I couldn’t bear to play her games anymore. Desperation propelled me to push her into the closet and kiss her. Hard. But she didn’t melt into my arms like she usually did and shoved me hard, making me stumble back a step. “Why?” She glared.
“Because that’s what married couples do. They stick to each other.” I stepped forward again and caged her within my arms. I was scared she was beyond her breaking point. Her gaze avoided mine and ran violently all over the room. Gripping her chin, I forced them to mine. “I love you.”
She scoffed at my words, like she always did. “You don’t love me. You love the fuckingCosa Nostra.”
Not this again.My hands rushed through my hair as a groan of irritation spilled from my lips. “You know I only said that, so you’d marry the don.”
“Because you don’t love me.”
“Because I wanted you to have a fucking better life,” I roared. My anger shocked us both. Most days, I was patient with her,but some days she made a mockery of it by stripping me of it. She couldn’t handle the change and shrank away from me. She was going to shut down again. Fuck if I was going to allow that. I gripped her neck and shoved my face in front of hers, refusing to let her sink into the numbness again. “I wanted you to marry the don because your life would have been grand. You always think so little of yourself. I wanted you to have a husband with a standing who would lift you up. Instead of being married to a bodyguard. I am a fucking soldier, not a don.”
“Good thing I didn’t because the last I heard, the fucking don was too busy playing with my sister’s pussy,” she snarled.
“Stop it.” She struggled in my arms, fighting to hide from me. I wouldn’t allow it. “Stop setting yourself on fire. It wrecks me to watch you do it to yourself. You’re pushing away everyone who loves you. Can’t you see we want you in our lives? Your mother, your brother, your sisters. Me.”
Her breathing was harsh, and she shoved adamantly at my chest. I allowed her to have a gap of a few breaths. “You wouldn’t want me if you knew.”
I sighed.About fucking time.“I’m almost afraid to ask, but why not?”
CHAPTER FOUR
ORIETTA
The organ behind my chest cavity was on a rampage. My pulse spiked everywhere, including in my eardrums, where the sound was deafening. I’d forced myself into this situation, and now I wanted to rear out of it. I wasn’t ready yet. How could I have thought I was? I couldn’t lose him. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“Well?” His voice sounded calm. The exception in my chaos. No emotion in them for me to unclasp and study. I wanted to freeze time or rewind to five minutes ago, a day, a week, anything but this.
But time refused, and he stood still as a statue in front of me. Unmoving. Waiting. Until I was ready. But the truth was that I would never be ready. My shoulders sagged when realisation washed through me. Just like I could not keep carrying this weight. It was killing me. Us. Whatever this toxic relationship was, where I tried to hurt him every day.
I swallowed the thick ball of dread that had formed in my throat. Licking my cracked lips, I forced the words out. He didn’trespond because there had been no sound. I tried again. My hollow words of defeat fell between us. “I am a bastard.”
I geared up for his storm of reaction. For three months, I’d done nothing but go through every reaction he’d have, from sneering at me to walking out the door to kicking me out. But none of them was this, where he looked at me deadpan and said, “And so?”
I stared at him. My eyes burned with the weight of my truth. He needed to explode in rage. Not this. “What do you mean, and so?”
“I already knew this, Orietta. Now move on to your next excuse.”
“How?”
He gave his head a rough shake, and one hand lifted off the closet to grab the back of his neck. “You don’t think I don’t follow your mood shifts? Three months ago, you had sunk low, beyond your normal destructive mood. I checked the cameras, found the woman, and tracked her down. Which brings me to the point that you need to stop paying her.”
My body trembled. I didn’t know how to handle this new piece of information that he delivered so calmly. “Why?”
“Because I gave her a one-time payment to shut her up and a promise.” His face twisted into stone when he uttered the next words. “If she ever turns up and fucks with you again, I will shred her to pieces and feed her to the fucking crows.” There was no doubt he meant it.
A storm of emotions built inside me. Rage. Pain. Disbelief. Especially disbelief. “Why would you do that?”
He reached for my face, and his thumb ran from my cheekbones to my jaw in a gesture of comfort, maybe. I couldn’t tell anymore beyond the confusion I felt.
“When will you understand that everything I do, I do for you?” He pinched my lips together, blocking any argument fromme. “I married you for you.” His words were a whisper against the edge of my mouth. “I told you I putCosa Nostrabefore you, for you.” His hand threaded through my hair and fisted it to hold me in place. I was his prisoner. “The only thing I do for myself is that I stay with you.”
I couldn’t make sense of it. “Why?”
“Because I need you in my life.”
I wanted to believe him. I did. More than he knew. But there was an army of monsters inside who wouldn’t allow it. What was one man going to do against an army? “You do?”
“You know I fucking do.”
