CHAPTER SIX #2
“It’s all because you two gave me some terrible advice,” he accused, glaring from me to Eve.
“Excuse me?” Eve looked ready to defend our honor as relationship gurus.
Come to think of it, given our current situations, we really should stop giving advice on love.
“You told me to be more open,” Terzo stated. “You told me to be myself and use my charm on her.”
“That’s good advice,” I mused, crossing my arms, not seeing where we went wrong.
“That’s grade A advice,” Eve agreed. “It gets no better than that.”
“Well, I was open,” he said. “I was myself. And I ended up making her cry.”
My eyes widened. “What did you say to her?” I whispered, already dreading his answer.
Being open could mean many things to a DeLuca. Perhaps we should’ve been more specific.
“I honestly don’t know what I did wrong,” Terzo told us.
“She wanted to see that crime movie, where the guy’s wife dies, and his dog gets killed.
Then he goes on a killing spree, returning to his life as an assassin to avenge his dog or something.
The movie has been out for a while, so I had to find a small theater that was still showing it.
I managed to find one. Do you know the movie I’m talking about? ”
“Yeah, I know the movie,” I said. “And it was sweet of you to search for a theater that was playing it for her. But what did you do to make her cry?”
“Oh. Well, as the movie played, I simply pointed out everything that was real and unrealistic about the movie,” he explained.
“I mean, no gun can hold as many bullets as that guy’s gun seemed to hold.
And with all the wounds he sustained, he should’ve passed out and not been able to fight for that long. ”
Eve was already rubbing her temple, clearly seeing where this was headed.
“Then she asked me how I knew that,” Terzo continued.
Here we go.
“I told her it was because I passed out whenever I was that beat up from a knife or gun fight. And she asked how often I got into those kinds of situations, and I told her...”
“Stop!” Eve said, still massaging her forehead. “Why would you tell her about the gunfights on your first date, Terzo?”
I bit my lower lip to keep from laughing. Poor Terzo. He really didn’t understand the unwritten rules of dating. Then again, neither did I. We were all learning, just in different ways.
“You said to be open. So, I was open. I put it all out there. And then I asked her if she knew how to shoot a gun. She said no. I was happy, thinking, here’s my chance to do something for her.
I offered to teach her how to kill. I mean, every woman should know how to kill.
It’s dangerous out there. The world is a mess right now.
I thought I was being helpful, charming.
Out of nowhere, she teared up, called me a psycho, and said to never call her again. ”
Don’t laugh, Sienna. Don’t do it. Not to his face.
“Then she rushed from the theater, crying. I followed her because she’d left her purse behind.
When she reached her car, she couldn’t get in because she didn’t have her keys.
I approached, trying to return her purse.
But she acted like I was stalking her or something and started screaming, please don’t kill me.
I had to cover her mouth to keep her from alerting mall security.
With everything that’s going on with the family, now is not the time for me to be getting into trouble with the law. ”
“What happened next?” Eve whispered, barely holding it together.
“I gave her back her purse and told her to quietly get in her car and drive home. Once she was in her car, I went back in and finished watching the movie to see if the guy avenged his dog. He did, by the way. It was a good movie. It should’ve been a good date. It wasn’t.”
My lips quirked, but I held the laughter at bay because Terzo looked serious as hell.
His dark eyes were filled with genuine confusion about what had gone wrong, like a puppy that couldn’t understand why it was being scolded for chewing on a shoe.
Eve stared at him. I stared at him. The silence stretched between us.
“You deserved that,” I said finally, unable to hold back.
“Exactly,” Eve added. “You don’t know how to talk to women.”
“I know how to talk to you two. You don’t mind when I talk about guns and killing,” he defended himself, gesturing between us.
“Just last week, I showed you my new guns, and you both were excited about them. Then we went to the gun range to play with them. But Maisie didn’t seem interested at all in my guns,” he told us, looking dejected.
