Chapter 18
I’m handling it
MARCO
Being in Las Vegas turned out to be more useless than the sea-view villa we had purchased in Mykonos on a whim, thinking it’d be nice to own property there.
I’d spent a good portion of this wholesome, lovely family blah blah blah bullshit trip watching some waste of precious oxygen lose eighty grand at a poker table.
My best advice to him would have been to steer clear of Monaco.
Although, I didn’t know the guy well enough to offer that up.
Nor did I share with him the obvious fact that if he was looking for a more effective way to flush his money down the toilet, he may have wanted to turn to stock investments.
Stocks were about as expensive and indecisive as the women on Rodeo Drive, and if he landed himself a fly-by-night broker, he’d blow through his money in no time.
Holding my jacket in my hand, I stood in silence in the elevator with Brooklyn while annoyance and sympathy interweaved and ripped through me.
Rocco had filled me in on her twisted game of blackmail.
It was juvenile because she should have known who she was dealing with.
Santo Deluca was never in a million years going to let EJ off the hook after he dangled bait in front of his face.
Had he not known about the ability to invest in the casino, that may have been a different story.
However, he was well aware and had been spectacularly briefed on the situation, so he had his mind set on taking a piece of it for himself.
As a result, there had better have been a solid reason, even more solid than evidence that could hold up in court and determine someone’s fate, for wanting him to walk away.
The silence stretched in the confined space and was beginning to make me feel like my blood flow was being restricted by too small of a condom.
It was severely annoying, especially because her lips weren’t even twitching to share with me what she had been up to during this period in our relationship we would forever remember.
In Vegas. The city of scandal and secrets.
The latter she had down. Except it technically wasn’t a secret since I knew what was going on. Embers of my sympathy began dying down, my disgust still alive and well as the elevator came to an abrupt stop.
“I think it’s stuck,” Brooklyn said coolly after waiting a beat, a bored look flickering over her expression. “Hit the emergency button so someone knows to come.”
I cracked my neck, dropping my jacket and hearing it plummet to the floor with a satisfying plop.
“You don’t think I could have figured that one out on my own?
” This was an outrage. Leaning over, I pressed the button and leaned against the side of the elevator, propping a foot up behind me.
It turned out I wasn’t in the mood to sit, but the jacket could stay there.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes widening as she pulled on her earlobe. That couldn’t have been comfortable. “Surely someone will be here soon.”
I narrowed my eyes, clearing my throat when she didn’t show any indication she was kidding. “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. Why, is someone claustrophobic? If so, you should probably stick to stairs.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Lucky for me, I’m not claustrophobic.” Crossing her arms, her tits squeezed together even more so than they already were, the low-cut green satin shirt doing nothing to hide her cleavage.
One wrong move and I’d be introducing myself to her nipples. I didn’t care to dwell on shit, like body changes, but her tits had definitely grown with her pregnancy. They weren’t just spilling out the top. There was overflow on the sides too.
Brooklyn was barely a notch below well-endowed pre-baby, so it wasn’t a far cry.
“You going to stare at me the whole time?” she questioned with attitude lacing her tone as she pursed her lips.
My dick thumped against my thigh, and I forced my eyes to catch onto the diamond necklace that, if any longer, could’ve gotten lost in between her tits.
“Yes,” I answered, taking note as she watched my lips move.
“Next time you have grand ideas of blackmailing someone, don’t,” I warned, crushing the tension that encircled us like a glittering aura.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine her as a warm mother, but it seemed nearly impossible she would be able to balance that between tending to her child’s needs and her own need for drama.
She released a sarcastic and hysterical laugh that seemed to have been forming in her throat for a while. “Please, spare me.” Her gaze flitted to the ceiling.
For as clever as she was, she was also rash and foolish. “It didn’t work.” I found it shocking she could have genuine disbelief running through her at the moment.
Yet she dropped her arms, swaying on her feet as her mouth hung open. “You’re lying,” she spat, clearly more comfortable staying in the realm of delusions.
“You forget this is Santo.”
