Chapter 13 Aurelia
Aurelia
Constantine was not himself—at all.
He was at work all the time, and when he was home, he chose to be in his study . . . even though he didn’t seem to be working. When I snuck a peek at him, he just sat there and stared at one of the walls . . . lost.
Whenever I tried to talk to him, he wasn’t interested in having a conversation.
He wasn’t even interested in sex.
I was buck naked when he came home one day, and he didn’t even look at me before he hopped in the shower.
Every time I asked him to talk to me, he said he didn’t want to. But the moment never passed. He just became colder and more distant . . . and kind of an asshole. It got so bad that I took his phone when he was in the shower, found Rocco’s phone number, and then texted him from my phone.
Hey, it’s Aurelia.
Everything alright? He sounded just like Constantine.
Constantine hasn’t been himself in a week, and I don’t know what to do about it. He won’t tell me what’s bothering him.
Yeah . . . he’s been in a dark place.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Need to let it run its course. Just remember, it has nothing to do with you and his obsession with you hasn’t changed. It’s just masked by an ugly cloud of depression.
I was relieved it had nothing to do with me. I’d assumed that was the case, but now that a full week had come and gone, I wasn’t certain anymore.
Be patient.
Yeah, I’ll try.
Elio set the table for dinner, and we ate in his dining room. We were seated across from each other, but Constantine didn’t look at me one time. Just focused on his food or his wine or the window. It was like I wasn’t even there.
“Con.”
His eyes immediately flicked to mine—probably because I’d never called him that before. Everyone else he knew did, but I always loved his full name, the way it sounded, the power in its length.
“I’m sorry you’re going through a hard time right now, but I wish you would confide in me.”
He was only halfway done with his food, but he set down his fork like his appetite was long gone.
He propped his elbows on the table, hands together at his chin, the defeat still heavy in his gaze.
“It’s not that I don’t feel like I can talk to you about this.
I just literally don’t want to talk about it.
” He swallowed, as if just acknowledging his source of heartache was enough to destroy him.
“You forget that I’ve lost someone too. That the grief comes and goes depending on the day and the season. You also forget that I also had an absent father. But in my case, he didn’t even try.”
His eyes dropped momentarily, his fingers interlocking a little tighter.
“I’m sure my loss is different from yours, but I’m sure it hurts the same.” I didn’t expect him to perk up immediately after I broached the topic, but I didn’t necessarily expect him to share his heartache either. I just wanted to address it since he was clearly unable to cope with it on his own.
He lowered his hands to the table and inhaled a deep breath before it came out slowly.
He stared at his hands for a while, no longer looking like the big, strong man who had flashed his killer smile every few minutes.
He looked worn and withered, like a leather couch that had been in a house for forty-five years.
“I met with the Skull King last week. We’re having some international-security issues. ”
This was not how I expected the conversation to go.
“And I have to sit there and look at his fucking face . . . and not kill him.”
“Why do you want to kill him?”
His eyes stayed on his hands, and he drew another heavy breath. “Because he killed my brother.” His voice came out quiet, so quiet it seemed like he didn’t want to share that with me. “Seven years ago. And I watched him do it.”
Oh Jesus . . . “Babe.” My hand reached for his on the table, held on to it like I was his life raft . . . when he was actually mine.
He stared at my hand as it gripped the top of his.
Then he changed his position, sliding our fingers so we were locked together.
“I tried to save him, but I couldn’t. So I stood there and listened to my brother scream for mercy as all the bones in his body were broken .
. . and I stayed, even though I couldn’t do anything, because I didn’t want him to be alone.
I still remember the last time we looked at each other .
. . and his stare . . . he knew he was gonna die. ”
I continued to grip his hand.
“They stuffed him in an oil drum right in front of me.”
I’d lost my mother, but our loss was not the same. I’d watched her die in her sleep, on the maximum dose of morphine, so high she didn’t even know she was dying. Just faded away, until her lungs stopped inflating. This . . . this was a whole different kind of traumatic.
“I returned a few weeks later to get his body back, but Darius wouldn’t give it to me. There was no amount of money he would take.”
“Why did Darius kill him in the first place?”
He continued to stare at our joined hands. “Because my brother had an affair with his wife.”
“Oh shit.” Now the violence and the pettiness made sense.
“A part of me . . .” His voice caught, and he paused to swallow before he continued.
“A part of me thinks . . . he deserved it . . . and that makes me feel worse. Not deserved it because the punishment for infidelity is murder, but because he knew exactly what the Skull King would do to him if he got caught . . . and he did it anyway.”
I didn’t know what to say, how to comfort him. It was just so horrible.
“But I’m still going to kill Darius anyway.
I don’t know how or when . . . but I fucking will.
” That was when he took his hand from mine.
When he pulled it back to his side of the table and lifted his gaze to look at me.
“He has so much power that he’s untouchable, but he became that way because everyone was too scared to provoke him .
. . and they know he’s a fucking powerhouse.
He’s a traitor to his own country, and I still can’t do anything about it. ”
I didn’t know what to say to that either.
“My mom thinks my brother died in a car accident. She visits his grave every morning, not knowing it’s just an empty coffin. She’s gotten better through the years, but she’s never been the same.”
“Understandably.”
“He left Taormina for Palermo when I refused to speak to him after he kissed my girlfriend. I didn’t know what he was doing there at the time.
My mother begged me to talk to him, said that family was more important than this disagreement, so I went there to work it out.
Found out he joined Cosa Nostra, and it just took off from there.
So I know this is even more fucked up, but .
