12. Nina
12
NINA
Nina
A fter a week of hiding at Dante’s mansion and waiting for him to need me to act like his girlfriend, this roller coaster of a night threw me off.
“This way,” Romeo said as he ushered me toward a car.
I hadn’t seen Dante’s son in years. Many, many years, but I recognized the boy he once was in the man who led me out of Escott’s and to an SUV with blacked-out windows.
“Yeah,” I replied breathlessly, worn from the rush to flee and the speediness of how things had changed so quickly.
The expectation to get ready to play pretend for the dinner. Dante’s blinders to my presence before dinner. The extreme opposite of his affection and kisses after it.
And then those two waiters finding me in the hallway, lost on my way to the restrooms because this place was enormous. They capitalized on the fact that I was alone, and with two of them, taller and stronger, I was outnumbered.
Fear and anger meshed, but it ended up as an overwhelming sense of panic.
If Romeo hadn’t arrived when he had.
If Dante hadn’t come to find me…
Shuddering at how closely I’d come to being violated—or worse, raped—was a hell of a hit to come down from. My skin stung, bleeding slightly from their nails when they clawed at my dress. My cheek burned from the backhand the taller guy gave me when I threatened to scream. Warm liquid trickled over my cheek. It wasn’t a tear, but a spot of blood. They’d broken my flesh, and the physical reminder of what happened somehow grounded me. Pressing my fingers to the cut was a motion that helped to pull me from sinking into my head.
“Thank—” I swallowed, then cleared my throat. My mouth was still too dry to speak as I followed Romeo to the passenger door. “Thank you. For…”
“You’re welcome.” He opened the door, frowning at me as I held up the torn scrap of fabric that those waiters tugged from my neck. “Here.”
He didn’t need to open the door any farther. Constella guards flanked us, and more stood behind me. They were a wall, surely protecting me from Escott’s. With how unsettled and weary I was, I would’ve wedged myself through a slim gap of the door’s opening. I wanted to get out of there—now.
But what about Dante? I paused long enough to cast a worried glance back at the building. I wasn’t scared for him. He could handle those men. Dante was older, stronger, more muscled. But I couldn’t shake the anxiety sinking in.
“I didn’t encourage them,” I told Romeo as soon as he got in the car and put it in gear. “I didn’t… I didn’t do anything. I was just going to the bathroom and they cornered me and?—”
He lifted his hand to gesture for me to stop. “No one’s blaming you for anything.”
“Okay. But I just wanted to say it.”
He huffed a dark laugh as he loosened his tie. The Romeo from my childhood was always a serious boy, but the man he’d become wasn’t any different. His aura, his presence, was a somber, serious one. “I came to the dinner late, but I noticed them checking you out.”
I frowned, watching his profile.
Glancing at me but keeping his focus primarily on the road, he seemed just as confused as I felt. “You were… watching me?”
“It’s been a long fucking time since I’ve seen you, but yeah, I watched you. Or I guess I noticed you.” At a red light, he studied me. “It’s been an even longer time since my father actually dated someone or brought a date to anything. So, yeah, color me surprised to see him at dinner with a woman.”
I winced. Dante struggled with the act of having a woman in his life, and Romeo’s wording made me wonder if the sexy man was really that clueless and rusty.
“He hasn’t dated anyone since my mother died.”
“Whoa.” I blinked, not expecting that. She passed away before I was even born, so that was one long dry spell. As handsome and attractive as Dante was—not to mention his obvious expertise in pleasing a woman—I knew he hadn’t been celibate all this time. Yet, I didn’t know how to interpret his breaking his dry spell with me.
“You’re with him now?” he asked. His tone was similar to Dante’s. Firm and with authority. I had to answer.
“Um, yes.”
He shook his head, chuckling to himself. “I shouldn’t bother asking. I saw enough.”
You saw us all over each other because we were faking it.
“I’m pretending to be with him.” I cringed as soon as the words left my lips. Blurting that out was dumb. The only way Dante and I could fake this relationship was if we kept it a secret. I already told Tessa. She wouldn’t blab about it, but Romeo?
I didn’t know if he could be trusted with this secret. Or if Dante would be mad that I’d told him, too. Romeo and I had never really gotten along. He was too serious. I was too quiet. We seldom saw each other, only during those few times my dad visited and brought us along when he caught up with Dante.
“Are you trying to manipulate him?” Romeo demanded.
“No! No.” I shook my head, trying to pull the torn dress up higher on my chest. “Not him. We’re both pretending.”
“You’re pretending to be together.” He said it instead of asking it. “No. I don’t buy that.”
“What?” I furrowed my brow, worried that I’d opened my mouth at all and that he seemed to think I could be trying to con his father. “No. It’s true.”
