Chapter 36
Lorenzo
Istumbled out of the bedroom after tucking Isabella back in to finish her nap. What the fuck was that? I had gone in to get information about her father, that was all. But I couldn’t get over that feeling in my chest when she’d started panicking.
It had only eased when I had her in my arms.
“Enzo?” Amalia was coming out of the laundry, looking a little more rumpled than when I had seen her this morning. She and Elio must have had fun, after all. “Are you okay?”
“I want to do something nice for Isabella. I just gave her some rough news.”
Her eyes went wide. She blinked a handful of times. “Weren’t you close to locking her away for the rest of her pregnancy just the other day?”
“What’s your point?”
Amalia laughed derisively. “You’re going to give all of us whiplash,” she said, but as she stared at me, she softened. “Take her to dinner. Somewhere nice, away from the estate. Let her feel human for a little while.”
It was a simple suggestion, but it was also a hard line in the sand. If I let Isabella cross it again, like when I had allowed her to see her sister, it would mean something between us. Something more than the deal that kept her tied to me. “Where does Elio take you when you’re pissed at him?”
Amalia’s smile was brilliant. “I’ll send you the address. She’ll need a dress.”
I nodded. “I can get her one.”
She winced. “She could borrow something of mine.”
“I’ve already got one in mind,” I said, picturing Sienna’s deep purple dress that flared around the hips. It was simple but pretty, and I had always liked it.
“Enzo.” Amalia shook her head. “You can’t keep dressing her in Sienna’s—”
I stepped into her space, towering over her, and her words cut off with a squeak. “I can do whatever I like,” I said. “This is my house.”
Her eyes dropped; her face turned red. “Yes, boss,” she said in a perfectly neutral tone that told me what an asshole she thought I was being.
I didn’t call her out on it. “I’ll leave the dress in the laundry room to be steamed,” I said. “Get her ready for eight o’clock.”
Isabella was ready with ten minutes to spare. She knocked on my office door and stepped in. The dress fit her perfectly; it was a good mix of sexy and elegant. Her dark hair was curled lightly and brushed her bare shoulders. Her makeup was light but done expertly.
She looked beautiful, but even though she looked so much like Sienna, I couldn’t stop categorizing all the ways they were different.
Sienna would have gone heavier with her eye makeup; she liked how it made her eyes look more green than gold.
She would have put her hair up instead of down because she hated the way it felt touching her shoulders.
The more that I compared them, and found more and more differences between them, the more I felt like I was able to exorcise Sienna’s ghost from the house.
Even earlier, with Amalia, I hadn’t gotten mad when she said Sienna’s name.
Moreover, her attitude was the thing that pissed me off.
Before Isabella, that would have been unheard of.
“Amalia said that we were going out?”
I nodded. “Dinner, if you’re up for it.”
“Did one of your businesses need checking on?” she asked.
“Not tonight.”
Her brows wrinkled inward. “So, why are we going out?”
I harrumphed and crossed my arms over my chest. “I thought you’d like a chance to leave the property for a bit, but if not, I can just go on my own.”
Her mouth dropped in a little oh of surprise. “I’ll go,” she said.
“Good.”
Thirty minutes later, we walked into a restaurant that was nice enough to have a dress code posted at the door. “Did you have a reservation?” the tall, blonde hostess asked in a faux haughty tone. She hadn’t even bothered to look at him.
“It’s under Vitali.”
Her head snapped up, and she flushed. “Oh, Don Vitali, I’m so sorry.
” She floundered, tapping frantically at her tablet.
“When Ms. Amalia called, she made the reservation for the same table where she and Mr. Elio always eat. I just assumed it was for them.” Sweat began to dot the hostess’s upper lip.
Isabella leaned into me. “I thought this wasn’t one of your businesses.”
“It’s not,” I said. “I’ve never been here before.” But if she knew me as Don Vitali, then she was a member of one of the minor families. “Amalia recommended it.”
Finally, after a few moments, the hostess grabbed two of the menus and tried to smile. “Right this way,” she said and led us into the dimly lit dining room. She took us to a corner booth and gestured for us to sit down. “Here we are.”
Isabella sat and scooted into the curve of the booth, and I followed after her, not stopping until I was right beside her.
The hostess handed us the menu and wished us a good meal.
When we were alone, I watched Isabella flip through the leather-bound menu.
I noticed that she blinked a lot, like she wasn’t able to see it properly.
“Something wrong, dolcezza?”
“There aren’t any prices.”
Was that a big deal? “Order whatever you want,” I assured her.
