Enzio
Marta buttered her toast. “Why doesn’t your wife join us for breakfast like she should?”
Since the consummation party, Bianca had never sat at this dining table for any meals. I’d been informed she’d been cooking her own meals and the baby’s all by herself. I lit a cigarette and took a sip of coffee. “She likes to eat alone.”
“This family is built on trust. If she doesn’t trust us, she doesn’t deserve the Lanza name.”
“She’s been the wife of two Lanza bosses. She’s the mother of the sole heir to our kingdom. She’s more of a Lanza thanmany. If someone in the family gave her a reason not to trust us,” I sucked a long drag from my cigarette and blew it out in her direction, “it’s them who don’t deserve the breath that enters their chests.”
She cleared her throat, waving the smoke away. “Cosimo never smoked in the house.”
“Cosimo didn’t smoke.” I blew out another puff. “Because of Bianca.”
“He did before he met her but never in the house.”
“Well, Cosimo isn’t here, is he?” I finished my coffee and kissed her on the cheek. “But I am, and I rule this place. You made sure of it. You’re stuck with me and mynastyhabits.”
I only put out the cigarette when I entered my room. Running water streamed in the bathroom when I walked in. Same like every day since the ceremony. Bianca had been locking herself up in there for very long showers. We barely exchanged a few words since, but I knew she’d been crying her eyes out in there.
She had it coming.
She killed Cosimo with her stupid demands. She tried to run away with my son. She repeatedly disobeyed and disrespected me.
She deserved what I did to her and more. And I’d hurt her every fucking day.
Mario hurled one of his toys against a chair. It squeaked as if in protest. Then he crawled toward me, cooing something, calling me on my shit, I presumed.
Why don’t you stop lying to yourself? That’s not why you hate Bianca or why you really hurt her.
I held him up and sat him in my lap. “You’re right, cazzone. But don’t rat me out.”
I didn’t hate or punish Bianca because of the stupid things she’d done. I was toying with her, breaking her, but I wasn’t going to shove my cock inside her like that. I’d have made her want it. Her body, at least. Rape was beneath me. And even though I didn’t practically rape her—she was my wife—it felt like I did.
I lost it and punished her like that because…even though she wore my ring, swore to be faithful to me till the end of her life and carried my name, she belonged to someone else.
She loved him, and she hated me. Whatever I’d do, how many times I’d claim her, Cosimo had made her his forever.
I hurt her because she’d never be mine.
Chapter26
Enzio
When she came out of the shower, Mario cried and stretched to leave my lap.Mamma’s boy.
I put him on the carpet on his tummy. He crawled fast to her arms and grabbed at the bathrobe, patting her chest. Little fucker was always hungry for her tits. Now that I’d tasted them myself, I couldn’t blame him. My cock sprang to life at the thought.
She spun and sat on the bed, Mario cradled to her chest, her hair dripping down her back. I watched them from behind silently, but after a few minutes, the boy was crying. “I know, baby. I’m sorry. I don’t have much,” she said.
My brows hitched. “Why is he crying? Is he sick?”
She just shook her head.
I left my seat and went to her. “Why won’t he feed? Areyousick?”
Her bloodshot eyes lifted to me in disbelief, the purple hollows under them dark. Then she sighed, as if she surrendered to the fact that someone like me wouldn’t understand that after all she’d been through, she must have been sick. If not physically, then mentally.
She rocked the baby. “My milk is drying out.”