“Of course, you can talk to us about that kind of stuff. We’re family, and we happen to like guns,” I explained.
“However, most women aren’t like us, Terzo.
Most women haven’t killed people for a living.
Some haven’t even held a gun before. You can’t assume all women are going to be violent queens like us. ”
He considered that for a second, his brow furrowing. “Noted. So, I should’ve just faked it and not been myself, right? I should’ve talked about the weather, and... flowers or something. Because being myself is never the answer. Right?”
Well, damn.
I didn’t want him to be fake. I wanted him to be himself. But he was a DeLuca. So, that wasn’t always easy. There was a fine line between being open versus trauma-dumping on your date about your body count, and I didn’t mean the bedroom kind.
“How do you usually flirt with girls?” Eve asked, taking a different approach.
“I don’t. I may seem like a flirt, but I’m really not. It’s usually women who approach me. We talk a bit, and then we end up fucking,” he told us.
“Well, there you go. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” I told him with a shrug. Why mess with a system that worked?
“But it is broken. None of those women knows the real me. And hiding the real me gets old fast. I get bored pretending to be someone I’m not,” he told us, frustration creeping into his voice.
I could understand that. There was nothing more exhausting than wearing a mask all the time. I’d spent so many years being whoever Maureen needed me to be, saying what she wanted to hear, that I hadn’t had a chance to get to know my true self at all.
It wasn’t until Stefano that I felt I could truly be myself, my damaged, sarcastic, complicated self. And he loved me in spite of my flaws. That’s what Terzo wanted. I guess that was what everyone wanted. Someone they could truly be themselves with.
“What about all those good Italian girls from prominent families?” Eve asked with a roll of her eyes, clearly thinking about Enzo’s relatives who kept suggesting appropriate matches.
“Have you met them?” Terzo scoffed. “They want to date a DeLuca to form an alliance. They’re puppets for their families and will probably snitch to them at every opportunity.
They’re good for a random fuck, but that’s it.
I want more than random fucks. I want a woman who wants to know me, the real me, the good and the bad.
” Terzo sighed and said, “I wonder if I need to leave Italy, leave behind people who know me, to find the one meant for me.”
Aww. He was such a hopeless romantic.
I couldn’t help but smile as I stared at him. Eve was smiling too. If anyone deserved a happily ever after, it was Terzo. He was handsome, with his dark hair, dark eyes, and chiseled jawline.
Plus, he was fit, tall, and charming. Oh, and he had a great sense of humor. It should be easy for him to find someone to love. One day, he’d find his Mrs. Right. I knew he would.
“When you find the woman you’re searching for, what do you expect her to bring to the table?” Eve asked.
“What do you mean?” Terzo frowned.
“She means, what do you expect her to bring to the relationship?” I explained, curious about his answer.
Was he like some men who expected their women to cook, clean, and pop out babies, all while staying fit and looking pretty?
“Oh, that’s easy. Just her heart. And her smiles,” he answered without hesitation. “I want her to be happy. I want her to be happy being with me. And I want her to love me. That’s it. I’ll take care of everything else.”
“What if she doesn’t know how to cook?” Eve asked, and I knew she was thinking about her own insecurities with Enzo.
“I can cook for her,” Terzo told her.
“Eventually, you’ll get tired of cooking all the time,” she added, pressing the issue.
“Did you forget that I’m loaded? I can hire a chef to cook all the foods she likes.”
“What if she doesn’t want to stay home all the time and wants to go out with her friends a lot?” I asked, thinking about Stefano’s constant worrying about my safety.
“She can do whatever she wants. She’s grown,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll have security follow her, though, because I have tons of enemies. I’d want her to be safe when I wasn’t there to protect her.”
Hearing him say that made me feel like I was listening to my Beast. This was just how the DeLucas loved. They loved hard. They loved with everything in them. And they’d give their lives for the women they’d given their hearts to.
They deserved to be loved and protected just as fiercely.