I knew that firsthand too. When shit went down, the Manellos didn’t hesitate to call me out.
Marissa had paid the price with her life, and Ava could have too.
No one else would be dying on my watch.
Chapter 10
Ava
* * *
Stay with me…
His words kept ringing through my head. Over and over again like a broken record, or one of those annoying infomercials that kept going throughout the night.
Stay with me…
I almost did. I didn’t know if I could even call myself foolish for considering it.
Was I foolish?
Was it foolish to go from Antarctic cold to hot like hell in just one night? Hours.
All the hours we’d spent together.
I couldn’t believe I’d slept with him again. All damn night like I truly had lost my mind.
I knew myself though. Sure, when it came to him, it was always difficult to separate what I should do and what my heart was telling me to do.
But… I never, ever did anything I didn’t want to do.
I’d slept with him because I wanted to. I’d slept with him and allowed him to own me because I craved it, craved him, and if I was honest, I missed him.
When Claudius had told me to stay, it was like he spoke directly to my heart.
Right now, I didn’t know what to do.
Nothing actually made sense. None of it. None of what I believed.
I thought he wanted Marissa and not me. Last night told me otherwise.
We’d felt like when we were together. Before.
It was wild and completely ecstatic. Of course, it would be. I’d been twenty-two when we broke up.
Having sex with the same man a little over ten years later would feel different. It felt different, and even now, I wanted him again.
That was why I was here, here at work organizing the inventory deep down in the wine cellar.
My favorite pastime of creating a distraction. The inventory list had grown substantially since the days when I’d worked here with Pa, but it was still a good medicine.
That section he used to keep the aged wine on now had two rows of shelves, and my wine from all over the world took up the whole back section. I’d had to knock out the back to get it all in. All that in a year.
I had done well for myself.
I’d spent the day down here, retreating out of human reach so I could go and lick my wounds in private. Or basically just figure things out.
The distraction kept me busy, but I was still as confused and conflicted as I’d been when I first got in.
It was done now. I had a full stock, enough to last a few months even if I suddenly got an influx of people that would be more than I could handle.
I made my way back upstairs to the restaurant floor. Ariel was ushering a family to their seats, and Kelly was behind the bar.
It was nearly lunchtime. She was prepping for that.
She stopped organizing the wine glasses when she saw me and gave me a little smile.
I hadn’t told her what happened last night. I think she guessed though.
“Are you okay?” she asked, eyes huge with concern.
My shoulders slumped. “No.”
She leaned against the counter and looked me over. “I’m not sure which is more worrying. The you that’s not talking, or the one that left here yesterday in a ball of raging fire. At least I could tell you were mad. Now I just don’t know. Ava, I have to say that if it were me, I would have told you by now. I’m left guessing here.”
Instantly, I felt bad. We’d been friends since forever, and I could honestly say that I was the friend who gave the silent treatment, who retreated into a cave when shit was going down, and who shut out the people who cared about her the most.
“I’m sorry.”
“What happened last night? I waited for you. I called you. I sent messages.”
God, now I felt even worse. I purposefully hadn’t looked at my phone because I was certain Claudius would try to contact me.
He didn’t have my new number, but that wouldn’t stop him from getting it.
“Oh, Kelly.” I sucked in a breath and tried not to cry. God, I didn’t want to cry here on the floor in front of everyone.
“Come on, let’s go out on the terrace and section it off. You need fresh air. Then you can talk.” She put her arm around me and led me outside.
Once there, we sat at the furthest table. It had palm trees on either side.
The fresh air cooled my skin, but a wayward tear escaped, running down my cheek.
“I’m guessing you did see him,” Kelly began.
“I saw him, and I …”
She tried to bite back a smile but failed. “You slept with him?” she filled in.
I nodded, and another tear ran down my cheek. I hated crying. It reminded me of all the times I’d had my heart broken in my life. The time Claudius and I broke up, seeing him with Marissa, watching him marry her, and losing her.
