Chapter 13 #3
His eyes narrow. “Watching you walk away from me. That is love? Lying awake night after night worrying that without me you’re hurting, you’re suffering, you’re in danger. That is love? No, Mina. That is weakness, and weakness gets people killed.”
“Love is giving part of yourself to someone without the fear of getting nothing back.” I hold his gaze, even though it hurts, even though I can still taste him on my lips.
“Until you can do that, Cristiano, you’ll never have me.
Not really. You’ll just have a woman in a cage who’s too tired to fight anymore. ”
He doesn’t say it, but I can read his words in the darkness in his eyes.
At least I would have you.
He’s never going to change. That lovesick boy who took his impulses too far, and that teenager with a motorcycle full of hormones and manipulation has turned into a man who still believes love is something you take, not something you give.
There’s studied calculation in his eyes as they flicker over me. My flushed skin, my heaving chest, my bare legs still spread on either side of his hips. I can feel him weighing the options.
Tighten his grip on me, snatch me up, and carry me away right this second?
Or wait for a better time to spring the trap?
Rosa’s kids are tearing around my apartment like tiny tornadoes while Leon chases after them, all three of them shrieking with delight.
Rosa is packing snacks into a bag for the park, and I’m standing at the kitchen counter trying to look like a woman who didn’t have an earth-shattering orgasm on a break room table yesterday.
I’m failing.
Every time I close my eyes, I feel Cristiano’s fingers inside me. His mouth on me. The way he looked at me afterward, like a predator deciding when to strike.
I haven’t changed. I’ll never change.
I shiver and reach for my coffee, hoping Rosa doesn’t notice.
I told him what I needed. I laid it out plainly.
Love is giving part of yourself to someone without the fear of getting nothing back.
Now I can’t stop wondering what he’ll do with that information.
A normal man would hear those words and understand them.
Would feel them. He would either rise to meet them or walk away.
Cristiano isn’t normal. Cristiano heard me describe vulnerability and immediately started calculating how to perform it. I could see him filing my words away, adding them to his arsenal. She wants vulnerability. She wants sacrifice. How do I fake that convincingly enough to get what I want?
I should have kept my mouth shut instead of making him more dangerous, but the orgasm he gave me turned my brain to mush.
God, the orgasm.
I press my thighs together and take a scalding sip of coffee.
When my legs had finally stopped shaking, he watched me get dressed with reluctant eyes. Like letting me put my clothes back on was physically painful for him. He’d tried to pull me back into his arms twice, and I’d had to physically duck under his reach to grab my shoes.
Then I’d heard him in the hallway, telling Gloria that I was taking the rest of the week off and would return on Monday.
The rest of the week off. With pay, presumably. Like I’m a kept woman he can dismiss and summon at will. At the spa to service him. Massage him. Fuck him. That’s what they’ll all think.
Worse than the mortification of Gloria’s carefully blank expression when I finally emerged was that I didn’t try to explain. I just put my head down and walked out of there before anyone could say another word.
A knock at the door startles me out of my thoughts.
“I’ll get it,” Rosa calls, already halfway there.
I hear her open the door, then a male voice, and then Rosa’s confused, “Can I help you?”
I round the corner to find a delivery man nearly hidden behind an enormous armful of flowers. Not roses. Whimsical, delicate blooms in soft purples and whites and pale pinks, the kind of flowers I’ve always loved. The sort you might find in a fairy dell, or a dream.
“Delivery for Mina Santoro.”
“That’s me.” My voice comes out strangled, because I have a horrible feeling I know who sent them, and my sister is here to see it.
There’s more than one bouquet. There are dozens. The delivery man makes three trips, filling my tiny living room with flowers until the interior of my apartment looks like a woodland clearing.
Then he brings in the packages. They’re wrapped in cartoon dinosaur paper, simply but neatly. I remember the blue wrapping paper on the snow globe Cristiano gave me all those years ago, and my heart does a flip as I picture him carefully wrapping these gifts for my son.
“Mama, look!” Leon abandons his cousins to investigate. “Presents.”
“Mina, are you seeing someone?” Rosa asks in astonishment. “I’ve been hoping you would. Who are they from?”
I can feel the heat climbing up my neck and spreading across my cheeks. “I’m not sure,” I lie.
Rosa finds the card tucked among the flowers. She reads it aloud, her frown deepening with every word.
