16. Marchella
CHAPTER 16
MARCHELLA
I sink onto the kitchen chair with Bella in my lap after she scarfs down an entire bowl of puppy kibble in what feels like seconds. Poor baby. I hate that she was wandering around on the streets of Inwood by herself, hungry and cold, for God only knows how long.
I pick at the bacon in front of me, unable to eat a single bite of the feast Dante ordered for breakfast. My heart clenches when I think about giving her up. I mean, it’s been less than twelve hours that I’ve even known her, for Pete’s sake.
Still, she represents a bittersweet memory, one that will be really hard to close the book on once we give her up to the police.
I release a shuddering sigh and slouch over in the chair.
It’s the right thing to do, though.
I’m doing what’s best for Bella.
And even though it really hurts now, I know I’ll be making her owners really happy.
My eyes sting with tears and I force the images of that last day in the park to the dark corners of my mind. I can’t think about that day and all of the trauma that came with it. I have to focus on what lies ahead and what’s still in my control.
Admittedly, with Roman in the picture, what’s in my control for the foreseeable future is a bit fuzzy, especially after last night.
I wrap my arms around Bella as she curls up in my lap, her little body warm against my bare legs. A loud snore breaks the silence and I giggle, despite the tear sliding down my cheek.
A shiver slides down my back and I bite down hard on my lower lip remembering his hands stroking my prickled skin, his hungry mouth devouring me like I was his last meal, his muscles rippling beneath my hands.
And his eyes…blazing with a heat so intense, it could singe my insides from a mile away.
“How twisted am I, Bella?” I whisper. “How can I feel these things? How can I get swept away like this, knowing that he’s still a?—”
“Hey!” A booming voice silences my next words and I look up in a panic at Dante strutting into the kitchen. “How’s the food?” He pulls on a baseball cap and slides his arms into a sweatshirt.
“Good,” I say even though I haven’t been able to stomach a single bite. “Are you heading out?”
“Yeah, I’m going for a run. Give you a chance to, ah, bond some more with Romo,” he says with a wink.
My face flushes with heat and I manage a weak smile. “I’ll let Roman know.”
Dante chuckles, shaking his head. “Oh, so you’re his assistant now, too?”
I shrug. “I think it’s written somewhere in the employment contract I signed.”
“Nice. Don’t ever lose that sense of humor, Marchella,” Dante quips. “Especially if you’re gonna be hanging around my brother. Trust me, you’ll need it.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I murmur, the hot flush now flooding my insides as he turns to open the front door.
I stare at the door as it slams closed behind him, almost in a trance until reality smacks me in the face.
All good things come to an end.
No matter what I think or feel or want.
Mama, Papa, my career, Princess, Bella…Jesus, it’s a depressing list.
And I’m only twenty-four!
I lean my head back, expelling a loud sigh. “I’m so tired of losing, Bella,” I whisper. “When the hell is it going to end?”
Roman clears his throat behind me and I gasp, twisting around at the intruding sound. “You scared me,” I yelp.
He runs a hand through his hair, avoiding my eyes. He obviously heard what I said, although he chooses to ignore it as he grabs a bottle of water from the fridge.
Maybe he thinks it was a rhetorical question.
I guess it was, but only because I don’t have a freaking answer myself.
I stare at his back as he guzzles it down before tossing the empty into a recycling container under the sink.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
He shrugs, still unable…or unwilling…to look at me. “Yeah.”
A stab of rejection slices into my heart. “Is there any reason why you insist on keeping your back turned?”
His spine stiffens and he slowly rotates so I can see the hardened expression on his face. The gaze that melted away my inhibitions such a short time ago is now sharp and cold.
Completely void of emotion.
“Did something happen with your brother?” I ask, gathering Bella into my arms and hugging her tight against me as if she’s the only thing that can shield me from the apparent stranger in front of me.
“Yeah,” he rasps, narrowing his eyes at me. “Something happened.”
I pull my lips into a tight line, trying desperately to calm my galloping heart. “What’s going on here, Roman?” I ask. “You left me and everything was fine. Now you’re looking at me like you want me dead.” I swallow hard. “What changed?”
His lips twist into a grimace. “Nothing!” he bellows, stalking past me toward the living room. Then he stops short and spins around, glowering at me. “No, you know what? There is something. See, all the bullshit you fed me about seeing something deeper inside of me, someone who’s good and soft and all that crap?” He stomps back toward the kitchen table. “That’s not who I really am,” he says in a choked voice. “It may be what you want to believe, but it’s not who you really see. It can’t be! Because I’m not any of that!”
