Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DARIA
T he sound of grunts and growls behind the kitchen door. Mamma’s trembling hands and weeping face in the dark corners of her bedroom.
I slid off the bed like I’d done it a million times. Like sleeping next to the Don of New York was bred into me like twirling spaghetti around my fork. There was nothing that said it was only the third morning except for my heart pitter-patting in sync with my feet as I trudged to his bathroom where he’d moved my stuff in like it was our bathroom. Keeping up appearances and all.
I didn’t grasp why he bothered. Why did all men? Why couldn’t they just be blunt and tell you to your face that they just want to fuck you and when they get tired, which will happen sooner rather than later, they’d fuck everything around them, too. While you play house, cook and clean and pop out the occasional baby.
A thought trailed through my mind. Maybe I could get him to do that? I paused with the toothbrush in my mouth, the minty toothpaste frothing like whipped cream on Mamma’s orange polenta cake. Maybe I could get him to admit his plans. If he put words to his intentions, I could build a battlement around me with siege weapons and all.
I spat and rinsed my mouth and face. I’d decided that was all the effort I was going to make for the man who married me. It was a pity, really. I loved to dress up. But if I did, it would give him the wrong impression, and that would put a dent in my battle plans.
I made my way to the kitchen, my bare feet cold on the glazed marble tiles. Noises coming from the kitchen made me wonder if he could cook.
My feet skidded to a halt and sunk into thick concrete. My heart thundered in my ears.
A young girl. Around my age. Blond hair. Voluptuous figure. In the kitchen. Doing things.
The floor below me shifted from shiny marble to checkered black-and-white tiles. My head was dizzy, but I still heard it.
Strange noises coming from the kitchen. In Sicily.
My feet carried me there.
I was back on the marble floor, the world spinning around me.
The girl looked up with a smile.
The door stood ajar in the kitchen, and strange noises…
The girl was speaking. Her mouth was moving. I couldn’t understand. Didn’t want to.
Moans and grunts from the kitchen in Sicily. The new girl, Isabella on all fours. And… my breath hitches like a fist has landed on my chest, Papà grinding in and out of her. My scream spilling into the air.
It was only eerie silence in here. The girl was talking. Her mouth was still moving. Her eyes were worried. But couldn’t she see? I was drowning and the noises around me deafening.
My world was bursting at the seams. Nothing to hold me in place.
My eyes jerked to a flicker of movement. Lorenzo came out from beyond the kitchen, wearing running shorts, bare-bodied and sweat-pooling down.
Papà bare-bodied.
Lorenzo bare-bodied.
Sweat.
Sweat.
Girl with blond hair.
Girl with blond hair.
My eyes rolled with madness.
Lorenzo scowled. Like Papà did.
Or was it guilt? Or was it insanity?
Something so sharp and deep twisted in my heart, and acid filled each vein, every cell, and every pore.
Panic didn’t crawl through my throat, it flooded the gateways and burst through.
Someone was screaming like a banshee, and feet were running.
Running, running, running.
LORENZO
I could judge the tension in a room in a single heartbeat. Calculate the egos, manipulate the room, know the pros and cons, and attack where it would hurt the most. With a word, a look, or a fucking gun.
Except when it came to my fucking wife because she rattled me like marbles in a damn tin jar.
I came out of my gym to find her plastered to the floor as if her very soul was in danger of being sucked away. But there was nothing to equal the terror in her eyes. All I found was the new maid I’d hired since my Sicilian housewife didn’t know how to cook. Fuck if I knew what the danger was oozing out of her, but it must have been big because I’d never seen my wife look like this.
She looked haunted like past horrors in the present tense. Like the monsters under her bed had found her in my territory. She looked like no man could protect her, even if he wanted to. And that irritated my skin like a nasty rash and clenched my chest like a metal clasp. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to protect her with all that I had. But before I could put a word to my thoughts, and take a step towards her to comfort her, she let out an ear-splintering scream that had the small hairs on the back of my neck jerk up. The eeriness of it would haunt me for days to come, I thought as I lunged for her. But whatever demons she was fighting with had her sprint so fast that the lift was already buzzing down even before I’d crashed through the front door.
