Chapter 14 #2
He shudders and closes the oven door. “If you say so, but you don’t know what you’re missing.”
There’s a leather-topped stool at the kitchen island, and I slide on it, settling in to drink my smoothie and watch my new husband make breakfast.
I have zero idea what I’m supposed to do, how I’m supposed to react.
Everything is new and, if I’m honest, completely terrifying.
Part of me wants to run out the door and never look back, but I also know that’s impossible.
I’m just as trapped as I was when he kidnapped me, only this time, I don’t have a chain on my ankle and I’m not cuffed to a bed.
I can’t bear to think about what would happen if I refuse to do Misha’s bidding.
Lorenzo gets out a frying pan, setting it on a burner before he goes to the fridge and pulls out a carton of eggs.
“If your brother’s chef made me a smoothie, why didn’t he make you breakfast?” I can’t help asking.
“I like to cook breakfast. There’s something about making shit with your own hands that’s a highly satisfying way to start the day,” he answers, his reasoning surprising me.
And forcing my attention back to his big, capable hands and long, inked fingers. I can only imagine what else he’s done with those same hands. All the sex and violence he’s visited upon others. The thought makes me strangely jittery.
Probably the coffee. I’m used to monsters. Living with one is nothing new, even if it’s been quite a few years since I left the home I once shared with my brothers and father.
The propane burner lights with a whoosh, and Lorenzo starts warming the pan, spraying in some olive oil. Then he opens the egg carton and extracts one. I watch as he gently cracks it. I’m suddenly desperate to know what happened between us last night. So desperate that I can’t contain myself.
“Did we have sex?” I blurt.
His head swivels to me, his face blank. “What do you think?”
His eyes are anything but neutral. They’re bright blue, burning into me.
I take another fortifying sip of smoothie. “Obviously, I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”
The corner of his mouth kicks up in a grin. “If we had, I promise you this, you wouldn’t have had to ask. But no. Drunk, homicidal Russian ballerinas aren’t my type.”
That stings even though it shouldn’t. Because tattooed, dangerous, muscle-bound Mafiosos shouldn’t be my type either.
But everything about him sets my blood on fire.
I’ve never been so keenly aware of a man, so inescapably attracted, even if every part of my rational mind is throwing up caution lights and warning signs.
“So we didn’t, then,” I reiterate, just to make sure.
He returns his attention to his breakfast, taking away all that smolder and restoring my ability to breathe. “I’m insulted, cara mia. If I’d have fucked you last night, I guarantee you’d still be begging me for more this morning.”
The ego of this man is seriously off the charts. With a face and a body like his, not to mention all the power of the Andriani-Revello families in his back pocket, I can’t blame him.
I snort anyway, not about to feed into it. “On a scale of one to ten, one being impossible and ten being highly likely, I give that a zero.”
Lorenzo cracks a second egg and shoots me a heated look over his shoulder. “Your scale lies.”
My pussy clenches. He’s cocky and smug. He’s my kidnapper.
He’s a Mafia enforcer. I shouldn’t be feeling anything but extreme aversion.
I shove the straw of my smoothie into my mouth and distract myself by downing the rest of it.
The sooner I’m on my way, the better. Now that the wedding formalities are over, I want to get back to my apartment so I can forget this ever happened.
I hop off the stool. “As much as I’d love to stick around and listen to more of your deluded ramblings, I’ve got to get out of here.”
He pulls a plate out of one of the cupboards and effortlessly slides an egg onto it, sunny side up. “Where do you think you’re going?”
The other egg joins the first. Is there anything he can’t do perfectly? How annoying.
“Home,” I announce brightly, smoothing down my skirt.
I need an Advil and a nap.
He sets his plate on the counter. “Not to that little shitbox you call an apartment, cara.”
I’m sure my apartment pales in comparison to wherever he calls home, but it’s mine, I worked for it, and I love it. Even if it does smell like everyone’s dinner and mildew and the air conditioning has a fifty-fifty chance of working on any given summer day.
I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s not a shitbox, first of all.”
He stuffs a mitt on one hand and opens the oven. “It’s not your home any longer either.”
I try not to notice how great his ass looks in his jeans when he bends over to retrieve the tray of bacon and fail miserably.
“Of course it’s my home,” I counter. “It’s where I live. And second of all, my name is Katya.”
