Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LORENZO
I was not sure what I expected from marriage, but running off to a fake meeting the very next day wasn’t it. But tension crawled under my skin, and frustration dripped off every pore of my body. So I had to get out of there before I smashed a fucking mirror into a million pieces. Was it wise to leave my beautiful wife alone in front of a balcony 129 floors up? Not really. But I’d locked those doors with a code she wouldn’t know. Because strangely enough, the moment she stepped out, my hands itched to drag her back inside. I had the nasty feeling that she might have jumped. Not so strange, really. She’d looked miserable the moment we got into our car in Sicily. How she’d turned around and watched till the house and the people in it disappeared as we drew away would have broken anyone’s heart. Even mine, apparently.
I strode into one of my clubs and busted into my office in the basement. I lit my seventh cigarette of the day and watched the gray haze spiral out. My wife was going to be the death of me. I already knew that. She had me all fucked up, and I couldn’t figure out why. Comfort was violence. Pleasure was fucking a woman on her knees. Faceless, non-Italian with a long braid of black hair. She wasn’t any of that. Then why the fuck were my hands itching as if she was my Pandora’s box?
I didn’t ask for much. All I’d wanted was a doll. Not a ‘snapping back’ one minute and ‘lost my voice’ the other woman. Not the ‘I don’t want you to own me’ type of woman.
“What the fuck, bro?” I spun my chair around to Stefano, framing the doorway. “Where’s my cognata? ”
“Home.” I frowned as he walked in and dumped the files he was carrying on my desk. I wasn’t in the mood to chitchat and I knew what was coming. But he said nothing. Just sank down on the couch, typing on his phone till it irked my skin like nails on sandpaper. “Spit it out?”
He looked up with an innocent smirk on his lips. “Didn’t say anything.”
“You want to. Get it over with,” I growled.
He dropped his head to his phone. With one leg stretched out on the couch and the other on the floor, he looked relaxed. How I would be if it weren’t for the glossy walls in my penthouse reflecting a girl with brown hair and big blue eyes. They had looked a steel blue to me right before I’d left. #4682B4 to be exact. I would know because my damn phone showed search results for color charts of fucking blue.
“Just think you shouldn’t have left her alone.”
“She was getting on my nerves.”
“Jesus, Enzo, sometimes I wonder if I was born before you.” He ignored my scowl. “She just left everything she knew behind to hop on a plane with strangers and come to a country she’d never been to. She’s never left Italy, for fuck’s sake. Give her a fucking break.”
“She’s not fucking porcelain.”
He laughed. “That she isn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I couldn’t stop my fucking anger from rising.
Stefano sighed, threw the phone on the couch, and sat up straight. “Don’t know what your plans are. You want to keep her home and pretend you never got married? Fine. Just be prepared for the unexpected.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“If she sneaked out and lost her virginity, don’t be surprised if she does worse.”
Something heavy, thick, and green slithered through my veins so fast that I didn’t realize I’d hurled the marble paperweight on my desk till it crashed into the wall an inch away from my brother’s fucking face. He didn’t move a muscle on his face. “No point in shooting the messenger, bro,” he muttered darkly.
There was a time when nicotine was my relaxation. That time wasn’t now. The thought that she might sneak out with another man or, worse, run away, made acid pile in my stomach. I didn’t like that fucking idea one bit, and I didn’t like my jackass brother for suggesting it.
“Do something with that pent-up energy of yours. Go show some attention to your wife.”
Jesus. I loved the moron, but he never knew when to stop.
“You wanted a marriage of convenience. I get that. Then why’d you change your mind and agree to marry her? You must have felt something. And before you go off on her sister being unavailable, I’ll be damned if I believe that shit. You could have got out of it easily and allied a different way. But you went ahead with it.”
“What’s up?” Nico darkened the doorway with a scowl.
“Stefano’s being a shrink,” I muttered darkly.
“Stop being a dick about it. All I am saying is we haven’t had a woman in our lives since Mamma died, and I am not talking about our one-night stands or Papà’s whores as the type of women to have in our lives. Why don’t you just fucking try? Get to know your wife.”
I stumped my cigarette out. A shit load of help, that was.
“What do you think, Nico?” Stefano asked.
Nico looked at us both, detached. I was sure he didn’t care one bit about it. “Get to know her,” he muttered.
“Not you, too, jackass.”
“Whatever. Do what you want. She’s pissed you off. You’re here because you’re pissed about something, right?”
That sounded just about right.
“So, when’s the last time a woman got you so worked up?”
