8. Dario
DARIO
This is fine. It’s all fine.
I’m living my life and she’s living hers.
But I still pop an AirTag into the backseat of her car, letting it fall onto the floorboard.
For safety. Not because I’m jealous.
I’m not jealous. I’m not.
Besides, she’s probably made it all up anyway. It’s too convenient that I have a date today and so does she.
I’ve been trying to bag Selena for months now. I had her number, and we’ve fooled around in public a couple of times, but never more than that.
She wanted me to take her on a proper date, and now, I finally have the time.
I pull into the gated community after putting in the code she texted me. Selena walks out in a barely there baby blue dress that shows off her blue eyes.
I get out to open her door and Selena slides in, her long legs stretching out over my floorboard.
Even as I stare at them, I’m thinking about Liana.
Where is she going? Who is this Scott Howard guy? What kind of stupid fucking name is that, anyway...
“Dario?”
“Hmm?” I ask, turning to Selena.
“You’re being really quiet.” She gives me a small smile. “Everything okay?”
“Everything is perfect,” I say quickly, trying to focus on her and stop worrying about Liana. “I’ve got a reservation at six.”
“We’d better get going then!” she chirps. She smells like lavender and soap, and my dick should be twitching in interest, but it isn’t.
I drive to the restaurant, a local French place that I frequent.
As we walk in, the ma?tre’d meets me at the front.
“Mr. Conte, right this way,” he says, taking me to the back of the room, to a table near the window.
I order us a bottle of red wine and the server pours us each a glass.
“You’ve been busy lately,” Selena comments, and I nod.
“Just work. You know how it goes.”
Selena wasn’t born into the life, but she’s a part of it nonetheless, one of those mob groupies who only dates wiseguys.
Is Liana’s date talking her up right now? Plying her with wine?
Rage floats over my vision and I don’t realize Selena is talking until she says my name.
“Hmm?”
She huffs out a breath. “You’re distracted.”
“I’m sorry,” I say earnestly, and I really am. I’ve been trying to get Selena into my bed for weeks, and now I can’t focus.
She frowns as I pull out my phone, checking Liana’s location. She’s at a dive bar downtown, one that we used to go to. Anger rushes over me, making my face heat up.
“Something wrong with work?”
“Yeah,” I say quickly, downing the rest of my glass of wine and standing up. I can’t do this anymore. I have to make sure she’s safe. She met this guy online, for God’s sake. Who knows who he is or what he wants? “Sorry, sweetheart. I gotta go.”
She looks up at me, aghast. “You’re just leaving me here?”
I throw down a few hundred dollars onto the table.
“Should be enough for a cab. Rain check?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’ll never see me again, Dario Conte.”
I look at her for a moment longer and then sigh. “Too bad.”
I stalk out of the restaurant, getting into my car and taking off toward downtown. That dive bar is in the shittiest part of town anyway.
When I get there, Liana and her boy toy walk out of the dive bar. My teeth grit so hard my jaw aches when I see him take her hand.
I want to pull all my hair out, slam my fists into the steering wheel, but instead, I just watch.
I get out of the car after they turn the corner, walking a few lengths behind them. He squeezes her hand, chatting idly as she looks up at him with a smile.
What’s he saying that’s so fucking funny?
They’re walking to the parking garage. He stops at her car and she looks up at him like he hung the moon.
I want to scream.
When he leans down to kiss her, I lose it, rage blacking out my vision. I rush toward them, punching the blond in the face before his lips can touch Liana’s.
Liana screams and tries to tug me off him but I can’t think, just throwing my fist into his face over and over.
Finally, she tugs me off him and he scrambles up, spitting out blood and sprinting toward a black sportscar.
Breathing hard, I watch him drive away.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Liana demands to know, but I don’t have an answer for her.
I lost it. Again.
“You bring out the fucking worst in me,” I say, my chest still heaving as I back her up against her car.
“He was really nice!” she argues.
I snort. “Nice. He was trying to get into your pants.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “And what if I was going to let him?”
“Not in my fucking house, you won’t,” I growl.
She throws up her hands. “You’re the one who said we get to live our own lives. This is me, Dario, living my life.”
“Well you can’t kiss someone like that. Not in public. You’re my wife now,” I say flatly, trying to rationalize it to myself.
“And what about in private?”
I go silent. I don’t want anyone else touching her, not for an instant, but I can’t say that. I can’t say that because it’s crazy that I still can’t stand the idea of her being with someone else.
“Come on. We’re going home.”
“Like hell we are,” she huffs. “I’m going to go to a bar and find somebody else who might—”
“No, you won’t,” I growl, thinking about her small hand in his, how she’d tilted her chin up when he leaned down to kiss her.
