Chapter 16 #2
Her mouth popped open. Anger shifted to confusion.
“He’s going to look for you, and he’s going to come for you.
Believe me when I say this, you don’t want that.
” Her face flamed, heat rising up her throat.
I wanted to tug her to me and taste it on my tongue.
“Learn this fucking lesson. You want to end me? You get to do that. But you stay away from my fucking brothers if you want to survive it.” Turning around, I pushed the swing-door and walked away.
Outrageous Spanish words followed me out of the room. Her spark was back and fuck if it wasn’t hot. If I hadn’t moved, I would have put her on the kitchen counter and had my way. And she had no idea what eleven years of frustration felt like when it was unleashed.
When I walked back to the table, Stefano’s attention had shifted.
Enzo had chucked his coat on the back of the chair.
His tie was undone again, and the two top buttons of his dress shirt too.
His wife had four buttons undone in the back of her dress.
Lucky for her, she had thirty-four quarter-inch buttons left for him to get through.
Which I wanted to cut through with one slice of the knife on the side of my plate when she asked me innocently, “Why is she mad again?”
The attention in the room turned my way. Just when I thought they’d mind their fucking business.
“I don’t know. Why do women lose it, cognata?”
She scowled. “It’s almost always because a man has pissed her off.
” Her gaze was accusing. Around Enzo, she was courageous.
If she was alone with me, she was more cautious.
She wasn’t comfortable around me. Not like she was around Stefano, the eternal charmer.
Unlike him, I couldn’t be bothered to make the effort.
Stefano chuckled. “What did you do, Nico?”
Asked her three times today if she was going to get to killing me in this lifetime.
I reached for the wine cooler set on the table and uncorked the bottle. “Vino?” Daria nodded silently. I didn’t miss how she moved closer to her husband while doing it.
“Angelo’s in London.” Stefano barked out a laugh and looked up from his phone.
Enzo groaned. “Let me guess… he’s the legal front for their business?”
I took the change of topic and rode with it. “He’s going to be the clean side of it. Antonio is an actual gentleman, and that worked in the business world in Boston. Maybe it’ll work in London. Angelo may look like a gentleman, but he’s hiding a gun under that suit of his.”
“Aren’t we all,” Stefano observed.
I looked at Enzo. Another button had come off. His index finger tapped impatiently for a cigarette while he was probably groping his wife underneath my dining table. “We don’t pretend to be something we’re not.”
Walking over to the drinks trolley, I mixed their drinks.
“How do you know this, anyway?” Enzo asked Stefano.
“Vitale.”
“Why are you kissing my brother-in-law’s ass?”
“Hey!” I picked up the sound of a smack. Turned my head to see Daria had punched him on his shoulder.
He took her fist in his hand and kissed it. “I know he’s your brother, principessa, but he’s still the Don in Sicily. There’s nothing Stefano needs from him that he can’t get from me.”
“You’d be surprised,” I murmured. Stefano glared at me. I ignored him.
The smell of garlic and onion filled the air together with the hallmark scent of saffron.
Daria said something. I didn’t register it.
Seventeen minutes after I’d warned her, Anna strutted in.
I followed her walk from the kitchen to the table.
A man could write a sonnet to the rhythm of her hips shifting.
My sister-in-law obviously agreed. She let out a soft sigh and said, “You’re so pretty.” She had good taste. The only reason I let her run all over my house and design it.
My gaze traveled up Anna’s body. Her pinched waist, the curve of her breast, the smoothness of her neck, and her fucking lips I wanted to bite and taste. Nine, nine, seven, four, seven, e. A fucking goddess. “Dull as they get,” I concluded in my indifferent tone.
My brother's eyes burned with inquisitive questions. Daria’s were taking up half her face.
The only one I wanted to be questioned by kept her gaze fixed on the table.
But oh, she was vexed. Her cheeks flooded with color.
She had her teeth clenched tight enough to warrant a dental check.
I’d got the reaction I ached for. Passion shimmered in her actions.
Thumping a plate in front of Daria, she moved toward Enzo.
Other than being the Don, he was a loose cannon.
Pissing him off was never a good idea. She either didn’t know or care, because the way she dumped his plate in front of him…
was a plea to have her hands cut off. The thought of it crushed the air in my lungs.
But she got away with it. He was distracted watching me watch her.
Whirling around, she stormed back into the kitchen.
The swing-door swung nine times before it slowed down to a stop.
“Way better than Netflix,” Stefano punctured the silence with delight.
I didn’t know if Enzo said something. Anna was back with two plates in her hands. I couldn’t help it. The ice was melting, and I wanted her fully thawed before the clock struck midnight.
“Spanish girls are fire.” Stefano’s plate landed next to him. Barely. “Not this one, though.”
Daria sucked in her breath. Anna had her lips curled in tightly. She was going to draw blood if she kept at it.
“Don’t mind him, chica.” Stefano’s words irked me.
I wanted her to mind me. But she didn’t even glance my way when I circled around her to my seat.
With a stiff upper lip, she marched toward me.
When the plate landed on the table, it was a miracle that it didn’t crack into a mosaic.
“This one’s a coward.” I thought I’d said it low enough, but the reactions in my peripheral view said otherwise.
Anna bristled next to me; her hands curled into fists.
I wondered how many men had seen the moles on her right inner thigh.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but have you checked her out?”
Of course I have. A hundred thousand times multiplied by a power of ten. But when I turned to Enzo, he had a suspicious glare and one hand fisted on Daria’s fork, holding it mid-air. He didn’t mean that kind of checking out.
“This isn’t Italian.”
“No,” Daria groaned. “Let me eat, Enzo. This looks so good.”
“It’s paella, Fratello,” Stefano drawled, already digging in. “Just because it’s not Italian doesn’t mean it’s not going to be good.”
“I fucking know that. She could have poisoned it.” She would have. If I were alone. The entire reason I had them over was because I’d pushed her far enough for her to crush her consciousness and kill me. I wanted her up close with a knife to my throat. Nothing else would do.
“This is fucking delicious.” Stefano smacked his lips. “You can come over and make use of my house anytime, chica.”
Like hell she would.
“Medda, let me eat.” Daria yanked her hand away. Enzo captured it back easily. “I swear to God, Enzo, if you get between my paella and me, I’m kicking you out of the house.”
“Fuck’s sake.”
My brother looked so torn, I had to put him out of his misery. “She wouldn’t poison us,” I told him, my gaze unblinking, pinned on the would-be-murderer in my house. “Would she?”
She scoffed. Left my family gobsmacked. “Only one way to find out.” Then she spun around and stalked off, hips swaying all the way out.