Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Vito
I’m carrying Teresa up the steps from the beach, wet and laughing and boneless in my arms, and I already know I’m not putting her down until I get her in the shower.
The salt is drying on both of us. Her hair is damp and tangled, clinging to her shoulders and the side of her neck. Water keeps dripping from the hem of whatever flimsy thing she’d managed to keep on from our little play session in the sea.
Her skin is warm from the sun and cooler where the ocean still clings to her.
Her arms are looped lazily around my neck, and she’s pressing kisses wherever her lips can reach—my jaw, the side of my throat, the corner of my mouth—like she has no intention of behaving herself and no interest in letting me recover from what just happened in the water.
Not that I’m trying very hard to recover.
I’m hard again already.
As usual.
At this point, I’m starting to think my body has simply accepted that Teresa exists to keep me on the edge of losing my mind.
She makes a soft purring sound against my throat, and I feel the vibration of it against my skin. The movement presses her closer, wet skin sliding against mine, and that should be illegal.
“Hurry,” she moans, pleading.
“I’m trying,” I grit out, taking the steps two at a time.
She giggles, a breathy, happy sound that goes straight to my cock.
She feels that. I know she does because she arches against me deliberately, her hard nipples pressing against my chest. One of her hands slides from my neck down my chest, her palm warm and slick against my skin, her fingers tracing the lines of my stomach with a promise that makes me want to drop her right here and fuck her on the stairs.
We cross the threshold into the house, both of us still dripping onto the floor, and I’m already mentally turning toward the hallway. Fuck in the shower first. Then maybe food. Or maybe bed.
Or maybe I just spread her out on the dining table right here and eat her out instead.
The sound of a phone ringing cuts through the house.
I stop dead.
Teresa lifts her head from my shoulder and looks at me strangely. “Do you hear that? Is that a phone?”
Of course I hear it.
I only have one phone on the island, and I don’t carry it around with me. I keep it in my room. There are very few people who have that number, and none of them would call it casually.
The ringing keeps going.
Teresa’s expression shifts from teasing to puzzled. “Vito?”
I set her carefully on her feet.
“Stay here,” I say.
That earns me an immediate look. “That sounded ominous.”
“It’s probably nothing.”
But I already know that’s a lie.
I leave her standing just inside the foyer, wet and flushed and looking at me with a mixture of suspicion and irritation, and head down the hallway to my room.
She, of course, doesn't listen and follows me.
The ringing keeps up, sharp and insistent in the quiet of the house.
By the time I get to the bedside table, something cold has already settled low in my stomach.
The phone screen is lit.
I look down at the number on the front and go completely still.
No.
For one second, I just stare at it, pulse kicking hard once in my throat.
Then I pick up the phone.
There is no greeting on the other end. No hesitation.
Just my father’s voice, stern and flat and unmistakable.
“Come home now,” he says. “And bring the doctor with you.”
Teresa is in the passenger seat of the car as we drive through the streets of New Jersey.
She has one leg crossed over the other, then uncrossed, then crossed again. Her fingers tap once against her thigh, stop, then find the hem of her shirt and smooth it down for no reason.
She adjusts the seatbelt. Pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. Checks the road ahead even though there is nothing for her to do with the road ahead.
She is fidgeting.
I’ve seen her scared. I’ve seen her furious. I’ve seen her nervous in ways she was trying hard to hide. I’ve seen her pissed off enough to snap and steady enough to stare me down in the same breath. But this particular version of her is new.
Fidgety.
Restless.
As if she cannot settle inside her own skin.
And I know exactly why.
My father.
The idea of meeting him.
The idea of immediately leaving the island after a phone call and heading right back to the city. For his house.
I don’t blame her.
Not even a little.
What I do blame is the hard, rising irritation starting to build in me the closer we get.
It’s there already.
I can feel it moving under my skin.
The impatience.
The urge to move, to get out of the car, to pace, to do something with my hands besides keep them on the wheel.
My temper shortens when I feel boxed in like this, when I can see the confrontation coming and there’s nothing to do but drive toward it.
I know that about myself.
So I keep my mouth shut.
Because snapping at Teresa right now would be the lowest kind of cowardice, and I’m already deep enough in the hole with her as it is.