She wrinkled her nose and wrangled her fingers, the diamond tennis bracelet falling lower on her wrist. When I gave thought to her jewelry and how it served as somewhat of an armor for her and a reminder of trials in her life, it felt like someone was heavily pushing their thumb over my spine.
“It’s because it’s Santo.” There was something in her expression, in her motions, that was uncomfortably familiar.
The feeling it stirred in me got its hooks into me, latching onto my heart and tugging.
There was no need to confess anything more than she already had.
That hunger that was pumping through her, for more payback, for more revenge, for more punishment on Santo, would only morph into guilt.
I was sure of it because Brooklyn was new to this, and she was reacting in a knee-jerk way.
She needed to leave this alone. “Let it go, Brooklyn.” I paused while her shaky chuckle filled the space. “I’m serious.”
“Is that what you do, Marco?” An uncharacteristic irritation underlined her voice.
She knew I wasn’t a schmuck, that I wouldn’t sit back and take his crap. “Santo destroyed the evidence,” I said. I would’ve grinned, but I didn’t exactly care to be boastful.
“How?” she choked out, and I realized that I must have been sick because for as much as I hated it, I harbored a sort of infatuation with her belief she was the smartest person in any room. She’d never admit to it, but she didn’t have to.
“Does it matter?” Besides my jaw hardening, I remained stoic, practically daring her not to proceed with a line of questioning that would continue this conversation.
Not when there was a darkness wrapping its vines around the situation now, Santo getting involved and acting like a god as he unleashed his endless power.
It became a matter of getting what he wanted and making sure some woman with a penchant for stirring up trouble didn’t get in his way.
We stared at each other, the oxygen seeming to dissipate the longer neither of us moved or spoke.
“Yes,” she finally demanded roughly, moving forward and destroying some of the distance between us.
Couldn’t she have been normal and sat down on my jacket or something?
Rested? Didn’t she need that? Rest would have been good for her.
She should try it, and then maybe I wouldn’t have to put up with telling her how fantastically she messed up.
She wasn’t tangling with some high school jock or even EJ anymore. Why couldn’t she see that?
Dragging a hand through my hair, I knew she wasn’t going to go away.
Maybe if this elevator would just work, I could walk away from her.
That didn’t seem to be happening, though, so maybe the next best thing I could do was impress upon her the gravity of the situation she put herself in.
“There was an unfortunate incident at an apartment building in the city.”
She squinted her eyes. “Incident?”
“According to the news station that reported on it.”
“What building, Marco?”
“Yours. Security is on it, though, working with the authorities to find the culprit.”
She narrowed her eyes but said nothing. She didn’t need to. She already knew.
“The good news is only one apartment was targeted. The bad news is it was yours. Or as the reporter put it, ‘apartment of the soon-to-be wife of a Deluca heir.’”
“Does he think this is a joke?” she snapped.
Her combative nature was cute, but it didn’t change the facts. “You’re out of your league.” Santo’s hands weren’t clean. They never were. They were covered in lies and deceit and soured realities that painted a picture of him doing all he did for the greater good, which in his mind was family.
In the beginning, I may have believed my mother didn’t know anything of it, that she had been in the dark.
Things changed. For as soft of a woman as she could be, she had probably learned chastising him for his broken moral compass and the misdeeds he’d racked up was nothing more than a waste of time.
Regardless, I had decided not to take a stance on the subject because it was more complicated than any of us could have ever imagined. It also wasn’t my place.
Just as it had nothing to do with me that Vito was treading down the same path as our father. Lisa Marie had been called out on her hypocrisy for turning a blind eye. However, I genuinely thought there was a bigger story there as well.
Whipping her ponytail, she gave me a fiery look that had the ability to shoot daggers my way. “Don’t tell me what I’m out of.” Her cadence became sharp in an authoritative tone that sent bolts straight to my groin.
“Too bad because you might be out of your mind too, but that’s another story.” I shook my head.
She groaned, reaching out and grabbing hold of my shoulders. Only, we were standing far enough apart from one another, such that it felt reminiscent of a middle school dance where neither of us could enter the other’s space. “Marco, aren’t you going to do something?”