Chapter 11 Annetta
ANNETTA
He’s hurt.
But it’s hard to tell by the way he’s carrying himself. The radio’s tuned to a pop song, and after he wiped his face with his shirt and—thank God—opened his other eye, he’s driving steadily through the dark streets like he doesn’t have a care in the world, like he’s not covered in his own blood.
“You’re supposed to be talking,” he says.
Annoyance flares inside me.
“You were supposed to answer my calls,” I bite back.
“I was busy—”
“Doing what? What do you even do all day? All you do is avoid me and leave me alone all the time.”
“You want some fucking company? Get a dog or go move back in with your parents. I didn’t ask to be your babysitter.”
He’s got a point, and that pisses me off more than anything else.
“It’s too late. We’re married now. How many women marry men they hate and still have to smile and pop out babies for them and cook and clean for them? Why do you get to pick your fate when I can’t?”
“Is that your fucking problem? Daddy stuck you with me, and now you’re crying because you’re not fucking Russell?”
I blink a few times, my anger blown out like a candle’s flame. “…Russell?”
He couldn’t possibly be jealous.
“Don’t even say his name,” he grits out and bursts into a dark chuckle. “If I hear his name on your lips, I swear to God, I’m driving back there, and I’m going to make you watch me finish strangling him.”
Finish…?
The bandage around Russell’s throat. That’d been Dom?
It’s difficult to think through the pleasurable haze that is the understanding of my husband’s jealousy.
I lean into him, wanting to sip from it like from the juices of a ripe fruit. “He’s nothing to me.”
“Maybe you’re too sheltered to know what a man thinks when he sees a woman like you, but it was pretty fucking clear he wants you.” Dom pauses. “I forbid you from seeing him again.”
I burst into laughter, and judging by the white skin on Dom’s knuckles on the steering wheel, he doesn’t like that. I couldn’t care less about seeing Russell again, but I’ll be damned if I let my absent husband boss me around.
“What gives you the right to tell me who I can talk to?”
He snatches my wrist and shakes me, a groan of pain escaping his lips. The idiot—he’s grabbing me with his own injured palm.
“This ring gives me the right,” he says. “You say I’m stuck in this—you are too. So, you’re going to be my wife, I expect obedience.”
Fuck no.
I twist my hand and dig my finger into the cut in his palm.
He nearly swerves off the road. “Fuck!”
He jerks his hand out of my grasp and swings the car to the side road, hitting a strip of sidewalk before he slams to a stop, inches from hitting a brick fence.
I brace myself against the side door of the car, heart racing, eyes wide.
“Dom,” I say in a weak voice. “You’re scaring me.”
He laughs. “You’re scaring me. Here I thought you were my sweet, innocent wife, and now I learn the Chiarellis have a hit out on you?”
My tongue goes dry. “You need to go to the hospital. Get stitches.”
He sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Alright,” he says. He turns off the car and tosses his phone on the dashboard. “Get out. Leave your phone.”
Is it trust or fear that has me scrambling to unbuckle myself after him? The way his massive form stalks around the hood of the car makes my breath catch, even now, but I still wait for him to open the door as an act of tiny rebellion—he can do it, since he wants me outside so badly.
The door swings, and he stands outside the car for me like my personal bodyguard.
I slip out lightly onto the street, my boots clicking onto the asphalt.
“Where’s your phone?”
“I left it in the penthouse.”
He eyes my coat. “You gonna be warm enough in that?”
My coat’s plenty warm, but I still cross my arms and glare at him. “No.”
He chuckles as he shrugs his massive coat off and slides it onto my shoulders. The smell is intoxicating, and I have to resist shoving my face in the fur lining. Maybe this crush is just self-destruction dressed in lingerie.
Mom picked Dad even though Aunt Karen said he would cheat on her constantly until she got pregnant with Carlo. I’ve seen the ways she molded herself to be a woman Dad would never think to leave, until there was nothing of her old self left.
And if Serafina and Russell really were together, that’s another woman in my family who chose a man who couldn’t be worse for her.
If I could turn off my attraction to Dom like a switch, wouldn’t I? Or is it written in my DNA to pick men who’re bad for me?
“Come on,” Dom says. “Let’s walk.”
Blades of grass poke through a frost-crusted hill behind the brick fence we almost drove into. Nearly invisible in the darkness, tombstones jut out of the ice like shards of broken pottery.
My breath catches in my throat. It’s a cemetery. I spot a placard on the iron fence above the bricks. Oak Woods.
Serafina’s body isn’t here.
