“I don’t have to like you to marry you.”
21
Matilde
“Che cosa?!”Marry me? He can’t have been serious.
Without answering, Nico pushes the button that lowers the privacy screen. I fidget in my seat, knowing Primo likely heard me getting spanked earlier at the very least. “Drive us to my parents’ home,” Nico tells him, calmly. “Matilde will be staying there tonight.”
“Why would I be staying there? You tell me to live with your mother. I am happy there, but you tell me move to your house. Now, you tell me to go back to your mother’s. And what do you mean by marry?”
His rough finger presses against my lips. “You want the very best for your sister, don’t you? You want her to be safe, right?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Just a fact, Matilde.”
His hard stare defies me to test him, so I angrily bite my tongue instead… though I accidentally-on-purpose kick his shin when I cross my legs.
And for the first time ever, Nico smiles at me. It’s more like a smirk. A damned sexy smirk. Thisasshole.
***
“Nico, what is going on?” Zeta asks, eyeing my little black dress with concern a half hour later.
“I’m afraid Matilde wasn’t studying for her finals tonight but busy sneaking into a nightclub.”
“Oh Matilde! Men at places like that might take advantage of a young girl like you.”
I glare at Nico as Zeta continues her gentle scolding. I hate the way he meets my gaze unperturbed. And because I love Zeta and hate disappointing her or causing her distress, my cheeks soon glow with shame even if I would really love to punch her son in the mouth for this.
“I know it can be dangerous,” I concede. I know better than she realizes about the dangers strange men might pose.
“On the bright side,” Nico continues, “Matilde has been reunited with her long lost sister, something she was apparently hoping for when she came to this country.”
“Sister?!”
“Yes. I must impose on your kindness again, Mother…”
Zeta’s cries of surprise and delight soon fill the room as I’m wrapped up in one of those motherly hugs I can’t help but adore.
“There’s other news, but I need to speak privately with Matilde first,” Nico adds for his mother.
Zeta nods rapidly, summoning a maid, and the two of them hurry off to prepare a room for my sister.
A few well-chosen words and everything just snaps into place for him, doesn’t it? Frustrated but also curious, I follow Nico up to the room where his children are sleeping.
Zeta has already bathed them and given them their nighttime bottle, but Amadeo’s bright eyes greet me.“Buona notte, Deo,”I coo, unable to resist picking him up. No judgy face tonight, I get a smile. He smells so sweet, and my heart swells with love for them both. Even when the boy tugs roughly at my hair.
“Be gentle, son. We do not hurt girls,” Nico rasps, making my heart thump harder in my chest. He carefully strokes Lucia’s dark hair while I settle Amadeo back in the crib. “I need to take them home after we talk.”
“Home,” I repeat, wistfully. Will anything ever feel like home to me again?
"You dropped this." He gives me back the switchblade. "Don't drop it again. Here.” Surprising me, he tears his suit coat off, wrapping it around my shoulders. It smells like him and carries his body heat.A cold, cruel man yet he warms me.“Perhaps you might take a seat,” he suggests, pointing to the loveseat.
Gingerly, I sit, but my wits scatter like dried leaves the next instant when he joins me, his muscular thigh pressing against mine, reminding me of lying in his lap earlier. He seems so composed, as if that charged encounter in the back of the limousine never happened when it’s all I can think of.
His large hands rest on his knees. He rolls his sleeves up, revealing his forearms as he sets his knife aside. My core tightens remembering his hand touching me somewhere private and then straddling his hips. With every breath I take, his cologne teases me, stirring things inside me I know I should not want.
