Chapter 22
What a dick.
In an attempt to be sneaky, I chuckle inwardly so Damiano doesn’t see me smiling. Hiding behind my phone screen as we eat lunch, I angle it to snap a quick picture of him across from me. Though I’m sure he knows what I’m doing, he doesn’t make a move or say anything, and I understand why. I told him I wouldn’t make a deal of him wearing something other than a suit, but I can’t help it now.
Dressed in a simple white t-shirt and black lounge pants that he put on after his shower, he’s the epitome of what I imagine he would look like as a normal man. Or so I would think. Either way, I like this image of him but am trying my hardest not to make it obvious.
I would hate to show him that I’m amused by something regarding him - Would hate for him to get the thrill of knowing he’s the cause of my simple mirth. I intended to make him realize that he didn’t want to spend the entire two weeks of our honeymoon with me, which had backfired. It seems to be the only thing he has done for the last three days.
It is as if he’s proving that he enjoys spending time with me.
We have damn near spent every waking hour together and have surprisingly not killed one another. If we’re not shopping for the renovation he wants for this fortress of a mansion, enjoying the city, or simply visiting places, we are at home.
Home.
The word is so foreign to me that I bristle at the thought. I haven’t had a place to call home for so long that my easy acceptance of the term worries me. I’m unnerved by how easily it crept into my mind.
I know I’m prone to growing accustomed to someone and relishing the need for familiarity after it was snatched from me at such a young age. I know I can find that with Damiano in a warped sense. It’s why, in the past, I distanced myself from people. Growing up, I was always a social butterfly, and people flocked to me. Now, I don’t like people. The idea of them, or even getting too comfortable around them, makes me anxious, withdrawn, and prone to violence.
Becoming close to someone worries me. It breaks promises I’ve made.
After Damiano’s little comment about me being Bianchi, I would have willingly sold my soul to bask in the consuming happiness I wanted to envelop myself in. Instead, I had gone to Damiano and let him fuck me senseless. I gave him the part I could, and I apologized.
I should have known that as Damiano Bianchi, he made the rules. None of them applied to him.
Afterward, to satisfy him, I spent the day touring the humongous mansion that had been his family’s home for over a century. We’d gone from one room to another, going over tedious details, though I had enjoyed spending those small moments with him. I had yearned to stay encapsulated in the small touches he’d graced me with, the heady glances, the countless times he’d trapped my body beneath his to tease me.
I felt terrible for the sounds of sex that his employees had been subjected to, but not enough to stop the advances. I was enjoying him too much to ruin it.
The house, while gorgeous, is so old and outdated. I instantly saw that Damiano's mother was the last person to do any renovations or repairs. Once she’d been murdered, there had been no reason for him to visit, and his father hadn’t cared enough.
That had been before he’d declared he wanted me to choose anything I wanted to update the house. The cost didn’t matter, and neither did the design. He had informed me that his uncle’s house was on the opposite side of the land. A simple ten acres away. His uncle also hadn’t been home in such a long time. Damiano knew he would never make it back, which would also become ours for future generations.
“You can’t possibly be that interested in your phone.”
I raise my eyes from the picture I am looking at to squarely meet my husband’s stare. “I’m not.”
My haughty answer makes him smirk. “You didn’t eat your breakfast.
Very observant.
Across from Damiano, I shrug. I’ve never been much of an eater, but things have tasted unappealing lately. “I’m not one for sweets. I drank my coffee.”
He doesn’t argue. I watch, apprehensive, as Damiano types something on his phone and then places it face down on the table. His brown eyes lift to take me in for a long time. Neither of us says anything as time seems to tick by. Behind the calm, hardened exterior he’s presenting right now, I can tell he’s thinking something.
I'm about to find out whether it will ruin my day or not.
“Have you had the chance to think of decor or color schemes?” He asks.
I chuckle. I mock his previous movements and place my phone on the table. “So, we’re going to take the long road around what you want to ask me?”
His dark brown eyes sparkle with light amusement. Damiano licks his lips, and memories of how he utilized that tongue this morning flood my brain.
He smirks, aware of what I’m thinking about. “Are you pregnant?”
I guffaw. “How?”
That wasn’t the question that I was expecting from him.
This time he doesn’t smile at me, and I realize that I’ve fucked up. At the funeral, he requested that I stop taking my birth control, and I just ad
“I just stopped taking my birth control after the wedding.”
I shrug, pretending to be unphased. “So, I doubt it.
“Do you?”
In defense, I reach for my phone, then stop. Instead, I sit back in the chair and look at the lush greenery surrounding his land. “I haven’t had a period in years, husband – Courtesy of birth control. So, with how a woman’s body works, yes, I doubt it.”
He’s pensive for a second. “Why haven’t you had a period in years? Is that normal?”
Men.
I nod easily. “Yes, I religiously took birth control that stopped me from having one. The last thing I wanted to worry about while killing Rossi’s men was battling cramps.”
Damiano nods but ignores my words about the Rossi men. I see that he’s taking in more than he lets be obvious. “When will you know?”
In a hurry?
“If my next period that Benicio estimated doesn’t come, then I will test. If the test is positive, we’ll go from there.”
He looks at me. “You mean to tell me you don’t know when that will be? And when did you talk to Benicio without me present?”
I roll my eyes at his questions. A dramatic sigh exits my mouth. “I’m bored.”
Damiano scoffs. “Already? We haven’t even been married a month yet.”
Despite not wanting to, I laugh at his response. Our eyes meet, and it feels awkward to hear him make an actual joke. To see him appear so human.
It leaves me craving more from him.
Seated back in my chair, I toss my legs over Damiano’s perfectly tailored and pressed lounge pants leg. “I want to know something about you.”