I recoil as he shouts those last words, turning around and fisting his hair as he stalks past the coffee table. “I’m the guy who needs to be in control, Chella! I’m the guy who gets things done, no matter what the cost!” He gets right in my face, his teeth clenched, his forehead pinched. “I’m the one who people have to count on,” he growls, jabbing himself in the chest with his thumb. “Me! And that guy doesn’t have the luxury of being good! If I snooze on my work, if I don’t do what’s expected of me, I fucking fail and everything crumbles. Do you understand that?”
My mouth drops open because whomever this guy is, he’s most definitely not the guy I spent the night with…the guy I thought I might actually be falling for by some bizarre twist of fate. It takes me a second to process his words, just enough time for my stomach to knot like a giant pretzel. I watch him collapse onto the couch cushion, his head dropping into his hands, and I’m still shocked into silence.
Bella wiggles around in my arms until I finally lean down and let her leap out of them. She trots right over to where Roman is sitting and hops up onto the couch next to him, resting her head on his leg. My eyes widen. The guy is like a ticking time bomb right now. I don’t know if it’s such a great idea for Bella to be in the line of fire?—
That’s when he reaches over to stroke the top of her head with the same gentleness he displayed when we were together.
And suddenly, the guy I know who’s inside of him, the one he’s so bent on rejecting, claws his way through that vicious exterior.
He’s not the monster he is so desperate to put on display.
With a deep, shuddering sigh, he leans back against the cushion, his eyes closed. He hasn’t moved his hand, though, and he’s still nuzzling Bella’s ears. Pretty soon, her body begins to quake and she’s snoring.
Because she’s comfortable.
And because she sees exactly what I do, the real Roman Villani.
Not the nefarious alter ago he insists on showing the world.
“I’m the youngest of all my brothers,” he murmurs, his tired voice shattering the still, tense air. “I always got away with everything because of it. My dad tried to shield me from the family businesses because he knew how dangerous things could get if I got involved too early without knowing how to handle things. But I was a rebel. I didn’t care about consequences, and it always pissed me off that they’d hold me back. I couldn’t learn if they didn’t trust me to do the work.” He runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the ends. “So a couple of years after your family left Sicily, I tagged along on a job that Dante did. He didn’t know it until I showed up, and to say he was angry is a huge understatement. I didn’t know what was about to go down and me being there, in the center of something really dangerous, knocked him off his game. He was doing a hit and I was in the way. I distracted him from his targets. One guy got away, the other one came after us. Shot Dante in the chest. I didn’t realize he’d been wearing a Kevlar vest, but thank fuck, he was.”
I bite down on my lower lip. “What did you do?”
He sits up and looks at me, his expression grave. “I killed him,” he says, his voice hoarse. “First guy I ever popped.”
I inch toward him. “So you saved Dante.”
“That time, yeah. But when the other guy got away, he came after my family. Opened us up to attacks from all directions. All the bottom-dwelling scumbags who were trying to claim a piece of what we had came after us because I made a mess of everything. The hit was supposed to be clean and untraceable. I fucked all of that up and it put us all in a bad place for a long time afterward.” He drops his gaze to Bella. “It’s something I know they all think about and even now, years later, I still feel like a liability, like I have to prove to them that I’m not that fucked-up kid anymore, that I can make good decisions, that they can trust me.”
Gingerly, I lower myself to the couch. “And that call with your brother?”
“It just brought everything back,” he grumbles. “Because I feel like every time they give me an inch of rope, I end up hanging myself with it. I lose sight of what’s important and shit goes sideways. I try to recover but keep sinking deeper into the mess I’ve created.”
I nibble at my fingernail. “I think you need to stop getting sucked into the past. You’re battling against it so hard that you can’t move forward. Things happen. You’ve made up for them and your brother clearly trusts you or he wouldn’t have left you in charge.”
Roman’s eyes rake over me, the icy glare melting to reveal a mix of emotions that are even more startling.
Regret, remorse, and guilt.
Color me completely confused about now.
“You can’t move forward if you keep making the same mistakes,” he murmurs. “Making the wrong choices, not seeing the writing on the wall, being so intent to follow a certain path even though I’d have known it would lead to a dead-end if I spent the time thinking about it instead of bulldozing my way toward it.” His hand creeps over to me, grazing the top of my leg. “Deciding how the hell I’m supposed to deliver on the one thing that can save our livelihood,” he rasps, his blue eyes darkening with each word spoken.
I smile at him, lacing my fingers with his. “Nobody ever said being the boss was easy,” I whisper, stroking the side of his face.
“Neither is giving up something you want more than anything,” he says.
“This life is all about choices, Roman. I learned that the hard way when my dad made his,” I say.
“Chella…” he whispers, moving closer still, careful not to disturb Bella.
“Yeah?”
“I need to tell you something.”