“I’ll follow thee and make a heaven out of hell. —C.” She looks up at me. “That’s a bit dramatic. Who’s C?”
I look around at my tiny living room, which resembles a fairy dell with hundreds of delicate blooms, and I feel like Puck trapped inside the snow globe.
Rosa’s face transforms, her confusion giving way to dawning horror. She looks from my face to the presents and then back at my face. “Not Cristiano Montoni.” Her voice drops to a hiss. “Mina, please tell me you’re not seeing him again.”
“I’m not.” The denial comes out too fast, too defensive. “I was never seeing him back then, and I’m not seeing him now. He just has a way of blindsiding me when I least expect it.”
Rosa opens her mouth to say more, but it’s too late. The kids have descended on the presents like locusts, tearing through dinosaur paper with gleeful abandon.
“Mason, Carly, those aren’t yours,” Rosa starts.
“It’s all right.” I watch Leon’s face light up as he pulls a stuffed T-rex from the wrapping. “Let him share.”
It’s too late to send them back now. The paper is shredded, the boxes torn open, and Leon is clutching that dinosaur like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever owned.
I couldn’t take it away from him. He so rarely gets new toys.
Cristiano probably spent more on this single delivery than I make in a month.
I can feel Rosa’s judgment radiating from her in waves as she watches her children play with gifts from a man she loathes, but I know it would be cruel to take them away.
She doesn’t say anything else. She just watches as the kids sort through the bounty.
More dinosaurs, building blocks, a set of toy cars that light up when you press a button.
Leon is in heaven.
Why has Cristiano sent toys? Has he realized whose likeness my son bears?
He’s not just courting me anymore. He’s courting my son. Building a relationship with a child who’s already starving for male attention.
Make Leon love him. Make Leon ask for him. Make it impossible for me to cut Cristiano out without breaking my son’s heart.
I feel sick.
I can’t fall apart, not in front of the children, or Rosa, who’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
I take a breath, force my shoulders back, and reach for my jacket. “Come on, kids. Let’s go to the park before it gets too busy.”
The park is three blocks from my apartment, close enough that we walk. The kids run ahead, Leon proudly carrying his new T-rex, Mason and Carly clutching the toys they’ve claimed as their own.
Rosa and I walk in silence. I can feel her anger simmering beneath the surface. She keeps glancing at me like she’s trying to figure out who I am.
At the park, we settle on a bench while the kids scatter toward the playground. Leon immediately starts showing off his dinosaur to another little boy, his face bright with pride.
Rosa breaks first.
“He’s a rapist, Mina.” Her voice is low but fierce. “I don’t understand how you can let him back into your life.”
That old hot, tight frustration flares in my chest. The impossible position I always end up in, having to defend Cristiano in order to defend myself.
“Rosa, it wasn’t like that.” I plead with her to believe me, but she just shakes her head, her lips tight.
“I can see the guilt on your face.” She turns to look at me fully, her eyes hard. “You’ve kissed him, haven’t you?”
I look away.
“How could you, Mina?”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now.” My voice comes out sharper than I intended. “This isn’t the time or the place.”
“Then when? When is the right time to talk about the fact that you’re falling back under that man’s spell?”
“I’m not falling under his spell.”
The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. As much as I tell myself that I’m in control, he had all the power yesterday. He blew through me like a hurricane, and I loved every second.
“Is it because he’s rich?” Rosa presses. “Charming?” She makes a dismissive sound. “He’s not even that good-look…”
She trails off, her eyes fixed on something over my shoulder, her face going blank with shock.
I turn to see.
Cristiano is walking toward us across the grass.
He’s wearing a charcoal suit today, perfectly tailored, with that long, expensive-looking black coat.
The morning light catches his golden hair, his amber eyes intent on me.
Two men flank him a few feet back, young, hard-faced, dressed in dark suits.
Their eyes scanning the area like they’re watching for threats against their boss.
Around the playground, moms have broken off conversations or lowered their coffees to stare at Cristiano.
Not that good-looking? Even Rosa, disgusted as she is with him, can’t finish that sentence. Not when he looks like that. Not when he moves like he owns every inch of ground he walks on.
Because he does.
“Mina.” He stops a few feet away, inclining his head politely toward my sister. “Rosa. It’s good to see you again.”