29
CANDI
“What amI supposed to do now?” I ask, rolling onto my side to face Armani.
We’re still in bed, still naked, sweat cooling on our bodies after hours of what I can’t quite call lovemaking. We should probably shower and get dressed soon—it’s almost time for dinner and the staff will be calling us downstairs. But there’s a languid air hanging over us, a kind of sex haze that looks good on my husband and that I’m loath to banish.
Armani looks at me as if he doesn’t understand my question.
“I know for a fact now that neither side is in the right,” I go on. “The Brunos lied to me. My best friend probably lied to me. I came in here half ignorant about the entire situation. But at the same time, your family’s hands aren’t clean either. You’ve all done wrong, don’t deny it.”
“I never would,” he says. “Everything I’ve done on the side of darkness has been to protect my family, but at the same time, that doesn’t make it forgivable. I’m not in denial. I’ve done things that are…that I’ll never be able to atone for. The way I was raised is no excuse.”
I nod slowly. “I know I can’t just walk away at this point, even if I wanted to. I’m in too deep. But I can’t help feeling conflicted.”
“Because we’re all the bad guys?”
“No. It’s not about good or bad or choosing sides—whether you believe it or not, I’m on your side. I just…don’t know what the way forward looks like. I’m a part of all this. There’s no turning back. But what does that mean for me, practically?”
“What do you want it to mean?” he asks.
All I can do is shake my head, lost in thought.
I’m not sure exactly what I’m asking him. All I know is that everything I thought I knew about Armani Bellanti has been shaken to its core. The events of the last twenty-four hours have changed everything. I can’t stop thinking about what the tattooed man said about Armani’s mother and sister, or the cold hatred in his eyes as he dispatched of the prisoner with no remorse. But he was triggered. He was taunted. He lost control. That much was obvious.
It’s funny. For the longest time, I’ve had an image of Armani in my mind as some evil, cold-hearted criminal. A mafia monster. A man who would do anything to get what he wants. But now? I see a man who’s been grieving since he was a little boy. A man who’s been wronged. A man who will do anything to avenge the family that was taken from him. He’s nothing like I imagined. There are so many more layers to him, even though he tries so hard to hide them.
He couldn’t hide his reaction to what the tattooed man said, though. Something terrible happened to the women of Armani’s family, and it seems likely that it’s not what the Bellanti brothers were led to believe. The boys grew up thinking their mother and sister died in a boating accident, but what if that’s not the case? What if they died at Bruno’s hand? What if it was a kidnapping gone wrong? What if he tortured them for his own sick pleasure…or worse?
How much of what I’ve been told by the Brunos has been a flat-out lie?
The thought sickens me.
This whole time, I’ve been the perfect pawn. I love Juliana like a sister, but I see now that she’s used it against me. Instead of thinking for myself, I’ve taken her word at face value all along. I’ve blindly gone along with her plans, naïvely doing her bidding, never stopping to question the lines she’s fed me. Now that I’m becoming fully immersed in Armani’s world, I’m wondering how much of the story I was told wasn’t the whole truth.
Armani climbs out of bed and walks to the closet, giving me a generous view of his toned, naked body. I hear hangers clicking, drawers opening and closing. When he walks back out, he’s in a shirt and tie, pants pressed to perfection, not a hair out of place. It floors me, how he can torture, kill, fuck, and then turn around looking like sheer perfection. How dangerous this man is. How turned on I am by him.
My pulse picks up. My throat goes dry. A flicker of excitement lights in my belly. My mind and body are at war. I don’t know how to reconcile my contradictory feelings.
Initially, the captured man’s screams and pleading made me nauseous. I’d never experienced such a visceral reaction to someone else’s pain. Yet as he began mocking Armani, disrespecting Livvie, teasing at long-held secrets, implying that Sergio Bruno may have done something to Liliana—something violent, something sexual, who knows?—I felt something inside me change. At the end of that man’s life, I felt something dark rise up inside of me.
I thought he was getting what he deserved.
For a blissful moment, I was as cold and unfeeling as my husband. My brain simply turned off and gave me a reprieve from the anxiety and fear. Is this why Armani cultivates his pitiless nature? As a defense mechanism? Because some part of me can understand that. In the heat of the moment, I’d enjoyed going comfortably numb as a man met his death in front of me.
What does that say about me?
Earlier, I tried not to think about it. About why the adrenaline dump of witnessing something so horrible allowed my body to respond to Armani in the driveway like it had. The thought of him getting revenge—of dirtying his hands—flooded me with lust. How sick is that?
The longer I’m with Armani, the more I question everything about myself.
“You look like you’re plotting something.”
I snap my attention to my husband. “What?”
He shakes his head. “It was a joke. Unless you really are plotting something…”
For a second, I consider saying something about learning from the best, but I hold my tongue. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say right now, or how I’m supposed to act. Or what my next steps should be. The stupid little game I was playing is obviously over.