Bastardi .
DARIA
His stupid apartment was enormous. Just like his big fat ego. I got lost wandering through it and finally stumbled into what I assumed was his bedroom with my luggage in it. Fat chance of me sleeping in here with him. So I rolled my bags one by one to one of his many guest bedrooms. The man seemed to be more about more than less. Quantity over quality. I made sure to pick one the furthest away, didn’t bother to tread carefully, and hugged all the walls with my bags till they rolled into my new room. My last two pieces of luggage didn’t have wheels on them, so I pulled them along with me. There was a distinct type of pleasure to be taken in the dents I left on his glossy floors and the chipped-off plaster on the edges of his pristine white walls.
I had no orientation of time and teetered around in a daze. I’d never been alone in a house. Ever. Our home was always filled with servants, uncles, aunts, cousins, and anyone passing by for some Cosa Nostra business. Here I was in a cold apartment, so high up that the people below didn’t know that I was up here. If I screamed, not even a damn bird would hear my cry for help.
My emotions were like a fever in me, spiking up and down. I hit an all-time low when I switched on my phone and realized I didn’t have an international network connection, nor the password for his damn Wi-Fi, and couldn’t contact my family. I wanted to hear Mamma’s yells, Lia’s whining, and Vitale’s rough words. I might have even taken Orietta’s snarky words. Anything above this cold, lonely place. So I sat down in my room on the cold floor and wept my eyes out. Then, because I was a Di Matteo, and I wasn’t going to allow a man to keep me down, I wiped my eyes and went down to the kitchen to find some food. There was nothing in there. Did the asshole even think that I might need food?
I opened the front door to find Ciro, who was most certainly the burliest guy under his pay. Ciro spoke limited words. I got the impression he wasn’t into talking much, or he just didn’t want to speak to me. Maybe he was under instructions from his asshole boss. There was no chance he was going to be my American Luna, but I got him to order a pizza for me, and when it arrived, I cried again. It was the worst pizza I’d ever had and tasted like the cardboard it arrived in. After half a piece, I gave up, left it in the kitchen, went into my shower, and cried again. I promised myself this was the last time. Tomorrow was going to be a new day. I was going to grow up and put on my big shoes and get on with it.
The good thing was, it was only a lifetime. One day, I’d be dead and long forgotten, and no one would know my pain or this stupid marriage I was in.
I didn’t bother drying my hair when I came out. Jet lag hit me like a whack on the head. I didn’t even remember sleeping. One minute, I was up, and the next, I was in dreamland. It was so much better than my stupid reality. Tomorrow would be a better day.
LORENZO
I came home a few hours after I’d left it to the smell of vile pizza in the kitchen. Guilt pawed at my chest. I’d been so pissed I had walked out of there without thinking that she might need some food. Jesus! Even I knew I’d been an asshole. I bit a chunk off the pizza and spat it out instantly. That explained why she’d only had half a piece. I had no idea where she ordered it from, but it must have been from the slums. I had a feeling it was a suggestion from Ciro because the guy had the weirdest tastes. Which is why I shouldn’t have put him in charge of my fucking wife.
“Daria?” I called out to a silent apartment. It felt weird to call out to someone in a place I’d lived in alone for years. Am I supposed to do this every time?
I walked from room to room and ended up in my bedroom to find it empty and the floor damaged. I was a meticulous person. Organized to the point that I knew what I was doing every hour of my day. The only color in my life was in my agenda, which was color-coded. My shirts were hung according to color, if you count black and white as color. I didn’t do spontaneity. I did details. I had an eye for them and craved them. The only disarray in my life was the fucking clothes on my body and my annoying wife. The scratches on my flooring and the dents on my walls leading from my room to one of the guest bedrooms should have been pissing me off. I only followed them as if it was a routine, pushed the door open, and walked in.
It was early evening. Barely seven, but she lay passed out on the bed as if she’d literally fallen on it. Again, guilt trod into my chest. It was the first time she’d flown. She must have been jet-lagged. She lay there in the middle of the bed in another tiny short and t-shirt combo, and something I didn’t recognize clawed at my chest. It wasn’t guilt this time. She must have taken a shower. Before I knew it, my hand was in her hair and combing through it. It was still wet and all tangled up, but somehow she still looked like a fucking angel. Soft snores filled the room and pulled a reluctant smile out of me. I’d wanted to marry a doll. Instead, I was stuck with her. I couldn’t quite describe what she was. Except that Nico might be right. She angered me, frustrated me, and annoyed me more than any other woman I knew of.