Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
ORIETTA
The organ behind my chest cavity was on a rampage.
My pulse spiked everywhere, including in my eardrums, where the sound was deafening.
I’d forced myself into this situation, and now I wanted to rear out of it.
I wasn’t ready yet. How could I have thought I was?
I couldn’t lose him. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“Well?” His voice sounded calm. The exception in my chaos. No emotion in them for me to unclasp and study. I wanted to freeze time or rewind to five minutes ago, a day, a week, anything but this.
But time refused, and he stood still as a statue in front of me.
Unmoving. Waiting. Until I was ready. But the truth was that I would never be ready.
My shoulders sagged when realisation washed through me.
Just like I could not keep carrying this weight.
It was killing me. Us. Whatever this toxic relationship was, where I tried to hurt him every day.
I swallowed the thick ball of dread that had formed in my throat. Licking my cracked lips, I forced the words out. He didn’t respond because there had been no sound. I tried again. My hollow words of defeat fell between us. “I am a bastard.”
I geared up for his storm of reaction. For three months, I’d done nothing but go through every reaction he’d have, from sneering at me to walking out the door to kicking me out. But none of them was this, where he looked at me deadpan and said, “And so?”
I stared at him. My eyes burned with the weight of my truth. He needed to explode in rage. Not this. “What do you mean, and so?”
“I already knew this, Orietta. Now move on to your next excuse.”
“How?”
He gave his head a rough shake, and one hand lifted off the closet to grab the back of his neck.
“You don’t think I don’t follow your mood shifts?
Three months ago, you had sunk low, beyond your normal destructive mood.
I checked the cameras, found the woman, and tracked her down.
Which brings me to the point that you need to stop paying her. ”
My body trembled. I didn’t know how to handle this new piece of information that he delivered so calmly. “Why?”
“Because I gave her a one-time payment to shut her up and a promise.” His face twisted into stone when he uttered the next words. “If she ever turns up and fucks with you again, I will shred her to pieces and feed her to the fucking crows.” There was no doubt he meant it.
A storm of emotions built inside me. Rage. Pain. Disbelief. Especially disbelief. “Why would you do that?”
He reached for my face, and his thumb ran from my cheekbones to my jaw in a gesture of comfort, maybe. I couldn’t tell anymore beyond the confusion I felt.
“When will you understand that everything I do, I do for you?” He pinched my lips together, blocking any argument from me.
“I married you for you.” His words were a whisper against the edge of my mouth.
“I told you I put Cosa Nostra before you, for you.” His hand threaded through my hair and fisted it to hold me in place.
I was his prisoner. “The only thing I do for myself is that I stay with you.”
I couldn’t make sense of it. “Why?”
“Because I need you in my life.”
I wanted to believe him. I did. More than he knew. But there was an army of monsters inside who wouldn’t allow it. What was one man going to do against an army? “You do?”
“You know I fucking do.”
Fuck. I needed to believe him. But it was so hard. The self-doubt crept in again. “I am a fucking bastard child.”
He sighed. “So? It says nothing about you. If your father’s history is what makes you, then are you saying Vitale and the girls are fucking pesticides?”
His vile words agitated me. I pushed him off and stalked to the other side of the room. “You don’t get to say that. They’re not bastards.”
“It’s a simple calculation. The number of times Carlo put his dick in a pussy, it was bound to happen at one point.” He shrugged, watching me carefully. “I’m just glad it resulted in you.”
“I’m not a fucking math problem. This is not a fucking joke.”
“Never said it was. Just trying to get you to look at the big picture.”
I’d had enough of him. “I’m done talking.” I rushed out of the room.
He followed me at my heels into the kitchen.
“No, you’re not. I want all your fucking excuses.
Right here. Right now. I am done letting you ruin yourself.