“He’s pretending that you’re his girlfriend?” He looked at me before pulling off the highway.
“Yes.”
“You?”
I groaned. “What? I’m not fake-girlfriend quality?”
“That’s not my call to make. All I’m saying is that I don’t believe you. I saw you at the restaurant. You were all over each other.”
“Because we were pretending.”
“Yeah, right.” He chuckled once again, annoyed as he shook his head. “If that’s the line you’re sticking with, you might want to consider that he’s more interested in you than you think.”
“He’s…” I thought back to his kisses. His touches. Maybe he was that focused and driven to always be in business mode that he’d forgotten how to act like he had a date. Once I pointed it out to him, he was touching me and doting on me.
“ Be careful what you wish for .” Did he really mean that he’d deliver on it?
“He’s not.” I cleared my throat. “He’s not interested in me for real. We just want to make it believable, and with how obsessed he is with work matters and whatnot, it simply looked convincing.”
“That’s what you think?” He smirked at me.
I had no clue what to think anymore.
“Why would you need to pretend to date anyone? Much less, my dad?”
“I was lost in a bet to the Devil’s Brothers club.”
He raised his brows. “What?”
I sighed, embarrassed to admit it. Romeo and I had never really gotten along. He was older than me, but while Ricky was closer in age to him, their birthdays uncannily close to each other, they’d never gotten along well, either. Romeo was just too serious of a person to get close with.
“Ricky bet on me with Reaper, the bikers’ leader, and lost. Your dad suggested that we pretend to date so the MC guys would back off. That if they saw me with him, they’d realize I was already taken.”
“Goddamn.” He rolled his eyes. “Your brother is a fucking dumbass.”
I shrugged. I wouldn’t argue with him there. In fleeting moments, it made my blood pressure spike with the reminders of how he’d treated me like a thing to toss around.
“Seriously. He’s a moron to even try to negotiate or deal with that MC.”
I pursed my lips together as he pulled into the driveway. I didn’t know what to tell him, and it seemed he wasn’t waiting for a response, anyway.
When I reached for the door handle, he got out and rounded the front of the car.
“Right. I’m supposed to be a delicate, pampered lady unable to open a damn door,” I mumbled to myself, somehow peeved by this gentlemanly gesture the Constella man insisted on. It probably annoyed me because I’d grown up without such simple shows of chivalry, but now wasn’t the time to stress about it.
Romeo assisted me out of the car and led me up to the front door. “You’ll be all right here?”
“I, um… He moved me in here Monday.”
“Oh.” He looked at the door, opening it. “I haven’t been staying here lately. So, news to me. Will you be all right?” Only now did he glance down at my chest where the men ripped my dress and scraped my skin. When he lifted his gaze to the small scrape on my cheek, he clenched his jaw, murderous at the reminder that I’d nearly been violated.
“George can arrange assistance,” he added.
I shook my head. “I can slap a Band-Aid on. I’ll be all right.” Truthfully, I doubted I would be until I saw Dante again, but I wouldn’t go there. I didn’t want to think about what he might be doing, looking so sinister and malicious while those two waiters were dragged away.
I knew this was a Mafia family, but right now, I hated to consider the violence happening by the man I was pretending to date.
“I can…” Romeo turned back after nodding at me. He returned to me just inside the foyer. “I can set up some self-defense lessons for you. If you’d like. I know what you mean about him. My dad often gets into his business mode and struggles to see anything beyond it. His work has been his life for too long. If he neglects to show you how to fend off men, if any punks ever dare to bother you like those two men did tonight, you can be trained and prepared.”
I opened and closed my mouth, at a loss for what to say. For as serious and solemn as Romeo was, he was considerate, too. “Really?”
He nodded, unsmiling and sincere. “Yes.”
“Okay. Um, yeah. Thank you. I would like that.” I nodded once. “I appreciate that.”
With one last look, he turned and left me.
Romeo’s offer to show me the basics of self-defense was a gift I could rely on well after this fake-dating ruse was up with Dante. That simple suggestion of protection meant a lot to me, especially after the fact that my brother lost me in a bet and had been prepared to hand me over to rough bikers.
I’d never been protected. Not from life, not from punks or assholes. Sure, men groped me when I waitressed, but tonight was a striking turning point. I’d almost been raped, and being saved by Romeo, then Dante, I felt treasured and secure.
Instead of seeking out George or Eva, or any of the staff here, I trudged upstairs to clean up.
This night hadn’t gone like I thought it might. It’d ended on a lousy note.
But as I let myself into my guest room, I rolled my eyes at the absurdity that Romeo acted like the big brother I’d never had in Ricky.
And to make it even weirder? I was dating his dad.
“No.” I closed the door and sighed. “No, I’m not.”
I was fake dating Dante, and I winced at how hard it was to reinforce the distinction.