49. Antonio
Chapter forty-nine
Antonio
“T his feels weird.” She chuckles as I hold open the car door for her when we arrive outside Kaia’s house.
Everyone strategically left us at the restaurant alone with just security and a car.
“Why? It’s just like before.” I interlace our fingers and guide her up the driveway.
“It just feels so real now.” She shrugs.
“It didn’t feel real before?”
“I think a part of me was always convinced it was fake. Like I couldn’t let myself believe it could be real.”
“Well, it is real, tesoro .” I run my thumb over the ring on her finger and bring her hand up to my face to look at it. “You never took it off.”
“I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Pierre even volunteered to keep it for me.”
“I couldn’t do it, either.” I show her my left hand, and I watch as the colour behind her cheeks deepen.
I open the front door and let her in first. The second were inside, my eardrums feel as if they’re going to burst when a scream echoes through Kaia’s entire house and probably half of Cape Town.
“Oh my God, you look even more like a finance bro in person,” Theá’s sister says, appearing from behind a wall.
“Hey.” Theá frowns. “It’s the first time you’re meeting him properly, and you’re acting like a bitch.”
“I’m sorry,” she says to me under her breath.
I shrug. “I have Adriano and Augustus keeping me humble; it’s nothing I haven’t heard before. This must be your sister. Nice to officially meet you.”
Beyond seeing her briefly at the wedding, I never met Theá’s sister since she was in her room most of the time.
“Antonio, this is Noelle, my not so lovely little sister.”
“Hey, I’m an amazing sister,” Noelle defends.
“I have grey hairs because of you,” Theá says, brushing past her sister as we walk deeper into the house. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Kaia’s house, and I forgot just how massive the place is.
Pierre, Mattia, and Kaia are all standing around the kitchen counter chatting, all turning silent as we enter the room.
“Well…” Pierre says apprehensively.
“You said he was probably dead,” Theá practically yells at her brother.
“I didn’t know, I swear. Well, at the time I’d known for a while that he was alive, but Kylian did quite a number on him, so we had to wait for him to heal.”
“And you.” I point at Mattia. “Why didn’t you tell me that you knew she was safe? We had a deal.”
“Our deal was that I would do everything in my power to keep her safe, which I did.” Mattia raises his hands in defence.
“And how did you end up wrapped up in all of this?” I ask Kaia as I take a seat at the counter, pulling Theá to sit on my lap.
I don’t miss how everyone’s eyes track our movements, or how even Theá stiffens before relaxing.
A smile settles onto Kaia’s face as she observes us. “Ambrose called in a favour.”
“So he knew, too?” I look around the room, flabbergasted that they manage to keep this a secret from us.
“Everyone knew. Even Natalia, Val, and Selena,” Mattia admits.
I scoff and toy with the end of Theá’s braid. “You’re all a bunch of con artists. This was some Ocean’s Twelve type of plan.”
“Oh my God, thank you for recognising that. That was my inspiration,” Mattia says as he takes a bow, and everyone in the room starts laughing.
The conversation continues as Theá starts asking more questions about the details of the plan. And all I can think about is how I finally have my world right back where it’s meant to be. Her with me.
“I like your hair like this,” I whisper into her ear and watch as goosebumps run across her skin, a sight I haven’t seen for weeks. Even just the thought of her being this close to me has me feeling like someone set fire to my skin.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder . I’ve always thought that saying was stupid—until right now. I’ve missed her so much that even this physical contact has every single one of my nerve endings firing off rapidly.
Her sweet scent is drawing me in, and I’m so enamoured by her that I start tracing lines all across her skin, not hearing a single word of the conversation happening around me.
I want more. More of her skin on mine. More of her attention. More of her. I want all of her.
I rise to my feet abruptly, and everyone’s eyes fall to me. “We’re gonna head to bed.”
“We are?” Theá asks as I wrap her hand in mine.
“Yeah, we have an early flight home tomorrow.”
“Home? I thought this was going to be home?” She freezes in her spot.
“Oh no, tesoro, our home is Tevici,” I smirk and pull her along after me until we reach the wing of guest rooms. “Which one is yours?”
She pauses, visibly unsure about something, and a part of me worries if this is all too soon. Have I moved too fast in trying to get back to this moment? “We don’t have to do anything. I just want to be near you.”
“It’s not that,” she pauses, biting her lip.
“Then what is it?” I cup her face, forcing her to meet my gaze.
“I can’t leave with you, I have to take care of Noelle now and make sure that she’s okay. I fear my father will find her with how reckless Noelle can be sometimes, not to mention her naivety.”
A soft chuckle slips past my lips, and she shoots me a glare.
“ Tesoro, I don’t know what made you think we’d leave her here alone; she’s coming with us. I would never leave your sister behind.”
“But she’s not your responsibility, she’s mine.”
“ You’re my responsibility, which means indirectly, she is, too.”
“Even if she’s a giant brat?” She chuckles.
“Yeah, even then. She reminds me a bit of her older sister.”
Theá guides me to her room, and the second we’re inside, I make quick work of spinning her around and pinning her to the door. “Now that we're alone. I just want to make it very clear that the next time you’re going to be sleeping is on the flight, because tonight I’m going to claim every inch of you as mine.”