Stella shot her a look. Like, you’re being mean. Noemi sighed and continued picking at the grapes until a knock came at the door. Oscar went for it and so did Noemi, their shoulders hitting before she beat him to it. She smoothed down her outfit, checked her reflection in the mirror, taming any hairs, and then opened it with a wide smile.
“Damon!”
“Hey, babe,” he said, looking past her. “I didn’t want to be late for a meeting with my star.”
“You’re right on time.” She moved out of his way and let him inside.
If Oscar’s eyes were anything to go by, he was imagining Damon Carter’s death and how it would go down as he stalked behind the sleazy motherfucker. I’d already got to my feet and was standing between him and my wife. She sat behind me, taking sips of her water, and when she noticed the trap wasn’t with him, she sighed, like she’d released a ton of pressure from her chest.
“Stella!” he said, going around me to her. “There’s my star.”
Stella. Not Mrs. Fausti.
Strike 1.
“Ah,” Noemi rushed out, stepping between my wife and Carter. “Let’s tell Stella what we have in mind before they have to leave.” She tapped the face of her watch. “Extreme time constraints, you know.”
Even from behind me, I could feel that Carter was about to take my wife’s hand, maybe going to kiss it, and Noemi knew I would fucking throw him out the window if he did.
“Then we can talk business with her husband,” Noemi rushed out again.
A ticking noise was coming from the corner. Oscar hid in the dark shadows, but he was making his impatience known with his mouth, like he had something stuck in his teeth. Before I could look at Armando, he said something in low Italian to Oscar. The room grew silent.
“Business with her husband?” He walked in front of me and finally faced me like a man. “You her business manager? Her agent?”
I grinned, and it came slow. “Anything or anyone tries to get close to my wife, they go through me first.”
Carter nodded like a bobble head, his expensive gold watch catching the light and hitting Oscar in the eye. Oscar cursed in Italian and moved out of the shadows. Noemi gave him a stern look. He returned it. Though with Oscar, it was sometimes hard to tell. That was just the natural set of his face.
“I see, I see,” Carter said. “Are you venturing into the agent business now?”
“Nah,” I said.
“What do you do then, ah,Mr.Fausti? Or is that all you do? Represent your family’s name?”
“Financial investments,” I said.
“Well, ah, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but Stella here needs a pro. She needs someone like me to help her navigate the biz.”
Stella. Not Mrs. Fausti.
Strike 2.
He whirled around me again, and even though my back was turned, I knew he was devouring her the same way he had the night before with those wide, greedy eyes. He was imagining things I refused to even think, or he wouldn’t be quick enough to take another breath.
Damon Carter didn’t seem to need many of those. He was talking like someone who could rehearse an entire sonnet on one breath. He wasn’t as hyped up the night before. If someone was judging him by looks alone last night, they might have assumed he had some control, some respect. He was nothing. Nothing but a body made of flesh, blood, and bone. And the animal inside of me recognized it right away—he had nothing to separate him from being another animal, like honor, respect, romance. He was a food source, and I’d see him as one.
“I know what Noemi and I discussed, but here’s what I’m thinking, instead of doing her script, we go with another one, about a tortured wannabe star who can’t seem to make it in the biz. We give you an entirely different look, short black hair, a glitzy wardrobe you put together from secondhand shops, because, you know, you want this life so bad, and then…BAM! You end up as a stripper, and a man comes to save you! It satisfies the girlies who want plot, but also satisfies the ones who want raunchy sex scenes, and I think we should change your last name, you don’t want people to only be interested in you because of your last name, right?” He snapped his fingers. “We should call you Star! Star Woodbridge!”
His entire existence.
Strike 3.
“Damon,” Noemi barely got out. “That’s not what we discussed.”
“Take a hike for a while, all right, babe. This is business with a star. You know nothing about the business. You hide behind the camera. That’s your place,behindthe camera.”
Again, even though I couldn’t see my wife, I knew what she was doing. Shaking her head. When I turned, I found her doing that, but in a way that made me go feral. The look in her eyes was almost vacant and it was like she had no control over the shake of her head. All those years of being trapped with the Nemours and the Russians, and she was just reminded of who she’d been. Who the fucking world imagined when they looked at her.
