Chapter 37
FABIANA
The dining room of La Capasa, the small osteria Cosimo and I had picked for our dinner spot, felt like it had existed in Grottaglie for centuries.
A vaulted limestone ceiling arched overhead, elaborate iron sconces lined the walls, and a fire danced behind the blackened grate of the hearth, sending a steady crackle through the room.
Garlic, butter, and the smell of grilled meat wafted through the air. It was enough to get my mouth watering. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until now.
I settled into the chair next to Cosimo and picked up the menu. We were seated beside each other at a round table nearest the hearth. “I have a feeling we’re about to have a very good meal.”
His menu lay unopened in front of him. He stared at me intently, and for a moment, I forgot about my hunger—at least the type that food could sate. The other hunger was impossible to forget as long as he was around me, holding my hand and playing the role of a man on a honeymoon a little too well.
“Your brother told me once that you like to cook. You’ve never cooked for me.”
His comment took me by surprise. “You have a private chef. I didn’t think you’d want me to.”
“I want you to.” He tapped his index finger lightly against the menu. “If you enjoy it.”
I rolled my lips together, strangely flattered by the request. I did enjoy it. In Geneva, I cooked a lot, but I stopped once I came back to New York. I shot him a small smile. “When we get back, I will.”
I was going to leave it at that when I remembered Mia’s advice. Lean into it.
“My mom taught me how to cook.” I kept my gaze on the menu, scanning the list of antipasti without actually reading the words. “Dad left her alone when she was in the kitchen. We spent a lot of time in there together before she sent Elena and me off to boarding school.”
Cosimo’s attention didn’t waver from me. “She wasn’t at the wedding.”
“She’s a bit reclusive these days. Doesn’t like to be in big crowds, to be seen by people…” I swallowed. “She never looked good enough for my father. Couldn’t do anything right. None of us ever could.”
I looked over the top of the menu to Cosimo’s hands. They were clasped together on the table in front of him, the knuckles white. Something scared and vulnerable wavered inside my chest as I slowly lifted my gaze to him. To his face. To his eyes.
They were hard and angry. But after a second of me staring right into those blue depths, they softened. Flickered with understanding.
I was introspective enough to know where all my insecurities stemmed from. Now he knew it too.
Getting over them? Well, I was a work in progress. But it didn’t escape me that he’d been aiding the progress in subtle ways.
The waiter came by to explain the menu, which was a relief since I hadn’t absorbed a single word I’d read.
Either he was the world’s best salesperson, or Cosimo was even hungrier than I was, because we somehow ended up ordering every single dish I expressed even a remote interest in. It was easily enough for four people.
When the waiter left, Cosimo leaned back in his chair and glanced around the restaurant. A short chuckle escaped him.
“What is it?” I asked.
He nodded toward the poster hanging over the bar. “La Dolce Vita. Reminds me of Romolo’s Fellini phase.”
“Romolo had a Fellini phase?”
“He’s a movie buff. When we were teenagers, he forced Alessio and me to sit through multiple Fellini marathons with him.”
“Did you like them?”
“I thought they were boring as hell.” His mouth curved faintly. “I never had any desire to revisit them, but maybe I’d appreciate them more now that I’m older.”
I tried to picture a younger version of him sitting through old Italian films beside his brothers. It was strange to imagine Cosimo as a boy. “Are you and your brothers close?”
“We are now after Dad’s death.” His gaze lowered briefly to the table. “Probably closer than we’ve ever been. But it wasn’t always that way.”
“How come?”
He straightened out his cutlery, seemingly unsure of how much of an answer he wanted to give me. The firelight flickered over his face. Despite his hesitation, he looked more relaxed than I could ever remember him being.
“My mother deliberately tried to keep us divided,” he said, reaching for his wine.
I frowned. By now, I’d thought I understood the kind of person Vita was. Manipulative. Power hungry. Controlling. But Cosimo’s tone made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight.
There was more to it, wasn’t there?
“Why would she do that?”
Cosimo swirled his wine. “My mother puts on a certain face for the world. My brothers and I are the only ones who’ve ever seen the real her.
” His voice stayed even, but there was ice beneath it now.
“I think she always knew if the three of us got too close, we might stand up to her. She didn’t want that. ”
“How did she try to keep you divided?”
“When we were younger, it was logistics. She encouraged Alessio and me to move out, leaving Romolo at the penthouse with her. She invited us over for dinner, but always individually. Then, as we got older and started working for Dad, she made him place us in different parts of the business, working on different things.” His jaw tightened.
“Sometimes she’d tell Romolo I’d complained about him, or tell me that Romolo had complained about me.
Little things. Things with enough truth in them to make them believable, but enough distortion to create distrust.”
The unease in me swelled.
“We were busy. Never fully caught on to what she was doing,” he continued. “Didn’t have enough honest conversations.”
Heat brushed over my cheeks. I knew a thing or two about that.
“But you’re united against her now.”
“We are.” There was no triumph in his voice. Only caution. “I hope it’ll be enough to keep her from getting what she wants.”
The waiter returned with some of the antipasti we’d ordered, and for a moment, the conversation paused while he explained each dish. I only half listened. I was too distracted by the unexpected commonality between Cosimo and me.
When the waiter moved away, I reached for an olive and popped it into my mouth.
“My dad tried to create distance between us too. He always favored Rafe over me and Elena, and he made sure we knew it. When you’re a kid, all you want is for your parents to love you, so for a long time, we resented Rafe.
