Chapter 5 Annie #2
He pauses for a moment, as if considering how to answer.
“This is my home,” he says finally. “My father worked for Giuseppe De Luca. He had influence and power, but he was always beneath him. Giuseppe made sure he knew that. And the De Luca family turned out to be rotten. Ronan is giving me a chance to change all of that. To remake it in my image. To make this empire, that he’s handed me, what I want it to be. It’s a… huge opportunity.”
There’s something in his voice—a commitment, a passion, that makes my heart speed up in my chest. Before I can respond, the waiter arrives with our appetizers, giving me a moment to compose myself.
The food is delicious, of course. “I’ve never had caviar before,” Elio confesses as we spoon it onto thin chips with crème fra?che. “This feels a little over-the-top.”
He laughs as he says it, and I can’t help but smile.
The comment feels almost conspiratorial, like the way we used to whisper and laugh and joke with each other.
The pull of the past is so strong that I can almost feel it tugging from the center of my chest, drawing us together as uncontrollably as if we haven’t spent the last eleven years apart.
I pull back, setting down the caviar spoon as I reach for the files.
We need safer territory, something neutral and decidedly unromantic.
“Here,” I say, pushing one of the files over to him.
“These are the projections for the new restaurants Ronan wants to open. With the shipments that we could move through them, if you joined in on the venture, this would be highly beneficial for us both.”
There’s a certain thrill in talking about all of this in public, discussing drug shipments and laundered money in carefully couched terms that no one else will pick up on.
Elio’s mouth twitches as he takes the file, and I wonder if he finds the humor in it, too.
We’re sitting around all of these people, and none of them are any the wiser as to the business we’re conducting.
We go over file after file as we work our way through the caviar service and the tender, pillowy lobster gnocchi, keeping the conversation to safe, professional topics.
But underneath it, there’s a constant undercurrent that feels as if it builds with every passing minute.
Every time our fingers brush when we reach for our wine glasses, every time he leans forward to make a point, every time I catch him looking at my mouth when I'm speaking—it all adds up to a tension that's becoming harder and harder to ignore.
The waiter comes back to get our orders—the sea scallops with polenta for me and fig chicken for Elio—and I put the files back into my tote, pouring myself a fresh glass of wine.
"You've done incredible work with the financial side of things," Elio says, taking the wine bottle from me as I’m finished with it. "Ronan's lucky to have you."
"I'm good at what I do," I say simply. I’ve never seen the point in false modesty. "Numbers don't lie, and they don't have hidden agendas. I like that."
Elio’s mouth twitches. "Unlike people."
"Unlike people," I agree. "Although some people are more transparent than others."
“Oh.” Elio raises an eyebrow, that humor building in his expression. “And what about me? How transparent am I?”
I nearly choke on my sip of wine. “Not at all,” I tell him once I manage to swallow.
His gaze drops to my throat, and I go very still for a moment, trying to analyze what I see there.
To figure out what he’s picturing as he looks at the slim line of my neck.
But I can’t make it out, can’t unpack what’s going on in his mind.
He’s a closed book to me now, and that makes my chest ache in a way that I don’t want to examine too closely.
I don’t feel like I know you any longer, I want to say. I don’t recognize you at all. You’re a different person, and that makes me want to cry. It makes me wish that everything had been different before, instead of now.
But I don’t say any of that. Instead, I take another sip of wine with a forced smile on my face. “You have a good poker face now,” I tell him. “That’s important for a mafia boss. It’ll serve you well.”
Elio nods, the humor leaching from his expression as he drums his fingers against the table.
“I’m finding more than ever that it’s necessary to keep what I’m thinking to myself.
To make sure that others don’t see it.” He takes a breath.
“It’s not how I like to be. Closed off and inaccessible.
But survival is what’s important, right? ”
I swallow hard, and once again, I see his eyes flick down my throat. “Yes,” I say softly. “That’s what everyone in this world is trying to do.”
The waiter chooses that moment to return with our food, breaking the tension of the moment.
I can see the relief in Elio’s face as he shifts away from me slightly, and there’s a pang in my chest at the increased space between us.