. . the reason I still resent Isabella after all this time is because if that hadn’t happened, my brother would still be alive.
I blame her for it, and every time I’m triggered, I just start to hate her again. ”
Now I understood why he’d spoken to her so viciously on the patio.
This was a woman he wanted to marry, but he treated her with so much resentment, like she’d done something more egregious than kissing his twin brother by mistake.
When I said I wished he were normal and he dropped me, that honestly felt like a bigger crime.
But he forgave me so easily and never mentioned it again.
He didn’t strike me as the kind of man to hold a grudge, but he’d held this grudge against her for a long time.
“If one thing had been different . . . everything could have been different.”
His eyes dropped again. “I know that this happened because my brother decided to fuck Darius’s wife. That it was entirely his stupid decision that led us here, but I still feel that way.”
“It’s okay to feel all these things, Constantine. Grief is complicated and cyclic. When it returns, sometimes it’s worse—and sometimes it’s better. I’m sorry you’ve been through all this . . .”
He continued to stare at the table, and then he spoke like he hadn’t heard me.
“We would have stayed in Taormina and continued to work at the restaurant. I would have been married and had a couple kids. My mom would be happy. But then I realize . . . if all that had happened . . .” He lifted his eyes and looked at me again.
“I wouldn’t have met you. And I just can’t imagine my life without you, sweetheart. ”
After that conversation, Constantine was himself again.
He took me out to dinner, bent me over his desk in his office, woke me up when he came home from work at three in the morning by shoving his big dick inside me.
Back to normal.
I had a shoot in the morning, and he texted me and asked if we could meet for lunch afterward. The driver dropped me off outside a restaurant with an outdoor patio. He was already there, seated under the shade of the umbrella in a dark-gray T-shirt and a dazzling smile.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Hey.” I walked to where he was seated, but he didn’t stand up for me like he normally did.
He pulled me onto his lap and kissed me, his arms scooping my legs up like I weighed nothing. Naturally, he moved his hand to my ass and gave it a hard squeeze before he let me go. “How was your shoot?”
“Boring.” I moved into the chair across from him.
“You don’t have to work. You know that, right?” He grabbed the menu and gave it a look.
It was true. I didn’t need money. I didn’t pay rent, and I didn’t need groceries because I’d never even set foot in his kitchen.
The only time I spent money was when I hustled around the city and needed a coffee or a sandwich.
“I like my job. I just don’t like infant portraits.
Hard to get a good picture when they’re screaming at the top of their lungs. ”
“Well, I wouldn’t describe that as boring,” he said with a chuckle.
“Stressful, then.”
“Then maybe you should only take the jobs you want since you don’t need the work anymore.”
I’d never asked him to support me. He’d just started doing it . . . like we were married. “Maybe. But you never know where a word-of-mouth recommendation will go. I photographed this wedding and her uncle was a politician, and that led to a huge job six months later.”
He flipped the menu over and looked at the other side. “Keep it in the back of your mind.”
“I’m happy to pay rent and contribute to other bills—”
“Sweetheart, stop.” He grinned wide. “Trust me, you pay your way.”
“Hey, I suck your dick for free.”
“But if you’re good at something, never do it for free, right?” He winked, then looked at the menu again.
He pulled off that wink so well. So handsome and smooth.
“What are you getting?” he asked.
“Maybe the salad. I already ate breakfast.”
When the waiter came over, Constantine took over the conversation as always. He ordered our drinks and our lunch and then handed over the menus.
He moved closer to the table, elbows on the surface. “What else is new?”
“Other than you being so fucking hot, not much.”
He smirked. “But that’s not new, sweetheart.”
“A bit arrogant, but you can pull it off.”
“Oh, I know I can.” He continued to smile as he fished his phone out of his pocket. “It’s Beatrice.” He took the call and put it to his ear. “Hey, sis.”
I wasn’t sure what she said on her end. I pulled out my own phone so I didn’t just sit there and stare at him as he continued to talk.
“How are the monkeys?”
Monkeys? She had pet monkeys?
“Tell them if they give you any more shit, Uncle Con will straighten them out.”
Ohh . . . his nephews.
“Yeah, things are good. At lunch with Aurelia right now.” He listened to her for a bit. “Yeah, Aurelia’s here. You want to talk to her?”
My heart rate spiked because I knew she didn’t like me. Please say no. Please say no.
“All right, I’ll let you go. Food will be out soon. Love you.” He hung up and set the phone on the table.
I did like that he said I love you to his sister . . . and said it first.
“She said she had to go,” he said. “One of the boys had climbed onto the counter to grab a cookie from the jar.”
I nodded. “It’s okay, Con. I know she doesn’t like me.”
His eyebrows furrowed, and he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Why would she not like you?”
“Well, she was kinda cold when we met at the house.”
“She was?” he asked in surprise.
“Yeah, but I totally get it, she and Isabella are friends. It’s complicated.
” I didn’t take it personally. If you hoped your best friend and brother would end up together, of course you wouldn’t like the other woman.
But they’d been broken up for almost a decade, so I wasn’t sure why she hoped they would reconcile.
They’d even slept together again, and they still didn’t work it out.
Constantine cocked his head the other way and continued to stare at me, continued to stare hard.
“It’s not a big deal. Don’t worry about it.”
But he continued to look at me in a way he never had before.
“Maybe she’ll come around. Just needs some time.” I didn’t want him to be angry at his sister. She couldn’t help the way she felt. She couldn’t compromise her loyalty if her best friend was in pain.
But he continued to stare me down . . . like he was mad as hell.