20. Valeria #2
He left his apartment empty because he doesn’t give a shit about interior decor, and he let me pick out our furnishings for the same reason.
The only thing he cares about—the only reason he likes me—is for the hole between my legs.
The bedroom door opens.
I turn. The look of open adoration on Nico’s face nearly blinds me.
I blink several times. Asshole.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I say.
“Like what?” He moves closer.
“Like you’ve stopped listening to me.”
“I’m hanging on your every word.”
I want to throw something at him. I rub my neck. My shoulders always get tight when I’m upset.
“You’re tense. Let me give you a massage,” Nico says, stepping closer.
I let him walk all the way up to me until we’re toe-to-toe. I hate how stupidly tall he is. I’m used to having the height advantage, but with him, I have to crane my neck to meet his eye. It’s ridiculous.
“You’re not going to touch me,” I say.
“It’s going to be hard to put a baby in you without touching, but we can try.”
“You don’t want a baby, Nico,” I say, placing my hand on his chest to keep him at arm’s length, and for once, I’m proud of myself for not secretly thrilling at his mention of a baby.
“Kids are work. Family is work. It means you have to do your best—you can’t fly off the fucking handle every time you get scared. You have to actually try.”
He catches my wrist with a loose grip. “I would do anything for my family. You know that.”
“That’s not enough. You have to be better. With your wife. With your kids. You have to be good.” The words—not cool and unaffected, but thick with emotion—shock me as they tumble out of my mouth.
I’m asking a tiger to be a kitten.
What I want from him is never going to happen. His childhood was too messed up or there’s some inherent evil that runs through his veins or something else, but Nico is never going to be the husband or father I need him to be.
And I can’t keep asking him to change.
He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it, sending a wave of tingles down my arm. “I swear I’ll be good for you. I’ll be the best for you.”
“I don’t believe you.” My heart thunders in my chest.
He looks at me from under his eyelashes, my hand on his mouth, his amber eyes glinting in the sunlight from the windows.
“How can I trust you won’t leave?” he asks against my palm.
“That would come with time,” I say, feeling so, so foolish to even pretend there’s a future for us. I know he won’t change. He can’t. “You have to be patient.”
The moment stretches into a long, delicate, spidersilk strand as he searches my eyes.
“Okay,” he finally says. He scrubs a hand over his head. “I gave your cash to a homeless guy.”
He what?
I burst out in shocked laughter at the mental image of a furious Nico in his suit giving a bag of cash to the first person he found.
“Nico, what the hell?”
A light smile brushes his mouth. “Charity’s good, right?”
I laugh harder, my anger dissolving in fuzzy bubbles. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
He cups my face and brushes his thumbs against my lower lip like he wants to capture my laughter for himself. “I’ll bring you cash tomorrow.”
My heart skips a beat.
God, I can’t believe I’m doing this.
“Today,” I say.
“Today,” he repeats, his eyes bright.
“Do you understand why I want it?”
“No.”
I snort. Of course he doesn’t. He’s grown up in the lap of luxury.
“Money in the bank?” I explain carefully. “Someone can take that. Physical cash? I can touch it. I can see it. When I know it’s there, I feel safe. Do you want me to feel safe with you?”
“Yes.” His hands move across my jaw and neck like he needs to remind himself I’m still here. “I do. I shouldn’t have done that, and I’m sorry. I overreacted.”
“You think?”
“You can hide it again, if you need. I won’t go looking for it.”
I search his eyes. “Next time, you need to talk to me. With words. And your clothes on.”
He smiles. “Look at us. Talking. Wearing clothes. We’re doing great already.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m biting back a smile.
“You looked incredibly beautiful in your wedding dress,” he says suddenly. “I didn’t think I would ever breathe again.”
My belly clenches.
“I can’t wait to see you on our wedding day,” he continues softly. “It’s the one good thing to come out of all this. You are.”
“Well, now it’ll have to be all black, because you already saw it.”
His expression turns hungry. “You’d look amazing in a black dress.”
“Your sister would kill me.”
“Not if it was designer.”
I huff a laugh. From what I’ve seen of Alessia, he’s not wrong. “She’s kind of a handful, isn’t she?”
Nico scoffs. “She goes through personal assistants like Kleenex, and I’ve seen her make grown men cry. The fact that you’ve lasted so long is a true testament to how well you fit in with my family,” he says warmly before his expression shutters. “Val, I have to tell you something.”
I narrow my eyes at him, racking my brain for what he might say next—if he’s already going to make me regret trusting him again.
“Come here.” He leads me to the pink couch, sits, and pulls me on top of him.
“Nico,” I complain, pushing against him as he arranges my legs over his.
“You’ll want to sit for this,” he says. He gathers my hands in his, tracing little circles over my skin. The air between us grows thick and somber. “My father’s dying.”
I clutch his hands, searching his face for how to react. He doesn’t like his dad, but I know better than anyone how a sudden loss can leave you unmoored with nothing but a tangled net of messy emotions.
He smiles bitterly. “Cancer. Stage four. Mamma told me he wants me to take his place if he dies. I always knew it’d be a possibility, but now, it could happen very soon.”
My lungs are frozen. This isn’t about his dad dying. It’s about what happens next, what it means for us.
“Nico, I don’t want you to be a don.”
“Look at that,” he says with a small smile, his golden eyes practically glowing as the light hits them just right, and he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “We’re already thinking like a team. I couldn’t agree more.”