I’m fucking angry and I can’t help it. She whirls around and heads toward her car. I draw in a sharp breath and scoop her up, throwing her over one shoulder and taking her back to my car.
She kicks and screams and beats on my back but I can’t even feel it, I’m so pissed off. How dare she do this? How dare she come waltzing back into my life needing me, and then try to go on a date with someone else?
I’m not the one at fault here.
I get her into the passenger seat but it’s like getting a honey badger into a cage—difficult and barely worth it.
She finally goes still when I get into the driver’s side, crossing her arms over her chest and looking out the window.
The rage inside me doesn’t seem to abate.
“Who the fuck was that guy?”
“I told you his name already. Don’t you dare try to find him. You’ve done enough.”
“Like hell I have. You were going to let him kiss you? On a first date?”
“On our first date I sucked your—”
“Don’t,” I bark, letting off the gas when I glance down at the speedometer and realize I’m going thirty miles over the speed limit. “This isn’t the same.”
“Isn’t it? Since when do you get to tell me what I can and can’t do on a first date? You don’t even know me anymore.”
“And whose fault is that?”
She thins her lips in a hard line and looks out the window again, pulling out her phone and texting angrily. I peered over her shoulder, trying tro see who she’s texting, but she blocks me with one hand covering the screen.
I shut my mouth before I say something worse, before I spill out how fucking awful it was to find out she was pregnant, to find out she was with someone else.
It was Giovanni who told me.
“Boss?”
I was sitting behind my desk at the office, on my third drink of the night. It was barely six in the evening, but who cared?
Nothing mattered anymore, anyway. Liana wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t take my calls, had her father escort me away from her house.
She didn't want me anymore. Hell, maybe she never did. All because of something I’d done. Something she wouldn’t tell me. I hadn’t seen her face in six months.
“What?” I barked, and Giovanni winced, sitting down across from my desk.
“Pour me a drink.”
I raised an eyebrow. Giovanni had always been a teetotaler because his father was an alcoholic.
Good for him.
We couldn’t all be that perfect.
“You haven’t given your men any orders in months.”
I shrugged. “So?”
“So... maybe it’s time to get back out there.”
“You mean date someone else,” I said flatly. I couldn’t even imagine touching someone who wasn’t Liana.
“Not just that. You have to start your life again, Dario. You can’t let her take everything from you.”
My throat ached and I sipped more of my drink.
“I’m fine.”
Giovanni huffed out a breath, sitting up straight. “You’re not fine, don. You’re drinking more than you’re sleeping and—”
“And what? What does it matter?”
“She’s moved on.”
It felt like someone hit me on the head with a hammer.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I leaned forward, putting my elbows on the desk. “Have you seen her? Where is she? How’d she look?”
Is she miserable like me?
Giovanni swallowed visibly and I knew he was about to give me bad news. I could never have imagined how bad.
“She’s pregnant.”
Those words simply didn’t make sense to me. “Wh-what?”
“Pregnant. She’s showing, has a little baby bump.”
“She... she...” I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe, and then finally I gasped in air through my nostrils, staring at Giovanni. “You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie to you about this, don?”
My throat worked as I tried not to yell. She let someone else touch her. She let someone else inside her.
She was supposed to be mine.
“Get out.”
“Boss, I—”
“I said get out!” I yelled. Giovanni sighed and got up, shooting back the drink I’d poured him in one shot before slamming the glass down and leaving, closing the door behind him.
I stood up, walking to the bar, and took the bottle of scotch I’d been drinking back to my room.
I barely remembered the next three months.
“Are you going to let me out or are we just going to sit in the garage?” Liana’s angry voice brings me back to myself, and I clear my throat, unlocking the doors.
She stalks inside, using the key I gave her, and goes up the stairs before I can even get out of the car.
Fuck.
I follow her but she’s already got Sonny in her arms, his head on her shoulder. He’s sleeping peacefully and something in my heart clenches as they walk past me.
“Wait, Li, I—”
“Save it,” she mutters, not even bothering to turn and face me. “Beth is coming to pick us up.”
“Beth? My cousin, Beth?” I wrinkle my nose. Beth has always hated me, and never more so than when me and Liana split up.
I have no idea why Liana left me, so I have no idea why my cousin hates me. Any more than she always has, anyway. I’ve always been the “golden boy” of the Conte family, the only boy in a gaggle of girls.
“Yes, Beth. Don’t try to stop me.”
Beth pulls up in her SUV and I watch as Liana buckles Sonny into the backseat. She gets into the passenger side without another look at me.
We just got married today and she’s already pissed at me.
Great.
I need a fucking drink.
I take a deep breath, watching her drive out of my life. Again.
Panic rises in my chest. I can’t let her do this. I can’t let her go again.
I have to fix this.