The phone call replays in my head anyway.
My father’s voice flat and stern through the speaker.
I have no idea how he found out what I did, but I can understand him wanting me to come see him immediately.
That part I can live with.
He knows what I’ve done. Or enough of it. Knows I’ve taken a psychologist to Conti Cay and vanished there for weeks while I lied to him and the family about needing time away.
Fine.
He has every reason to be furious with me.
What I can’t figure out is why he demanded Teresa come, too.
Why drag her into it more than she already is?
As far as he knows, I kidnapped her, and she has been unwilling through all of this, so why make her go through more?
Beside me, Teresa shifts again and looks out the windshield.
I keep my eyes on the road.
She says nothing.
I say nothing.
The silence between us isn’t hostile. Just there.
I can feel her wanting to ask what exactly she is walking into, and maybe deciding she doesn’t want the answer. Or that she already has enough of one.
Because what do I tell her?
That my father’s house is beautiful and suffocating at the same time?
That the family closes ranks fast when there’s trouble?
That she’s about to meet some of the most important people in my life under the worst possible circumstances?
That she's about to get a full dose of, not even what they usually think of me, but what they're going to think of me after this?
That the part of me getting more agitated with every mile is not just anger, but the old, familiar pressure of becoming the version of myself that exists when I’m driving through those gates?
The last few weeks on the island felt outside time.
Whatever I was there—what she brought out in me, what I told her, what I let myself want—felt dangerously separate from this.
Not fake.
Just not this.
But now the road narrows, the trees thicken, and the turn for the estate comes into view, and I can feel that other self starting to settle over me.
Harder.
Sharper.
Less room to breathe.
I turn into the drive.
The gates are still closed.
I stop the car and wait.
My fingers start tapping once against the steering wheel before I can stop them. Then again, faster. My jaw is tight enough that it aches.
Beside me, Teresa’s hand lands on my thigh.
The touch catches me by surprise.
Not because she hasn’t touched me before. God knows she has.
Because of what it is right now.
Grounding.
Not sexual. Not searching.
Just there.
I look over at her.
She’s already looking at me, blue eyes narrowed slightly, reading me the way she always does.
A small, confused line forms between her brows.
I shake my head once, subtle enough that she gets the message without me having to say it out loud.
Not now.
Not here.
Not time for a therapy session.
Her hand lingers for one second longer, then slides away.
The gates begin to open.
I pull the car forward.
The drive curves a long way through the trees before it opens onto the house, and every second of that approach gives my irritation more time to build. By the time the estate comes fully into view, broad and imposing and lit for the evening, my patience is hanging on by mere threads.
And then I see the cars.
Several of them parked up the line of the drive in front of the house.
Of course.
Of fucking course.
My father didn’t just want me there. He wanted an audience.
Or maybe “audience” is unfair.
Maybe he wanted family.
Maybe he wanted witnesses.
Maybe he wanted everyone present because what I’ve done is already spreading through the house like a live wire, and he knows there’s no point handling this quietly anymore.
It doesn’t matter which reason it is.
It pisses me off all the same.
I hear Teresa inhale beside me.
She sees them too.
Great.
So now, in addition to being dragged into my father’s house, she gets to walk into the full weight of the Conti family staring at her.
I can already feel my temper threatening to turn vicious.
I grip the wheel harder and keep my eyes front.
We aren’t even at a full stop before the front door opens.
My father steps out.
To his credit, he’s alone.
That cools maybe one degree of my anger and not a bit more.
Luca Conti comes down the steps with the kind of still, contained fury that changes the air around him without any visible effort. He does not storm. Does not shout. He simply comes forward, measured and direct, and somehow that is worse.
He looks older than when I left for the island.
Not weak. Never that.
Just more carved by time. More marked by everything prison took and everything being out has required him to reclaim. His silver is more visible at the temples now. The lines around his eyes and mouth deeper. But none of that touches the force of him.
I park the car and cut the engine.
For one second, the silence inside the vehicle is absolute.
The house. The drive. My father waiting outside.
The family somewhere behind those walls.
Teresa beside me.
All of it seems to land at once.
I look at her.