Dom lays a hand on my shoulder before I can spiral down that line of thinking. I’m tempted to shrug his hand off, but I’m equally as tempted to lean into it, to kiss the blood off his knuckles.
He might be a fucking asshole, but he killed that guy for me. Mikey.
“You really need to get looked at,” I say after several long moments of silence as we stroll down the sidewalk like two midnight lovers. This is the first time we’ve ever been together, just the two of us in public like this, though there’s no one to see.
“I will soon.”
We pass a few other parked cars and a homeless man sleeping—at least I hope he’s just sleeping—on the sidewalk, before Dom finally says what’s on his mind.
“Why are you pretending to be your sister?”
I trip, stumbling forward at the same time that he shoots a hand out and snags the back of my coat. I turn to stare at him, open-mouthed, and he gently guides me forward.
“Keep walking,” he says. “And start talking.”
“What did Mikey say?”
Dom scoffs. “Cut the shit. I might be dumb, but I’m not that dumb. You and I both know I had my suspicions. I didn’t need Mikey to figure it out. This your idea?”
My mind flashes to my parents, hard-eyed in the soft glow of their living room while I stood out in the cold.
What have you done? Mom asked.
“Promise me,” I say. “Before we talk about this, promise you’ll keep my family safe.”
“I promise.” He doesn’t hesitate, and I don’t know if it’s the easy confidence of a practiced liar or of a person who knows an absolute truth about themselves.
I remember the way he held Carlo outside my bedroom door. He loves my parents and brothers. He’s always been a part of our family—I have to believe that.
“Mom,” I whisper, my mind spinning. My grasp on his coat loosens.
I wish he’d say something, but he’s completely silent as he waits for the rest of my confession—and of course he is.
I’ve heard about what he does when he’s burnt out from work.
He goes to the woods and hunts. The image of him, fierce and deadly, aiming an arrow at my heart in his kitchen, sends a frisson of heat through me, throwing my emotions off-balance. I can’t control it.
“She wanted to protect me,” I say in a low, slow voice. “She said I had to be Serafina.”
We’re walking next to a cemetery in the dead of night. Could someone be listening in, even now? My mind flashes with images—a boat, beer bottles, a flailing hand, an open mouth filling with water. Fear and pleasure stir deep inside me.
I continue. “Before I left Florida, my husband and I fought. I ran, and his family is after me now. They think I killed him.”
“Did you?” Dom asks.
I want to tell him the truth. I have to.
But the moment I do, I’m throwing myself at the feet of a man not known for mercy, who’s done little more than ignore me since I’ve moved to live with him.
I want to laugh. What I’m thinking about doing is almost suicidal.
Where else would I go? What other options do I have?
He won’t accept a non-answer from me, and if he sends his boss to look into this, I’ll be especially screwed.
Not even Valeria’s offer of cash could save me.
He wanted to know who hurt me when I had that nightmare. What feels like a lifetime ago, he promised me Aldo wouldn’t hurt me.
I take Dom’s hand, more for my own comfort than anything—like I might have another way to probe his emotions if his face doesn’t expose his thoughts, or like the softness of my hand will remind him to treat me gently.
We stop dead in the center of the sidewalk, and I lock eyes with him, nodding once.
I catch a look of amusement, of all things, which shouldn’t be a surprise coming from Dom, but it is.
He turns to continue our walk.
“Dad thinks they mixed us up—”
“They did.”
I glance sharply at him.
Dom squeezes my hand. “It was Mikey. He mixed you up with Serafina, and the Chiarellis know. They wouldn’t pay him until he finished the job.”
I stop in the middle of the sidewalk. “How much?”
“I didn’t ask.”
Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been enough, not to take away my perfect sister. I wish…
“You should’ve let me watch.”
One of his eyebrows ticks up, all the amusement wiped clean from his face. “That’s not the kind of thing you need to see.”
I imagine it anyway—Mikey’s blood, dark and thick as it pools underneath his body. His eyes turning dull as consciousness slips away, a small comfort for my loss.
“That’s not the kind of thing you get to decide,” I say, even as my stomach churns at the mental image I’ve created.
Dom takes my shoulder in his good hand and peers at me, his gaze so kind and gentle it cuts into my chest. His palm is molten hot even through the layers of our coats. “You’re young. Burning away what’s left of your innocence isn’t going to bring your sister back.”
It’s a miracle I’m able to hold back my tears when I finally look him in the eyes. “There’s nothing left to burn.”
He looks sad as he scrapes his thumb along my jaw. “I’m not going to let them touch you, okay? I’ll take care of this.”