Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
DARIA
T he air hung tight with the sound of our heavy breaths. The naked pipes hanging on the basement’s concrete ceiling reflected our deeds. Our heated gazes met, and warm awareness prickled like a bed of red ant nests.
Unease on my skin. Words fought to end the silence in between us. “Thanks for coming and getting me.”
His jaw ticked, and his hand found my ponytail and yanked. “Told you. I’ll always come for you,” his voice rasped. His eyes sparked like warm liquid on hot skin.
Something warm tickled inside my rib cage. It felt suspiciously like my iron-clad walls crumbling to their defeat. Agitation rushed up my skin, and self-preservation kicked in. I shoved him off me and stumbled off his bike. Heat brushed my face while I buttoned my blouse up and tugged my skirt down. My throat burned. My eyes misted and caught on my buttons. I hadn’t done them up straight. It was a mess, just like I was. I forced myself to forget what we’d done on his bike, the filth that had come out of my mouth, but damn was it tough when his cum was sliding down the inside of my thigh.
I was falling. Fast and deep. I was angry at him. But even more at myself. I needed to get away from him. All I had wanted was distance, and I had somehow put myself closer to him. To hurt, to insult.
I rushed to the elevator, but even as I jammed the button furiously, a heat behind me screamed of his presence. Emotion clogged my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut because my view was nothing but images of Papà hurting Mamma with his words and his deeds.
“ Va bene? ” His words bristled on my skin like thorns.
I gave a shaky nod because I didn’t trust words to do the job. Truthfully, I didn’t think I was ever going to be okay. I had promised myself I wouldn’t be Mamma. But weeks was all it took for me to be on the edge of that cliff, ready to fall. For a damn made man, the worst of them all.
The elevator pinged open. I rushed in and skidded to a halt. The mirror was all splintered into a million stars. A sixth sense or the experience of being born in the Cosa Nostra told me that the man brushing my back had something to do with it. I didn’t get to make sense of it before he pushed me against the paneled wall, and the elevator climbed up.
“What’s this about?” He caged me in between the hard wall and him. His eyes were electric. They sizzled. They sparked. He was coming for me.
“Nothing,” I choked out.
“Fuck.” He gripped my jaw and cocked it up. “We’re going to try. There’s no way out other than that. Is this about Emily?”
Her name on his lips was like a drench of ice-cold water on my body. It must have shown on my face because he growled out his frustration.
“I fucked her way before I met you, Principessa .” His fists clenched on either side of me. “I didn’t want to tell you because…” a harsh laugh spilled out of him.
“What? Because you thought I’d go all cuckoo on you?” I snapped.
His soft tone grazed my rib cage. “Because I didn’t want to hurt you.”
The door pinged, and I ducked under his arms and rushed out. With a hiss, he followed me and caught me just as I stumbled into the apartment. A gasp, and my feet left the ground when he grabbed me like I was a damn rag doll and threw me over his shoulder.
“Let me down,” I shrieked, trying at the same time to pull my skirt down.
He swatted my hand away. “Time to fucking grow up, Principessa . If you have doubts, we talk about them.”
He strode into our bedroom and threw me on the bed. He had already crawled on top of me before I could scramble off it. His black-clad body breathed danger. His eyes screamed anger.
“What do you want to know? When I fucked her? How I fucked her? What’s going to ease your damn mind that you’re the only woman in my life?” he hissed between his teeth.
“Tell me then.”
“What?”
“Everything.”
He sat back on his hunches and ran his hands through his hair. His eyes sparked disdain. “I was seeing her a few years ago.”
He said nothing I liked. In the slightest. “What does that mean? You were boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“I am no one’s boyfriend,” he growled like an angry gorilla. “I was fucking her, and once in a while, we went out.”
“So, like with me then,” I muttered.
His eyes thinned. “Forget it.” He pushed off. “I can never win with you.”
“No, wait.”
His eyes fell to my hands, which were clutching his wrist.
“Tell me,” I implored softly.
He shoved me roughly on my back and straddled me. “There’s nothing much to tell. We fucked. I found out something about her. I ended it.” He gripped my jaw. “And you are not her.”
I seized his wrist. It was broad and olive-skinned and spoke of masculine strength and uncouthness with the black beaded bracelet next to his watch. “Thank you for telling me.”
He grunted, annoyance riding on his face.
“What did you find out?”
He sighed. It was so deep and so heavy and laden with so much pain, I felt it in the hollow of my chest. It took three heartbeats before he answered. “Her father gave out the information to the Bratva .” My eyes filled with confusion. “To kill my Mamma.”
I hadn’t realized my hands had been stroking his until they stopped. The pain in his eyes told me he’d loved his mamma as much as I loved mine. I had looked at him like a made man and forgotten he was just a man. Someone’s son. One with pain in his heart. My fingers trailed his knuckles, and slowly, his fists unclenched and softly grazed my cheek. Everything suddenly made sense. My eyes flickered to the numbers on his knuckles. “Is that something to do with your mamma?”
“Her birth and death date,” he muttered darkly.
My chest ached to know she died the year I was born.
I was too scared to ask, but I had to know. Even though the clues were all there in front of me and I had been too self-involved to realize it. “How did she die?”
His jaw clenched. Like he would have preferred to bite down on venom than tell me. But he spit out the words that blasted off every wall in the room. “A fucking car bomb.”