Maybe this was a bad idea, I can’t help but think as I spear a delicate sea scallop with my fork.
This hasn’t helped anything. I think it might have made it worse.
But when we finish our food and Elio suggests we skip dessert, I can’t stop the next thing that comes out of my mouth.
“What about a drink?” I look at him, suddenly feeling desperate for this night to not end.
I know it’s not going to happen again. After tonight, neither of us is going to make the mistake of being alone—me, because I know how it’s making me feel, and Elio, likely because he doesn’t want the complication of the tension I know he senses.
If anything, he’s likely to draw further away after this.
And I want a little longer with him, just the two of us.
It hurts, being so close to him. But it’s the kind of pain that almost feels good, in a way.
Elio hesitates. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
Why? I want to demand. Because you don’t want to be so close to me, or because you can’t help wanting it?
I want to dig every bit of feeling out of him, to know what the last eleven years felt like to him, to know what he felt that morning in Ronan’s office when he walked in and saw me there.
I want to know what he’s thinking, feeling, suffering, longing—or if there’s none of that at all, and I was right to tell myself to forget all about him when he left.
“You can tell me your plans for dealing with the issues at the docks,” I suggest. “Over a good cocktail. They have excellent whiskey, too, if that’s your thing.”
“I’m more of a gin guy,” Elio says wryly, and I try to stop the leap in my chest.
“So am I,” I say with a small laugh. “Partial to gin, that is.”
“What’re the odds of that?” Elio’s smile looks tight at the corners, but he reaches for his wallet, pushing my hand away as I try to stop him. “I’ve got this.”
“I invited you out,” I protest. “I should pay. I can write it off as an expense, anyway.”
Elio shrugs. “So can I, now.”
“Elio—”
Something crosses his face, a flicker of frustration that I don’t quite understand. “Just let me pay for dinner, Annie,” he says, his voice suddenly sharpening, and I sit back, startled.
“I—okay.” I hold my hands up in a placating gesture. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He runs a hand through his hair as he tosses his black credit card down. “I—I’m sorry. I just wanted to… fuck, I don’t know. Sorry.”
He doesn’t move to take his card back, though, and I bite my lip as understanding dawns… or what I think is understanding, anyway. Elio is a different kind of man now, a man who can pay for a dinner like this rather than just taking us to his grandmother’s restaurant, where we’ll eat for free.
There’s more to it, too, if I had to guess.
For years, when Elio lived with us, everything he had was by the grace of the O’Malley family.
Even now, his wealth is because of what my brother’s done.
I can understand why it must make him feel good to be able to toss down his card and pay for a meal like this.
Elio looks at me, pausing. "One drink," he says finally.
“One drink,” I agree, managing a smile. And then we’re both getting up, heading out into the cold to drive separately to the bar I give him the address to.
It’s the speakeasy that Desmond showed me last weekend. A part of me wonders if this is a bad thing to do—to take Elio to a bar that a guy I’m sort-of-dating told me about. But I also think Elio would like it, and I want to show him what I thought was a really cool spot.
Elio does seem impressed when I give the password and we walk in. “This place is incredible,” he says, looking around as we walk to a small, velvet-backed booth at one side of the bustling speakeasy. “It really has that vintage feel to it. How’d you find this place?”
“A friend of the family,” I say automatically, which isn’t entirely untrue. Desmond has been more than that, really, over the years.
We settle into our booth, and I take a deep breath, trying to relax.
This place is made for it, with the dimly lit atmosphere, the soft sounds of a jazz band playing from the stage, and the hum of the customers scattered throughout.
A waitress in the same 20s garb from the first night I was here appears, and I order the Bees Knees again. Elio glances at me.
“What’s in that?” he asks curiously, and the waitress rattles off the ingredients before I can answer, looking at Elio with an expression on her face that’s almost primal.
She’s clearly not immune in the slightest to how devastatingly handsome he is, and I feel a curl of jealousy writhe through my stomach.
I want to tell her to fuck off. To stop looking at him. But I have no right to. I never have—even years ago, when we pretended to belong to each other even though we never could.