Chapter 6
SIX
ISABELLA
I wake before the alarm, which means I haven’t slept. Not properly. Not the way a woman who spent last night in a man’s bed should sleep—loose-limbed, body sated under warm sheets.
My body is humming, but not for the right reasons.
Richard is a long line of warmth to my left, turned away from me, his breath slow and even.
I miss the days I used to sleep like that.
I haven’t slept soundly since Anthony Moretti stepped onto the front steps of my apartment building and reminded me the past doesn’t stay behind a person just because you run from it.
I stare at the ceiling, repeating in my mind what happened in the restaurant last night.
I touch my lips, recalling Anthony’s finger silencing me.
I can still smell the beer on his breath, the touch of his body against mine.
I hate that even now I react to that memory.
How many years have I pretended to be over that man?
Five…
Fuck.
I turn onto my side, careful not to wake Richard.
Outside, New York is already making itself heard—a horn, a delivery truck, some idiot who can’t parallel park shouting at another idiot.
The sounds remind me of everything I left behind, and I can’t say I miss this life.
I have a new one now. One that I need to get back to sooner rather than later.
If only I could find someone to take on the Romero name who wouldn’t bring them all down as Alex would, or as Matteo intended to do.
Richard’s shoulder rises and falls in the gray, predawn light.
I’ve been dating him for two months. I should know him by now.
The real him. The him that exists below the polite smiles, the bottles of good wine, the dinners at places where the waiters know his name.
Two months is long enough to know a man’s ugly, isn’t it?
His impatience. The thing he does when he’s lying.
The shape of his particular cruelty, if he has one.
I don’t know any of that about Richard.
And that, lying here with my mouth still sore from Anthony’s palm, suddenly feels like a problem.
I watch his hand where it rests on the pillow.
A single tattoo on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, which he told me was a stupid mistake from college.
I’d laughed and let it go. Who hasn’t had a college mistake?
Mine was an almost-tramp stamp I got talked out of at the last possible second by a sensible friend.
But looking at the tattoo now, the design of it isn’t quite what he said it was. Too deliberate for a bad decision. I tilt my head and the shape resolves, almost, into something that isn’t English. Something I can’t make out or read. Russian, maybe…
Paranoid, Isabella. You’re being paranoid, and it’s because of Anthony.
I pull the sheet higher and tell myself to stop. Anthony touched me last night. Anthony pressed his palm against my mouth and put his fingers on my throat, and whispered warnings and threats to me. Of course, I’m all muddled this morning. Out of sorts and not myself. Not thinking clearly.
Anthony is the warning. Not Richard, a banker for heaven's sake. Anthony, who has no business being anywhere near my life anymore. Not after his treatment of me and our unborn child.
I close my eyes and breathe.
It doesn’t help. The dark inside my eyelids looks like him.
Richard’s phone buzzes, but he doesn’t stir.
I sit up and glance at it on the nightstand.
It’s sitting face down, the way it always is when he sleeps.
I noticed it the first night I stayed over at his apartment, and I noticed it every night after.
I’ve never said anything. It’s a small thing.
Men are private about their phones. I’m private about mine.
But still… I look at my phone, and it’s face up.
I roll my eyes, frustration pumping through me.
He knows I’m a Romero. Everyone in this city knows I’m a Romero.
He’s never asked me what that means. I had noticed that in the first week and filed it under gentlemanly discretion.
Curiosity is a thing men have. Especially bankers, who make their living on knowing where other people’s money hails.
Richard has never once asked where mine comes from.
He has, however, asked which routes I take to work. What times I keep. Whether I travel nationally or internationally. All of which he framed as concern. All of which sounds a lot less like concern and a lot more like reconnaissance or control.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes until I see spots.
No. No, I’m doing exactly what Anthony wants. I’m sitting in my own bed, making a Russian mafia operative out of the first kind man I’ve let near me in five years. That’s all this is.
Richard stirs, and his breathing changes.
He rolls onto his back, and one hand comes up and rests, palm down, across his chest. I wait for him to settle again, and then I slide out from under the sheets, careful not to wake him.
I pad barefoot across the hardwood to the ensuite and shut the door.
I take a deep breath and count down from ten, remind myself that I’m Isabella Romero, head of a hundred-year-old mafia family, and I don’t come apart in a bathroom because a man I shouldn’t give the time of day to touched me in a restaurant storage room.
I pull on a robe, splash cold water on my face, and watch the woman in the mirror get her color back.
I think of my daughter. I always think of her when I’m forgetting what I’m doing here.
How much I love her and her sweetness that’s too good for this harsh world.
Her gap front teeth. The small, dictatorial finger she jabs into my palm when I tell her it’s bedtime.
The way she smells of lavender and the shampoo Maeve uses because it’s gentle and fragrance-free.
Soon, my heart. Soon, Mamma will be home.
I walk back into the bedroom. Richard is still out cold, a perfect man who has the body of a god. I narrow my eyes and study him for several minutes. Do bankers usually look so athletic, so muscular and formidable?
The phone, face down. The odd tattoo. How he flinched when the neighbor slammed her door three apartments over the other day. Richard had almost vaulted out of his skin, and then laughed and blamed the coffee when I teased him about it.
I’d let it go.
I’m very, very tired of letting things go.
Things always went askew when I didn’t take heed of my instincts.
I stand there for longer than I should, debating everything I know about him, about me, and what Anthony had said.
But I don’t have to listen to Anthony anymore.
He’s a liar and is only trying to hurt me yet again.
Don’t let him make you paranoid, Isabella.
I lean down and softly kiss Richard’s shoulder, so he doesn’t wake.
His skin smells of soap and the faintest something else I can’t quite place.
My phone buzzes on the bedside table, and I walk around to pick it up.
A message from Alex. Another client gone.
The Dragunoviks again, their prices impossible, their promises and reach far greater than our own.
I stare at the screen until the message dims. A horn sounds outside, and I walk out onto the balcony and watch New York wake up while I make the kind of decisions I didn’t want to make today.
Because Anthony was right last night, the bastard.
The Russians seem to be here to stay and to cause trouble while they’re at it.
There’s no loyalty, no respect, and perhaps I need to align myself with the Morettis to ensure they toe the line.
Don’t cross any of our family boundaries.
Not the Morettis. Not the Romeros.
“What are you doing out here?” Richard wraps his arms around my stomach and leans his head against my shoulder.
I clasp his hands, holding him against me.
There was no way this man was anything that Anthony was insinuating.
So what if I started to date him around the same time the Dragunoviks were making their presence known in the States?
It didn’t mean anything. A coincidence only.
“Just enjoying the view, which has improved now that I’m enjoying it with you.” Not a lie. I did love having his company.
He sighs and kisses my shoulder. “I wish I didn’t have to go and we could spend all morning together, but I have several meetings lined up today, and I need to return home to grab a new suit.” He pulls away and turns me about. “But dinner tonight as planned?”
I nod. “Of course. I’ll be ready by seven.” He kisses me and leaves. I watch him walk away, enjoy the view of his back and his boxers as he collects his clothes. He doesn’t even sound Russian. There isn’t even a whisper of an accent.
Anthony was just being an ass. Typical Moretti. I should know better, especially considering our history.