My blood thundered in my eardrums even as my heartbeat slowed. “Is that why you always check… the cars?”
He gripped my jaw, determination in every vein. “No one’s fucking dying on me again. Capisti? ” I blinked back tears and nodded numbly. “No association with that woman, sì ?” I nodded again. “Good,” he muttered, his tone moody. “Enough with the talk. I want to fuck you.”
His words were crude, but his deeds were gentle. His hand skimmed roughly on my skin, but the tattoos on his knuckles were soft on my soul. I was edging too close to that cliff, and I wasn’t sure anymore if I cared enough to hold myself back from falling.
I was packing my backpack like a teenager, but my thoughts were far away from starting college in four days’ time. The idea that he wasn’t like Papà was crawling through my mind. It was putting up nails on every cell to anchor a belief. Trust. Was I going to trust him? Just like that?
Stefano’s voice filtered through as the office door closed with a thud, and a minute later, he framed the arch to the living room.
“So, heard your rebellion didn’t end well.”
He walked over to the dining table, grabbed an apple, and popped half of it in his mouth. I always wondered if someone stole his food when he was small.
“Was worth a try.”
“You know, I like you, right, cognata ?”
I nodded slowly, not sure where this was going.
“So take it as brotherly advice, don’t fucking test him.”
Geez. He always looked so nonchalant that I was fooled. The quiet rage in his voice smacked me right in my face. “I don’t know what you did to wrap him around your fingers, but he’s wrapped around you, alright.” He dropped the half-eaten apple back into the bowl, and my immediate thought was that it was going to annoy my husband.
“You should finish it off,” I muttered.
“Yeah? You should appreciate my brother.” He picked the apple up and flipped it behind his shoulder. I frowned as it landed perfectly on the worktop. “He’s changing a lot for you.” His tone softened. “It’s only because he cares for you. Not every man is your papà, cognata .”
“Mamma…” I had timed it just right. On the Friday morning before I started college, when neither Vitale nor Lia would be home, I could get her just for myself. “Why did you do it?”
Her brow creased in confusion. “Do what, Daria?”
They said video calls were not the same as a face-to-face chat. It wasn’t. Distance and a phone screen in between us gave me courage even though my throat burned with anxiety bringing up bad memories. “Let Papà do what he did.”
I couldn’t bring myself to put the words ‘cheat,’ ‘liar,’ and ‘Papà’ together in one sentence when I was already hurting her by bringing it up. When I was already hurting her by bringing it up. When I could see it in her dull face, in the emptiness of her eyes, the shake in her hand when she tugged an invisible tendril in her tight bun.
I thought she’d dismiss it. Or tell me that was how he was made. To change the subject to the weather or Lia doing something to piss her off. But the silence ticked away, and nothing came out. I tiptoed to the door and closed it softly. Benedetta rarely disturbed me when I was in my room, but still…worse than having this conversation was having someone overhearing it. Panic overtook me at the thought that Lorenzo might miraculously walk in when he had just gone off to his office. Ridiculous.
“Mamma… I don’t want to hurt you. I just… I am confused. Lorenzo… he’s doing… so many things… nice things,” I added through my own confusion. “I don’t know what to think, Mamma.” I swallowed the thick lump clogging my windpipe. “I don’t want him to do…” I squeezed my eyes when the thought alone made my lungs clench like they were in a vice.
“Do what piccola mia ?”
“What Papà did. I can’t. I won’t allow it, Mamma. I won’t,” I choked out.
“Oh, mia Daria. Mia zo zo dispiace. Lorenzo is different to Papà.”
“He’s not Mamma,” I pressed, because I wanted someone to pull me back from the danger that was him.
She sighed. It was heavy and hollow, and it ached, and it touched behind my ribcage. “I should have done it all differently. I know that. I think… I let Papà do what he did because I loved him. So much. It hurt me more to be without him than to be with him. Even with all his faults.”
My chest hurt to see her eyes shine bright with unshed tears. To listen to her shaken words.
“Mamma, I am so sorry…”
“No, piccola mia . I need to explain. I should have done it a long time ago, but I didn’t because sometimes even I couldn’t explain it to myself.” She let out a shaky laugh. “It’s not like every marriage is the same. Not like there’s a manual on how to do it.” Her hand looked weathered, clenching the old chain around her neck, her face lined with old memories and new troubles. “But it was my burden to carry, and I shouldn’t have let my children shoulder that burden as well. You all think I am selfless. I am not, Daria. I was selfish. I should have seen how much it hurt my children, but I couldn’t. I only saw Carlo.”
Silent tears trailed down her cheeks. “You know, I tried once. I packed my suitcase even. Called Vitale to come and get me. But when he answered that call, his voice… It reminded me of Carlo when I first met him and how much I still loved him. He loved me, too. You didn’t see everything. Couldn’t. Because no marriage is only good or bad. It wasn’t only bad moments. There were good ones, too. We did lots of beautiful things together. Maybe you didn’t see them. But I did. For every ten faults of his, there was one that made up for all ten of them, and I stayed. That was enough for me. I would never want to replace that.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s not easy for anyone to understand this, mia Daria. Every marriage will have its hurdles and problems, and no marriage is the same. These were mine. The good and the bad. Yours and Lorenzo’s will be different. Because Lorenzo is not Papà and you are most definitely not me, piccola mia . Learn from our mistakes. Take out of it what you want, but make it your own.”