59. Dante
Chapter 59
Dante
A dalina slumps in the backseat, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her knuckles are white as she clenches them, her gaze fixed on the diamond engagement ring glinting on her finger. I can practically feel the heat radiating off of her. She is fuming mad.
“How’s your wrist feeling?” I venture to break the silence pervading the car.
She whips her head around to face me, each movement sharp and deliberate. Her eyes are filled with a fiery mix of anger and frustration, radiating from every pore of her being. And then come the words, like daggers thrown with precision: “You’re a fucking predator.” The venom in her voice drips with disdain as she spits out the accusation, leaving a bitter taste in the air between us.
“I can see how you’d think that,” I begin.
“No,” Adalina cuts me off. “I don’t think that. I know that. You’re a predator. You asked me to marry you when I was high on pain meds.”
“Well, if we’re getting technical, I think it was a combination of anesthesia and pain meds.”
Adalina purses her lips. “I hope someone T-bones this car right now, and it kills you.”
Now, she’s just being dramatic. I know she has feelings for me; they are there in every glance, every touch, and every word spoken between us. “If you really didn’t want to marry me, you wouldn’t have said yes, high or not. But I think being high helped you get in touch with your true emotions for me.”
“If we don’t get T-boned, I’m going to murder you in your sleep,” she threatens.
Enzo snorts in the front seat and tries to cover it with a cough. He’s thinking the same thing I am: this is what my brothers were afraid of. I hope he keeps that information to himself, though. The last people who need to hear about my future bride’s death threats are Salvatore and Luciano.
“Just think about it, Adalina.”
“What about your other wife?” She retorts. Now that we’ve left the hospital, the meds are wearing off quickly. Adalina is just as sharp as she was before the drugs.
“I don’t have another wife. I was engaged to Lucrezia, but I’ve taken care of that.” At least, as far as I’m concerned. Saverio has other plans, but he can’t do anything. I broke my contract with his sister fair and square.
Adalina returns to staring at the diamond engagement ring, her eyes turning into thin slits of anger. “You should have stayed engaged to her. She would have made a nice wife. While I, on the other hand, am going to wind up in prison for killing you in your sleep.”
I wouldn’t have put it past Lucrezia to get a jealous hair up her ass and kill me in the middle of the night. Honestly, after our broken betrothal, I half expected to wake up at 2:00 am with my former fiancé holding a gun to my skull. Luckily for me, she hasn’t been able to get past the gates. “I haven’t been to prison myself, but I’ve been at the county jail a couple of times. The charges didn’t stick,” I add. “I’m Teflon, baby.”
“Call me baby one more time, and I’ll kill you before we get home.”
Oh, she is definitely not in a good mood. “I like the way you call it home.”
Adalina raises her arm, and the car jerks suddenly. Enzo sees the motion in the rearview mirror and immediately pulls over. “No, keep going,” I snap at him. “I can take care of myself.”
But he glares at Adalina through the mirror. “I’ve got some zip ties in the glove compartment. You need’em, boss?”
“If you zip-tie me, I’ll lose it.”
She makes me laugh; she’s so cute when she’s angry. “No. She just had surgery. We can’t zip tie her wrists.” I could zip-tie her arms together at the elbows if I really wanted to, but I sincerely doubt Adalina is going to hurt me. Right now, at least. “Listen, I’m not forcing you to marry me.”
“ Yet, ” Adalina mumbles under her breath.
True. I don’t think there’s any part of me that will allow her to leave my home before there’s a ring on her finger and a tentative agreement between us. “Anyway,” I continue, “I’m not forcing you to marry me, but I really want you to. I wouldn’t have proposed if I didn’t.”
“If this is some sick way to get me to have your children, I’m not doing it.” Adalina pouts in the seat beside me, her face shadowed in anger.
“I never wanted children or a wife, actually.” I confide in her because we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives, even if the rest of our lives is only a few short months before one of us kills the other.
Adalina peeks at me from beneath her eyelashes. “Then why were you engaged to that other girl? And why do you want to marry me?”
It’s tough to explain this lifestyle to someone who hasn’t lived it. Adalina’s had one foot in the door her entire life, but she’s never been all in. “My father arranged my marriage to Lucrezia a few months ago. It wasn’t what I wanted, but he was trying to strengthen the Terlizzis by marrying me to the family in power. The Castigliones run the Midwest through force and fear, and Father thought it would make us untouchable if I married Saverio’s youngest sister.”
