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I scowled at him as he turned to leave the room, calling out, “If you’re good tonight, I might let you get on your knees and finish what you just started.”
Dario’s chuckle trailed behind him like drug smoke, leaving me lightheaded and aching for more.
But a small part of me questioned my reality.
Had I watched too many movies with Elijah and Finn? Because it felt like I’d taken the red pill and woken up from the Matrix or fallen down the rabbit hole like Alice. In one chaotic twenty-four-hour period, my entire life had reshaped itself just slightly enough for me to call everything into question.
Or maybe not everything.
Just my husband.
Because who the fuck was this man who bought me a dream car I had never, not once, told him about and then impatiently picked me up from work to take me shopping?
A virtual stranger.
Even after six years of marriage, it seemed I didn’t know Dario Ferretti at all.
Chapter Twenty-One
Fiammetta
The first time I had an American hamburger was one of the best culinary experiences of my life. We simply didn’t eat things like that in Sicily, not in my family at least, and I had this idea in my head that the typical American dish would be nothing special because Papà had always been derisive of the United States and most Italians were dismissive of its cuisine. But then Booker, Hank, and Walter had taken me out to a bar one day after a few weeks of shooting the shit at Booker’s gun club and introduced me to the culinary delights of a beef patty, melted cheese, and a toasted bun.
I was a goner from mouthful one.
Since then, I’d lugged my friends to all the top burger spots in Chicago, searching for the very best combination I could find. It was a common joke among our friends that if I was given the choice of eatery, I’d pick a burger joint every time.
I had never been to a restaurant that served them with Dario.
We always frequented Michelin-starred places with white tablecloths and stuffy fixed-price menus where each plate had oddities like foam and edible foliage.
So I wasn’t expecting to pull up to a tiny restaurant in Logan Square with a blue-painted front door and a hanging sign that depicted a blackbird.
“What is this place?” I asked, but Dario was already getting out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
I waited for him to help me out because there was no way I could manage in this elaborate dress with my heels in the low-slung vehicle.
He didn’t answer me as we waited for Stefan and Luigi to head inside to do a sweep of the premises.
“Dario,” I breathed on a sigh. “Would it kill you to say more than two hundred and fifty words to me in an hour?”
He snorted softly. “Would that make your life better? If I was dead?”
I startled, surprised by the turn of conversation. “I thought you were dead last night.”
“I know,” he said, still facing forward, his shoulder pressed to mine as he waited outside the front door. “How did it make you feel?”
It was the most reflective question he had ever asked me, and it shocked me into being truthful. “Scared, desperate, a little lonely.”
“Because you might have to start again with another man?” he asked flatly, jaw working as if he was chewing glass.
“Because I’ve barely started with this one.”
His gaze snapped to mine, but Stefan and Luigi chose that moment to open the door for us to enter. Luigi took the lead, showing us to the table instead of the hostess, and Stefan followed. When we were settled, they went to their own table within eyesight of our own and between us and the front door.
It was standard procedure, and I didn’t notice them much anymore.
“It smells good in here,” I noted, looking around at the other patrons, who were dressed much more casually than Dario and me, in a variation of jeans and simple summer shorts and dresses. “Like grease.”
