans hug his muscular legs, a simple white shirt stained with grease stretches across his muscles, a medallion gleaming on top of his chest. He gives me a slow sexy smirk that tells me he didn’t miss the way I just ogled him openly, and I want to punch it off his face.
“I’m guessing you got into the file I have on Addams.” He comes to stand behind me and crowds my body with his. Though we’re not touching anywhere, he could be having his hands all over me for the heat that licks my skin and pools low in my belly.
Andrea’s breath skims my neck and cheek before his velvet voice envelops my senses when he whispers softly, “A man could get used to this welcoming sight, guerrieritta.”
I swallow hard and ignore him.
“Even if I get through my own information network, I’m sure I won’t find anything. He’s working a little too hard to keep all the records clean. Most of his properties are registered under his wife’s name and they have a marriage contract, so he owns jack shit.”
“How do you know that? It’s not even on my files.” I detect surprise and a hint of admiration and can’t help but preen that the cyber genius would find my skills something worth noticing.
“I have my ways.”
“You sure do, guerrieritta,” he whispers in my ear. His lips brush my shoulder in the lightest touch. It’s so quick I convince myself it didn’t happen.
“Don’t be crass, Capaldi. And go take a shower, you stink of oil.”
My voice doesn’t have an ounce of heat.
“I love it when you boss me around.”
“Get ready to be bossed around a lot, Capaldi.”
“I look forward to it, guerrieritta,” he growls in my ears before taking a deep inhale like he’s inhaling the very essence of me.
It shouldn’t be as hot as it is and I shouldn’t want him to do it again. I knew when I set the rules for our marriage that if I ever had sex with Andrea, I’d be fucked and not in a good way. Men in my life have been nothing but problems, demanding everything and giving nothing in return. I won’t let his good humour and handsome face change the trajectory of my life.
The truth is that I love nothing more than to seduce and gather attention because then, I set the narrative. I’m in control. The only time I wasn’t, a man manipulated me. I cannot count on my hands the number of times my first boyfriend, Sebastian, said he’d kill himself if I ever left him, or simply not give him what he wanted, be it a job within the family or sex. I was seventeen, and though I was raised in the mafia, born to become ruthless, I didn’t understand that wasn’t love, that wasn’t normal. Maybe if my father hadn’t neglected me, I’d have known better.
I’ve never had a long term relationship beside him, and I don’t count the two months I spent with Louis three years ago. Louis worked for Pierce, though I didn’t know him as my cousin’s husband at the time, and was a great lover. That’s why I tolerated his persistence and clinginess, but he was just a distraction.
“Remember the rules, Capaldi. Now, let me work.”
The tight set of his jaw should not be annoying. The absence of taunt should not be annoying. And yet it is. I might be getting addicted to my husband’s brand of annoyance. He saunters out of the room and I breathe normally again, happy to be relieved of his presence.
That night, it takes me longer than usual to get ready for bed and when I’m in, I toss and turn and can’t seem to calm my racing heart and dirty thoughts.
Even though I know Andrea might come in any minute, I remove my sleep shorts and let my hand fall in between my legs, caressing the skin of my inner thighs before dipping my fingers toward my needy clit.
I let out a breath of relief when I circle my fingers tightly and press two digits inside my wet and aching pussy, my nipples peeking through the thin cami I wear to bed. I slide the fabric down with one of my hands, keeping the other in between my thighs, and pull the nipple taut until pains flares under my skin, mixing with the arousal in the best way.
I lick my fingers to bring the cooling sensation that never fails to send me into orgasm to the peaked tips.
I’m panting and moaning, but I don’t care. I throw my head back, plunging my fingers deeper inside me to stroke my G-spot and pressing the heel of my palm on my clit.
My traitorous brain conjures Andrea, sitting on the club chair, a smug smirk on his lips because he knows damn well who got me all hot and bothered like that. I come in seconds imagining him watching me without my permission to touch himself, his name on my lips.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Falling for my husband, a made man who seems to have stalker-ish tendencies, is not a good idea.
Getting up on unsteady legs, I wash my hands then come back to bed. I’m not sated by any means, but it will have to do.
No matter how much we tend to gravitate towards each other, driven by necessity, close proximity and nothing more, Andrea is an ambitious man with a big ego. I know the type. He’ll lie and manipulate to get me where he wants. I haven’t fought my way for the right to exist with my entire family to do the same with him. I haven’t refused to become serious with anyone, to protect myself, to do it with someone like him, someone dangerous. He could take my entire soul and run with it.