I spark her curiosity. Adalina no longer stares angrily at her engagement ring. Instead, she looks at me with wide eyes. “How did my father fit into the family?”
“Tommaso was near the bottom of the food chain. He extended his hand to the Castigliones symbolically, but it was more to benefit himself. He clung to the Midwest families like a leech, sucking us dry but never returning the favor.” My father rarely spoke of the Martinelli family. He brought up the rumors and the stories we all heard over late-night drinks, but it was never more than that. Tommaso was a selfish man who never involved himself with the day-to-day operations of the Family.
“Why didn’t you want to marry Lucrezia? If she could make you untouchable, isn’t that a good thing?”
Enzo quietly drives, pretending he isn’t here. There is nothing I could tell Adalina that I wouldn’t want him to know. He’s my best friend and my right-hand man. “Lucrezia Castiglione is, to put it mildly, insane. The rumors surrounding her are part fact, part fiction. They say she killed a man when she was twelve, that she fucked her father’s inner circle at fourteen, and that she wants to supplant her brother. She’s sixteen years old,” I explain, “and she is a very beautiful young woman, but I could never see a future with her. I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of her, but I would never be able to trust her.”
“Why me, then?” Adalina asks a moment later. “I’ve killed a man. I didn’t fuck my father’s inner circle of bodyguards, despite what he thinks, but I wasn’t a virgin when I met you.”
“When I saw you, I wanted you. I thought it was lust at first. I could have fucked mafia royalty from sea to shining sea, but there was something about you that called to me. Luc thinks I was trying to recreate the family dynamic I had in my childhood when I saved my mother from abuse.”
Adalina gently runs her thumb over the rigid splint encasing her wrist, feeling the rough edges and sharp corners press against her skin. “I don’t think Luciano likes me.”
“Luciano sees my attraction to you as a threat to the family,” I shrug. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with you.”
“Your attraction to me.”
I nod as she repeats my words. “Luc is right, in a way. I wanted to save you, consciously and subconsciously. But it was more than that. You weren’t just beautiful or good in bed; you were a breath of fresh air. Your soul was the yin to my yang, the darkness to my light, the chaos to my calm.”
Her eyebrows knit together, forming a deep crease on her forehead as she scowls. “I may have my moments of impulsiveness, but I wouldn’t label myself as chaotic,” she protests.
I snort at her, unable to keep a straight face. “ Cara mia , you are the definition of chaos. That’s not a bad thing. It’s kept you alive.”
“Alive for what?” Adalina rolls her eyes. “Alive to suffer through my father’s abuse? To be locked up? To be forced to marry a stranger?”
Her unfeeling characterization of her life is depressing. “You are alive for a purpose, Adalina. You lived through hell for a reason. I don’t know why. I don’t know what your experiences have prepared you for. But I know that your life is only just beginning. You’re going to change the world. Your story is going to save so many lives.”
“But I don’t want to tell people my story,” she breathes, barely able to grasp onto the words with her oxygen. “I don’t want people to pity me. I see it in their eyes every time they look at me. ‘That poor Martinelli girl, a victim.’ But I’m not a victim, Dante. I don’t need a handout. I don’t want someone to hold my hand and coddle me. I can be strong on my own.”
I reach over to grab her injured hand, holding it gently in my own. I look at her bruised and swollen fingers, and I hate that this had to happen to her.
“No one is saying that you aren’t strong, Adalina. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. Fear drove me to stab my father when I was nine, but you never let fear drive you. You survived through sheer will. You didn’t let your father break you. You didn’t let his men tear you down. I want to hold you up and strengthen you, but I know that I will never be the force behind you. You are a complete person without me, cara mia . There is nothing I can give you to make you whole; I can only stand beside you and strengthen the parts where you are weak.”
“What’s in it for you?” Her eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What are you getting out of this?”
I shrug because I don’t know. I’ve never wanted a wife. I’ve never wanted children. I’ve never seen a family as an extension of who I am. I’ve always only ever seen myself and my future.
But when Adalina entered the picture, I began to see so much more. We can be so much more together . “You, my love, just you. That’s all I need.”