Chapter 13 - Domenico
Domenico
Imake more noise than I need to getting out of bed. Drawer scraping, door slamming, shoes heavy on the marble floor. I don’t care if I wake the dead as long as I wake her, but her breathing stays even. Her eyes stay closed.
I’m out the bedroom door and down the stairs.
My thoughts twist in the empty air. They fill the rooms with all the things I couldn’t say last night.
All the things I should have said. It wasn’t the warehouse I thought about when the bullets flew.
It wasn’t the product. It was her, her, her. When did she become my everything?
The house is too large and too empty at this early hour.
I sit at the head of the long dining room table, waiting for company.
Waiting for my family. For my wife. Rain pecks at the windows, the only sound to break the silence.
A maid brings me coffee and toast, dipping a small curtsey, then she’s gone.
“Hey.” Emilio is the first to arrive. Wearing jeans and a t-shirt like he’s a nobody from out-of-town, not a damn Rosetti.
“Hey,” I grumble.
“You’re up early.”
“Always,” I say.
Emilio nods. “Where’s your wife?”
“Go easy, Emilio.” I sigh. “Not before I’ve had my coffee.”
He shrugs and snatches up a piece of toast from my plate while he waits for his own. The maid comes and goes, and my eyes stay glued to the doorway.
Footsteps echo. I look up, but it’s Raffaele, not Besiana, that slouches in. Black leather gloves already on his hands.
“You look well-rested for a man whose warehouse got torched,” he says. “You sleep like a baby, Dom?”
I give him a look. He knows better than to finish that thought. I could tell him about waking in a cold sweat at 3 AM, reaching for her before I even reached for my gun. Instead, I just sip my coffee and wait.
Rafe takes the hint and slides into a seat next to Emilio.
“How much product did we lose?” he asks, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. “Tell me we don’t have a situation.”
“We’re still assessing.” I put my cup down. It clinks loud and hard against the table. “It doesn’t look good.”
We sit like that, the three of us, until my patience frays. I should be long gone, already out on business, fixing the shitstorm that rained down last night. But I need to make sure she’s okay. She should have been downstairs with us an hour ago.
I push back, my chair scraping against the floor, as I rest my elbows on the table.
“Rafe, call Clara. Make sure she’s calm. Tell her we’ll secure more product. Milo, secure a new storage location. We can’t go back to 12th Street.”
“And you?” Rafe asks. “You just gonna sit around here moping?”
Tension is tight inside me, and I leap to my feet, fists up, ready to release it.
Then I see her, and my arms fall to my sides. Her dark hair sleek against her cheek. Her dress an armor of high fashion and sharper lines. She’s perfect, not a hair out of place, like she didn’t spend the night dodging bullets.
“Good morning.” Her voice is calm and controlled, but her eyes hold mine longer than they need to. The slightest hint of a smile, there and gone. It feels like she’s pulled a pin from my chest. Like it’s only now that I start breathing.
“You’re late,” I say, the words slipping out before I can measure them.
Her eyebrow arches ever so slightly. She’s surprised I care enough to say it and even more surprised that I show it. I see it in her eyes, the careful way they consider me, the slight cock of her head.
I want to say more, say everything that teeters on the edge of spilling out. Instead, I bite it back and watch silently as she sits across from me. She picks up a coffee cup, and for a moment, I imagine it’s a shield she’s raising between us. She sniffs it cautiously and wrinkles her nose.
“Problem with the coffee?” I ask.
“What?” she says, catching my stare and holding it this time. “It’s not from Bell I can’t handle her pretending I mean nothing. She stands, scraping out her chair and leaving no room for further argument.
On the way out, a man sitting on the sidewalk nods as we pass. Besiana stops, puts a twenty-dollar bill in his hand, and ruffles his dog’s fur with a familiar touch.
“Take care, Dale,” she says, and the man’s face cracks into something that might have been a smile in a past life.
Water drips from his scruffy hair and jacket, and his green eyes have the same hard edge as his voice.
“You too, Bes.”
When we’re in the car, I say, “Didn’t I tell you not to smile at people unless I talk to them first?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t be ridiculous. That was just for the Met Gala. I can’t live my life that way. Besides, I’ve known Dale for years.”
“He’s homeless.”
“When did you get so observant?” she teases.
She’s amused, but I’m not.
“Why are you kind to him? He’s nobody.”
She shrugs. “Everybody is someone.”
“He could be dangerous.”
“No, not Dale. He’s been there forever. Since I was in college. It makes me sad to think he’ll never leave that one spot in his whole life.”
He will. In about an hour, he’ll be in a hotel room, not a cardboard box. Him and his mutt both. I have it done with one quick phone call and one deep breath.
Besiana doesn’t say anything until I hang up. “Why did you do that?”
“Why do you think?”
She’s quiet for a moment, and when she speaks, her voice is almost soft. Almost tender. “For me.”
She gives me that smile again, like I’ve managed to surprise her. It doesn’t feel bad. It feels goddamn incredible.
We drive home through the rain, and she watches me. Trying to figure out where I found this sudden heart I seem to be displaying. Who the hell I am becoming.
Well, I wish I could help her. I wish I knew.