We thought he was stealing Dad’s attention from us.
” I rubbed my thumb over a stray crumb on the tablecloth.
“It took us years to understand what holding that attention on himself cost Rafe. My brother was always trying to protect us, even when we didn’t see it.
I still regret how coldly my sister and I acted toward him before we learned the full story. ”
Cosimo studied me. “It’s good that you had Elena.”
“Yes. But we were never as close as people expect twins to be. She’s bold and brave, and let’s just say that if her boss tried to pull the kind of trick mine did, she’d have to be dragged out of the UN kicking and screaming.
” A small smile tugged at my mouth. “I love her, but she’s very different from me. ”
“You don’t sound that different.”
I sent him a questioning glance.
“You’re brave too, Nettle. Look at what you’re doing. You came with me on this trip despite knowing things might get dangerous.” His gaze held mine. “That’s bravery.”
“I don’t know if I agree.” I hesitated before saying the next part. It was revealing, but it was true, and hadn’t I just decided that I should lean in? Screw it. “I’m not nervous about being here. I feel safe with you. Always have.”
Something heated and all too pleased skated through Cosimo’s eyes. He reached for his wine and took a sip, allowing a charged silence to settle between us.
The hearth had warmed the room. He unbuttoned his sleeves and began to roll them up. I watched him while the conversation we were still stubbornly not having began to rehearse itself in my head.
I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want a second husband. I want you. Can we give this a real try?
God, it seemed so simple. But Cosimo was wrong. I wasn’t brave. At least, not brave enough. Someone brave would shake off the fear that gripped me at the prospect of saying all that out loud. I couldn’t.
And then, in a flash, I wasn’t thinking about any of that at all.
I was looking at Cosimo’s forearms. I’d noticed the tattoos before, dark ink shifting over muscle, but I saw something else there now that made my blood run cold.
Small circular marks on his skin. They were round and faintly brown, scattered along the inside and outside of his forearm.
“What are those scars on your arm?”
Cosimo’s expression darkened. He looked away, considering his answer for a long moment.
“Cigarette burns,” he finally said.
I blinked. “Why do you have cigarette burns on your arm?”
“When I was younger, it was my mother’s favorite way of disciplining me.” He said it in a calm monotone, as though he were telling me the name of a dish on the menu.
Horror flooded through me. “What?”
“It stopped when I was twelve. I got too big for her to do things like that. I could overpower her easily by that point.” His fingers flexed once against the table. “When I was younger, she’d go to town.”
I couldn’t look away from the scars. Could barely wrap my head around what he was saying.
Vita wasn’t just ruthless. She was a monster. And she had everyone fooled.
No, not everyone. Mia knew what she was. She’d tried to warn me but hadn’t gotten into the details. I understood why now. Whatever Rom had told her about his mother must’ve been too private for her to share with me.
I took a shallow breath and dragged my gaze up to Cosimo’s face. “At the engagement party, she said something about teaching you discipline. Is…this what she meant?”
He gave a slow nod. “She was generous with her punishment. It came whenever I lost my temper. Cried. Defended one of my brothers. Stood up to her in any way. I was supposed to shut up and obey her. Always.” He took another sip of his wine.
“The worst of it was when I did anything to threaten her image. She’s obsessed with appearances.
With what others think of her. That’s the source of her power. ”
I stared at him, my stomach turning over. “My God, Cosimo. I’m so sorry.”
His face didn’t change.
“I don’t understand how your dad never realized it.” The words came out before I could soften them. “Or was he like her?”
“No,” Cosimo said. “He wasn’t like her.”
Relief flickered through me, but it didn’t last.
“But he always chose her,” he added. “He never protected us, even when the evidence of her actions stared him in the face.”
My chest tightened.
“When he saw the burns on my arms, he stopped taking me on the hikes.” His voice was still controlled, but there was something underneath it now.
Something old and bitter. “Somehow, he thought the proper response to finding out his wife was putting cigarettes out on my arm was to distance himself from me.”
“I don’t understand how he could justify that to himself. My mom wasn’t able to protect Rafe, but she wasn’t the don. Your dad was. He had absolute power.”
Cosimo frowned, his gaze sliding toward the fire. “My mother had her own power over him.”
The rest of our food arrived before I could respond.
“Let’s not ruin our appetite with this discussion,” Cosimo said once the waiter stepped away.
I didn’t argue. For a man like Cosimo—private and secretive—telling me this much must’ve been difficult.
And yet he’d done it. He’d trusted me with information he’d vehemently refused to give me only weeks ago when I’d asked about him and his mother at Gino’s wake.
Warmth and hope converged inside my chest. The shape of what was happening between us was changing. From lust and want, to intimacy and need. He might’ve hidden himself behind tall walls, but he was human like the rest of us. Humans craved to be seen.
I reached for his hand across the table and covered it with mine. “We’re going to get what we need tomorrow.”
His expression softened. Just barely. “Now that you’re here, these pottery workshops have no idea what they’re about to be up against.”
I grinned. “That’s right.”
He turned his palm face up, and our fingers intertwined. Heat bloomed between our hands, slipping under my skin, into my veins, flaring in his eyes.
My heart beat loudly inside my ears. I thought back to the room waiting for us at the hotel, to the tiny bed, to the plans for tomorrow we still needed to discuss.
The fear in me was fading, I realized.
And it was being replaced with anticipation and the certainty of moving toward something inevitable.