He looks at me, not acknowledging my legs over his as his phone vibrates on the table. He picks it up, reads whatever notification he receives, then puts it back down. “Something that you haven’t already looked up under my name?”
I want to laugh, but he won’t find it funny. Or maybe he will. I still haven’t figured out his personality entirely. Just when I think I have a grasp on him, he changes up.
A fucking chameleon. Yet, I’m always intrigued by it.
“Yes.”
I nod. “Tell me about your childhood.”
For the longest, he stares at me. I can see that he’s gauging me, trying to figure out why the fuck I would want to know about him as a boy instead of the chance that I’m simply bored.
“My childhood?”
A cocky smirk shows on his face that makes him look so handsome and mischievous. “Tell me about yours?”
I’m tired of this thing he thinks is a game. “I’m sure you know everything there is to know, but is there anything specific you want to know?”
He spares me the shocked expression I’m expecting from him, even though I can see it in his eyes. He thought that I would argue with him, and the fact that I didn't bewilders him.
“Did your parents have any other children?”
I think about it for a second, debating whether I should tell him or not. “I had a younger brother, Apollo. When my mother was pregnant with Gaia, he got the flu, then pneumonia, and passed away.”
For a moment, Damiano is silent, then looks at me. “That must have made things hard for your family. I’m sorry.”
I’m sure he is. Everybody is always sorry when they hear of a tragedy. It’s the right thing to say. They don’t feel sorry.
I shrug. “I don’t remember much about him, to be honest. I was pretty young myself.”
“What were you?”
He thinks about it. “Maybe four or five max?”
“Yeah,”
I nod. “I’ve seen pictures, and he was so cute. But I think he was spared what my parents would have put us through.”
Damiano balks at that. “Why do you say that?”
“I know things would have been different, but my parents were never the same after that. Once my mother had Gaia, she pulled away from the family. She buried herself in work – Working for the Rossi’s.”
Not surprised, but probably from having heard or read it, Damiano nods. “How was that for your family?’
“You know the result. We all died.”
He looks at me. A look I don’t try to decipher. “You’re very much alive, Bellissima.”
He takes my foot that’s on his leg and starts massaging it. “A part of you may have died that night, but you were reborn as so much more.”
I smirk at his words. Words that mean more than I want them to. Words that make me want to stay with him forever when we both know that this deal is going to end in my death or his.
He’s making these plans so difficult – Making leaving him almost impossible.
I look back at the grounds, taking in the serene scene surrounding us. This place is beautiful. When I was told we were coming here, I imagined the place would be ghostly because nobody had been here in years, but it’s the opposite. I had allowed my imagination to run away with me, and I figured I would come to a desolate land with a dilapidated building overgrown by grass and weeds. A house manager has been taking care of it all this time.
Which makes this the dream of all the dreams young women have while growing up.
To be flown somewhere extravagant, relaxing, and get fucked into oblivion multiple times a day. Which has been happening due to nothing being on our schedules. I don’t mind the fucked into oblivion part. It’s the breeding that I’m more annoyed with. I’m supposed to end up pregnant at the end of this.
I signed up for it.
I want Aldo and his family to be dead before I bring life into the world. I wasn’t lying when I told Aldo that I would slaughter him. I will end him, his family, and everything they’re about. Whether I’ll have my baby in a carrier or not will be the question.
“Your turn.”
I return my attention to Damiano.
Still massaging my foot, he nods. “Okay. Something about my childhood.”
I think for a second, but I'm distracted by the foot massage, which is doing things to my blood. “What was your favorite thing to do when you lived here?”
Briefly, he looks surprised by my genuine question, and then a passively amused smile takes over. “So, you really are bored?”
I cock my head to the side and stare squarely at him until he chuckles. “Uh, we used to swim in the lake all the time.”
He looks towards the lake behind the house.
“That’s it?”
I ask. “I feel like in a big house like this, you could get into a lot of trouble.”
A scoff meets my ears. “Bellissima, I'm Bianchi, we are always in trouble.”
He’s right about that.
I smile at him. Damiano reaches out and takes my other foot in his hand, kneading into it and making me moan. My thighs press together, not helping the heavy pulsing I have. “Have you played hide and seek here?”
“Hide and seek?”
There’s surprise in Damiano’s tone. “No, never.”
He shakes his head.
I’m not shocked by that admission. More than likely, he was never allowed to enjoy being a child, and when he moved here, there weren’t any other children to play with. Growing up, he’d had a lonely life, but it had all been in hopes of him eventually becoming Don. His mother's hopes of him living his life to the fullest until he couldn’t anymore had been far more temporary than she had imagined.
It had been cut short. Similar to my childhood.
Pulling my foot out of his grasp, I stand, and reach for him. “Let’s play.”
Confused, my husband looks up at me. “Play what?”
My eyes roll at his dense question. “Hide and seek.”
I pull him up by his hands. “If you don’t know how to play, it’s simple. I’ll hide, you count to one hundred, then you come get me.”
An eyebrow hitches upwards. “One hundred? That’s a long time.”
I nod, giving a teasing look up at him. “This is a big house. I have to find somewhere good to hide.”
“Fair enough.”
I can’t stop the ear-to-ear smile that spreads across my face. While I had the feeling that he wouldn’t turn down my idea, I’m always surprised when Damiano does agree. Typically, he’s stoic, and getting any emotion from him aside from anger is challenging. Maybe because it’s just us and he’s not concerning himself too much with things back at home, he has the opportunity to relax.
Something I plan to take advantage of, too.
With a mind of its own, my body steps into him. My hand slinks up his chest, and I rest it on his shoulder. “The best part of counting to one hundred is deciding how long it takes.”