“Did you miss the clause about us living together?” he asks, completely ignoring my second point as he slides the tray of sizzling, fragrant bacon onto the stovetop. “Because I didn’t, and I’m not about to live in a fucking closet.”
Damn it. He has me there. I did miss that clause, and mostly because I had reached the point of saturation, and my nerves hadn’t been capable of taking more.
I bite my lip. “What did it say?”
He gives me a smug look. “So you didn’t read it.”
Pieces of bacon make their way onto the plate with the eggs. Is the man eating half the pack himself?
“My life was imploding,” I defend. “I couldn’t make it to the finish line.”
He frowns, piling on more bacon. “I wouldn’t call marrying me an implosion.”
“I would. Do you think I wanted any of this?”
“Do you think I did?” He turns and stalks toward the island, depositing his filled plate there.
We glare at each other, anger sparking in the air between us.
“Bad news for you, cara mia.” He stabs into his egg, sending sunny yellow yolk oozing everywhere. “You’re living with me now.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to say no. You’re my wife, and the safest place for you is where I am.” He picks up a piece of bacon and dips it into the yolk, then takes a bite.
Alarm bells go off in my head.
“Safest place?”
“I have enemies. Your two brothers, for instance, but others too. The best way to put a target on your back is to send you back to that shoebox alone.” Calmly, he sips his coffee, like it’s every day that he announces sweeping life changes for me that I don’t have a say in.
I’m sure everyone in his life follows his orders.
All he has to do is snap his fingers, and they rush to do his bidding.
But the thought of living with him sends me into a tailspin.
I haven’t mentally prepared myself for sharing a space with him, day in and day out.
Marrying him was bad enough. I could process giving up ballet, putting my life on hold, and obeying Misha to protect Svetlana because I had to.
But for some reason, it’s my apartment that breaks me.
“I don’t want to live with you,” I tell him.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re mine to protect now, and even if I were stupid enough to let you wander around the city alone, I’m bound by the marriage contract. We need to live together. It’s all spelled out.”
Shit.
I really should have finished reading that stupid contract. Or anticipated there would be some kind of clause about where I had to live. Misha thought of everything else. Of course he would have anticipated living arrangements.
I’m such an idiot.
Before I can say anything, Lorenzo’s phone goes off.
He pulls it out and taps on the screen, scrolling through a text.
“Looks like the movers are finishing up at your place. I’m having everything delivered by lunch.
Do you want to go through the boxes yourself, or should I have my guys unpack them for you? ”
It takes me a second to process what he’s just said.
He had my entire apartment packed up this morning without my consent. And he’s having everything delivered to wherever it is that he lives. I don’t even know where he lives.
“You just packed up my whole apartment without my permission?”
“It needed to be done.” He forks up a bite of egg.
I’m so furious with him that I can’t stop myself from reacting. I grab his plate and slide it across the marble island. It comes to a stop right on the edge.
“You can’t just move my things. How did you get into my apartment?”
“You can do anything with the right motivation,” he says calmly, setting his coffee cup down on the island. “Now, are you going to be a good wife and bring my breakfast back, or are we going to have a problem?”
Everything compounds. I don’t even know what I’m doing, just acting on instinct as I take his coffee cup and hurl it across the kitchen. It shatters into pieces, and the remnants of his coffee splatter all over the floor.
“Get your own fucking breakfast!” I yell. “And I want my things back where they belong in my apartment!”
Then I stomp out of the kitchen.
It’s only when I make it onto the front porch of the guesthouse that I realize I’m not wearing any shoes, I’ve left my phone behind on the island, I just walked through ceramic shards, and the only transportation in this place that I can drive is the golf cart in the garage.
With a cry of sheer frustration, I take off anyway.
My feet are usually protected at all costs. As a ballerina, I depend on them to be in top shape. But I’m so far gone that I don’t even care. I take off down the sidewalk in my bare, cut-up feet. I don’t know where I’m going. All I do know is that I need to get away from the man I married.
Scorpion
I give her a head start until I realize there’s blood on the floor.
Her blood.
Katya stomped right through the fucking mug she smashed into bits.
Cazzo. I don’t have the patience for this.
I was trying to play the gentleman after playing the saint last night when we got to the guesthouse and I had to help her out of her wedding dress.
And now look at where all that’s gotten me.
Clearly, she hasn’t learned who’s in charge here.