She wriggled in her seat, obviously uncomfortable. “I just don’t want to pick something that’s too—”
I reached over and put a hand on her thigh. “Money isn’t something you have to worry about. Get what you want.”
She stared at me for a moment and then nodded. “Okay.”
Our waiter showed up a few minutes later, an effervescent smile stretched across his face. “Hello, folks,” he said in a singsong kind of way. “How are we doing this evening?”
I knew he was trained to be friendly, and he probably got tipped really well for that reason, but these particular types of waiters exhausted me.
“I want an eleven-ounce filet, rare, with the loaded baked potato,” I said.
The waiter was surprised for a second, but to his credit, he caught on and grabbed for his order pad.
“Would you like a salad with that?”
I shook my head. “But bring me a whiskey. Whatever your top shelf is.”
“Very good, sir.” He looked at Isabella. “And for you, ma’am?”
Isabella ordered salmon, worried eyes pinned to the menu, as if she were trying to work out what would be the cheapest thing to get. When the waiter hurried away, I squeezed Isabella’s thigh again, bringing her eyes to mine. “Are you doing okay?”
She stared at me like she couldn’t quite decide if I was trying to trick her or not.
“I’m trying not to think about it,” she said finally.
She looked around at our surroundings, and then back at me.
“Is this the part where I ask you if this is a date, and you tell me no?” Her words surprised a laugh out of me, and she snorted. “Now, you want to call me a brat.”
“Because you’re acting like one, dolcezza.”
Isabella hummed softly. “You like it, though,” she said.
My cock twitched. I did like her acting like a brat almost as much as it pissed me off. But that wasn’t what tonight was about. “How are you feeling physically?” I asked, trying to steer us away from my desire to drag her into the bathroom to bend her over the sink.
Her expression was bemused. “Are you asking if I think the pregnancy is doing okay?”
A food runner came and dropped off our drinks. I picked up the whiskey tumbler and took a sip. It burned all the way down, leaving behind a warmth that made my muscles unwind. “I guess that’s what I’m asking,” I said when we were alone again.
Isabella twirled her straw in the iced tea that she’d asked for.
“I’ve had some nausea, but so far, I don’t feel all that different.
” She sipped at her drink. “I always thought that I would, you know? I would know and feel it the moment that I got pregnant.” She sounded a bit melancholy, and it struck me that she was lonely, and what was even worse, I actually cared that she was struggling.
“My mother was almost in her third trimester when she realized that she was going to have Cristian,” I told her.
“Or, that’s what my father told me later when I asked why she doted on him more.
He said that she didn’t get to bond with him for as long as she did with me because she didn’t know he was there. ”
She studied me for a long moment. “Maybe it was that you didn’t belong to her,” she said. “You were your father’s heir, right? Maybe she knew that you were never going to be hers, so she was glad to have a baby who could be.”
Her words were a blow to my ego, but I couldn’t find fault with her logic.
Cristian was beloved by my father, the same way that my mother loved me, but even before he decided to join the Church, he hadn’t really been a part of the Cosa Nostra.
He didn’t attend meetings in the same way that I did when I was a teenager; he didn’t have the same expectations laid on him.
My father would have made space for Cristian, of course, if he’d ever shown any interest, and he did train with me at the gun range, but it was never as serious for Cristian to get things right.
Our waiter came by with a tray laden with food. When he set the salmon in front of her, however, her expression crumbled. She sprung up from the table, slapping a hand over her mouth, and ran toward the Restrooms sign.
“I’ll just take this, then,” the waiter mumbled and picked the plate back up.
I looked at my steak, mournful. “Just bring us the bill,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
After taking care of the check, I met Isabella outside of the bathroom. “Ready to head back?”
She looked apologetic. “I don’t think I’m up for dinner.”
“That’s fine.” I offered her my arm, and still cautious, she slipped her hand into it. “I’m thinking dates aren’t going to be our thing.”
Isabella looked at me, surprised, but then a tentative smile curled her lips. My heart thumped violently against my ribs. Fuck, but I liked it when she looked at me like that. “So, this was a date?”
“An attempt at one.” I reached into my suit jacket and pulled out a cell phone. Brand new and fully programmed. “Here.”
She stared at it. “What? Why?”
“Just take it,” I said, handing the phone to her. “Call your sister. Set up a lunch date, and let me know when.”
Isabella’s smile grew as she stared down at the phone, and then up at me again. She leaned in and pressed a kiss to my cheek. My heart threw itself against my sternum again.