And if it’s for no good reason, other than that your sperm donor couldn’t keep his dick inside his pants, then that’s not fucking good enough for me. ”
“Don’t you get it?” I whirled around, waving my hands in agitation. They were traitorous, trembling, and I caught hold of the kitchen island to keep them out of sight. “He didn’t want me.”
“True.”
I gasped. One sharp word that split me apart.
He stalked up to me, melting the gap between us to nothing.
“Don’t you get that Carlo didn’t want anyone?
He was a selfish bastard who thought only of his own pleasure.
Stop entrapping yourself in the eyes of one man who never wanted you.
Fuck if I let him ruin you when you have so many people around you who fucking want you in their life. ”
I shook my head angrily. No one wants me.
“Ada wants you, doesn’t she?”
Why would she when I wasn’t hers? “I told you I was done talking.” I turned my back to him, but he flipped me around and shoved me against the fridge.
“Doesn’t she?”
“I am not hers.”
“Is that why she brought you up like one of her own? Is that why she’s trying to talk to you? Not giving up on you even though you’ve ignored her for months? You’re killing yourself, and you’re ruining the people around you by doing it.”
I pushed him away and staggered to the other end of the room. “This is what I do. I am not the nice girl you think I am.”
He laughed. “Please. Give me some fucking credit. I never thought you were nice.”
His words hurt me. Even when I knew it was the truth. I wanted to be his nice girl.
“I don’t do nice. I don’t want fucking nice.
Fucking nice wouldn’t have got you on your knees sucking my cock.
I want you. If you want to burn my clothes and rip my bike, go ahead.
If it makes you happy, you can burn the whole damn world, and I’ll take a front-row seat to watch you doing it.
” He stalked over to me and caged me against the wall.
“But does it make you happy, piccolo porcospino?”
I stared at him, too angry to come up with words.
I didn’t want to have this conversation anymore, but I was somehow also shaking my head.
My control trembled under his sharp gaze.
My eyes brimmed, and before I knew it, a tear had spilled out.
“This isn’t me.” I wiped angrily at my cheek and looked away.
He gripped my chin and forced it back to his. “Why not?”
“I don’t cry in front of anyone.”
“Am I anyone?”
I stilled. My hand on my cheek burned. My words came out slow. Thoughtful. “You’re the man who married me.”
“What else?”
“The man I fuck.” That I was sure of.
His lips tilted up. “And so well, too. What else?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed in frustration. “What do you want me to tell you?”
“I’m the one who’s going to be with you every step of the way.
If you want to burn the world, I’ll walk by your side and carry the gasoline.
You want to plant trees and make this a better world?
I’ll dig the holes for you. You name it.
I’ll do it.” He tipped my chin up. “But I will not stand back and watch you burn yourself, capisti?”
“What if I want to?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the world would be bleak without you, piccolo porcospino. It’s a far better place because of you.”
I yanked my head away from him. My vision started to blur. It gave me a curtain of courage to hide behind. “Sometimes… sometimes I don’t know how to handle it.” I choked out. Gripping his arm, I pleaded with him. “It hurts so much. I don’t know what to do with it.”
His fingers thread through my hair, massaging my scalp. Soothing me even though inside I was a storm of emotion. Brimming, crawling. Fighting. He leaned closer and whispered into my ear, “What if we take it one step at a time?”
My breath caught on the we. “We?”
“Fuck, yes. Told you I’d be with you every step of the way.”
“Even if I damaged your precious t-shirt?”
“We’ll burn it together, if you want.”
Something snagged inside me, and I launched myself at him.
He wasn’t prepared and staggered back before he caught himself at the counter with me in his arms. I cupped his face in mine and assaulted his lips.
A tortured groan slipped through him before he muttered between my lips. “This is not what I meant.”
“Please? This is what I need now.” I couldn’t even explain why.
But I had a sudden urge to stick myself to him.
To have him as close to me as I could. I wanted to be one with him.
Somehow, it always hurt less then. I fought to get the words out to tell him, but already understanding shone in his eyes, and without wasting another word, he devoured me.