“Fuck!” I punched my fist into the marble wall. It should have hurt, but all it did was burn my heart. I bolted back inside to grab my phone, and even as I punched the button for Danilo, my heart pounded like damn gunshots in a loop.
“Daria… she’s coming down. She’s terrified. Keep her in the lobby.”
The button of the bloody lift pulsed from the number of times I’d pushed it. I paced, and I growled, and I pushed the damn button a million times.
Frustration jumped on me and clawed all over my skin.
I’d known how to handle a gun since I was nine. Mamma went out with a blast, and the very next hour, I found myself with my first gun. I wasn’t letting anyone else die on my watch. But there wasn’t a damn gun in the world that could prepare me to help my fucking wife, who was running away from a demon I couldn’t fathom.
I wanted to be down there. Not let my man catch her before me. I had to be there for her. Not my fucking men.
The moment the lift went ping, I swear that the fire in me flew out like I was a fucking dragon. Jesus, each drop of a floor riled my frustration up an inch. What a fucking stupid idea of mine to go and live on the goddamn 129th floor.
The lift landed with a gentle thud, the soft whoosh of the doors, and I strode into the lobby. The view loomed dark in front of me. My feet skidded to a stop so fast that I staggered back like a fist had landed on my beating heart. My Principessa was on the ground wailing her heart out while my fucking men stood around her like damn Satan’s wall.
“Move the fuck away from her,” roared out of me as I sprinted toward her.
We were the fucking entertainment of the lobby, and on any other day, I might have cared. Might. Not today, though. I skidded, took a breath to calm my racing heart, and approached her tentatively. I hoped to fucking God she wouldn’t run. I didn’t know if I would have the heart to chase, when she looked so fragile and shattered, like a princess should never be.
My insides burned like acid swirling in a hot pot. It hurt so much that I almost wanted to keel over and throw the fuck up. But I put one foot in front of the other, and when I was in front of her, I slowly slid to my knees, and I forgot that there was a world outside of us.
I’d thought seeing another man in between her legs was the worst it could ever get. I was so fucking wrong.
Her eyes were tightly shut, and she rocked on her knees as she wailed out her pain. She was so precious. A crystal amidst fucking bulldozers.
“ Principessa,” I rasped, terrified she might run again because I didn’t have the heart to cage her in. But she surprised me. Yet again. The moment the word left my mouth, she jumped on me and hung on to me like a fucking koala bear. Her tiny body flung me back onto my heels, and damn, did it feel like candlelight in the darkness of my heart.
I don’t think she knew how tight she held on. Her long nails crawled my back, and her chest pasted to mine. It was with sheer strength that I knelt up straight when the slightest whiff could have taken me to the floor. Her weeping shook my chest, each sob vibrated in my rib cage.
“Shhh, baby, I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” I crooned to her wails as I rocked her tight. Her body jittered in my arms like she was in a boat in the middle of the Atlantic and not in my damn arms on a mid-August Monday.
I wrapped my hands around the nape of her neck and pushed her face to my chest. “Shhh, breathe with me,” I whispered in her ear, and it was like a magic switch had been flipped on. Her painful wails slugged down instantly to harsh whimpers vibrating on my chest.
A shiver rocked her body as she tried to hold her breath in, and when I did the same, hers released to my whoosh. Somehow, with a hitch here and there, we found the balance, and slowly but steadily, we started breathing to a tune that was ours. With each breath, I found a shiver less in my arms. Her stiff body sagged till she went completely slack.
Noise filtered into my mind again. Gapes from strangers. Ringing phones, flashing cameras. The black-suited bodies of my men surrounded us. In an instant, I wanted her out of here and away from prying eyes. She was mine. To protect. No one else should witness her weakness, if it even could be called that.
So I rocked back and stood up with her in my arms and strode to the lift with the moving wall of my men as she buried her face in my neck.
Only when the lift pinged shut behind us did I dare to release my breath.