“Alessio,” she protests, but her voice is silken and low. “You’re going to make me spill my tea.”
It’s only fair. She made me spill my guts to her last night. But I really don’t want hot Earl Grey dripping down my thigh, so I ease up a little, raising my head.
“I want you naked in my bed when I come home tonight.”
“Well, I want to eat chocolate cake for every meal, but that’s not happening either.”
“You want cake?” I rub my lower lip against hers. “I’ll bring you some fucking cake.”
“You’re missing the point.”
Yeah, I am. Intentionally, too. But I don’t tell her that.
I kiss her instead. She kisses me back, and she tastes like tea and makes a soft, needy sound into my mouth that I want to play on repeat.
I break it off before I make it impossible to leave. “You. Naked in my bed. Tonight.”
“I don’t take orders.”
“Then think of it as a request.”
She licks her lips. “I don’t know. That sounded kind of like a command to me.”
I growl and kiss her again. “I’ll text you. Be ready.”
Then I leave her standing there in my kitchen with her Earl Grey and Cid before I do something stupid, like throw her over my shoulder, take her back to bed, and fuck her until the sun goes down. She’s like an addiction, and I can’t get enough, constantly chasing the high of more Isla.
But I can’t give in right now.
I have work to do.
“I don’t wantto see her.”
“Saint,” Lucky protests on the other end of the line. “She’s our mom.”
The G-Wagon moves through traffic at the speed of a snail. Priest’s driver who he sent back from St. Thomas, Rocco, is doing his best to get me where I need to be, but a rush-hour accident has traffic at a standstill, and getting around it is just about impossible.
“She’s the woman who birthed us,” I correct sharply. “That doesn’t give her the right to lay claim to being our mom. To be our mother, she would have had to have stuck around, which she didn’t. To be our mother, she would have had to have been there for us when our father was beating our asses and turning us into men.”
Our childhood wasn’t much of a childhood. It’s not something I dwell on. Mostly, I tamp that shit down and bury it so deep that it’ll never see the light of day. Our father was a heartless prick who made us in his mold by using brute force. The day our mom skipped town was the last day we were ever allowed to be soft.
I can still hear him telling mesoft guys get clipped and dumped into the riverright before he smacked the back of my head. I was fucking six.
“She asked to see you, and I thought maybe you’d want to hear her side of the story,” Lucky says, bringing me back to the present with a jolt. “That’s all. Your call.”
“Damn right it’s my fucking call,” I snarl. “She can ask to meet the pope if she wants. Doesn’t mean she has a right to see him. I’ll see our sisters. That’s all. I don’t give a fuck about Antonella.”
“Fine.” Lucky sounds annoyed with me, like I’m the one being unreasonable here.
He’s the youngest, and he was so little when Antonella ditched our family that he has no memories of her. I have memories. Bitter, painful ones. A mother with ready hugs, who did all the shit that moms do. She decorated for Christmas. She volunteered in our school. She baked for us, chaperoned my Kindergarten class trip, the whole thing. And then, one day, she was just gone.
No message, no reason, nowhere to find her. She just disappeared, leaving four children who desperately needed her behind. Leaving us at the mercy of our father.
“Look, if you want to pretend like mommy dearest didn’t abandon us, go for it,” I tell Lucky, irritated that he’s taking her side instead of mine. “But she’s dead to me.”
“What if she had a good reason to leave?”
“Would you listen to yourself?” I snap. “A good reason to leave four fucking kids who needed her? What would be the reason?”