They hadn’t been married for long, but it was long enough. Just over a year. They’d lost their baby, and it devastated Marissa. Of course, it would. It was awful. Truly awful. It changed her though. She became nicer somewhat. Nicer to me. She always looked genuine when she spoke to me after that.
The light in her eyes would always reflect sincerity, and she and Claudius had looked happy together.
“Something must be wrong with me, right?”
“No.”
“No? Really, Kelly? I keep sleeping with my sister’s husband.”
“It’s not like that, and Jesus, Marissa has been gone for too many years for you to classify the man as such. Something doesn’t add up, Ava.”
I started to laugh an off-key sardonic laugh. “I know. I know it doesn’t because last night, it was like when we were together as a couple. It was like when he was mine.”
“Maybe if he feels like yours, he should be.” She lifted her shoulders into a shrug.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s as simple as that. In fact, I didn’t think it was. And there’s so much more to think about. Kelly, I should be with someone like John. Not a mafia boss. Jesus.” Just saying it spiked my nerves. Claudius wasn’t just associated with the mafia. He was the frigging boss.
I knew I had jumped straight into the line of trouble years ago, so what the hell was I doing now?
“Would it help if I told you I might have softened my very harsh feelings toward him?” She gave me a little smile. “Ava, he gave you the complex on the east side and the adjoining land. I did a google search today, and I had all manner of ideas flooding my head. It’s huge. And the man gave you a million dollars. I’m not saying to just brush aside all the problems, but I think you two need to get past the sex and talk it out.”
I nodded. That was truer than true.
“You’re right. I just don’t know how.”
She looked past my shoulder, and her eyes widened. “Um… I don’t think you’re going to have much of a problem with that. If that’s him, God damn, the man’s gorgeous.”
Feeling my nerves spike again, I gripped on to the edge of the table. Kelly had never met him, but she’d know enough from what I told her to guess.
She continued to look, but I didn’t need confirmation.
I felt his presence well before I turned around.
Yes, it was indeed Claudius.
In the daylight he did look gorgeous. As gorgeous as he did this morning when I left his bed.
The sun beamed down on him, picking out the lighter shades in his hair.
I returned my gaze to Kelly, who nodded her approval.
I rose on shaky legs, feeling like my knees would buckle but willing them not to.
I walked to him, toward the piercing stare he gave me with his fascinating eyes.
When he put out his hand to me, I took it.
I took it and cursed myself for the way my body reacted to him.
He felt like mine, but I knew h
e shouldn’t.
* * *
We went back to my place this time.
It felt strange being here. He also drove his car. A black Porsche that added to his suave image but tamped down the bad boy he was.
Last night, he’d put me on the back of his bike. A mean-looking thing that looked like it was pulled from the set of The Terminator.
I always knew him to love motorcycles.
Last time he was here, he left me. The time before that was the day when I found out about him and Marisa.
Both were bad times for me.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I asked once we stepped inside the house. My voice sounded braver than I felt. My body betrayed me, though, because I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.
No not just my hands. The shaking came from deep within my soul.
I hated this flux of nerves that had taken over and invaded my mind. I wasn’t this person. Shaking and trembling. Not damn well knowing how to control myself.
I’d spent years trying to shake off the old me. My old habits, the bad ones.
It was ironically while I was in Europe that I felt like I’d been reborn and gotten some new form of life. Paris in particular was ruthless, and it was evident from the onset that I had to grow a pair of some serious balls of steel to survive.
I’d come back here a new woman, only to get my heart crushed.
Right now the anxiety of what we’d talk about was eating away at my insides.
What would he say to me?
I’d lived in this vague bubble of confusion for so long that it felt weird that something was about to happen to pop it and force me into reality.
Claudius didn’t answer, so I walked on ahead of him. I was aiming for the kitchen, but he caught my arm and pulled me back. His hand dropped to the edge of my waist and lingered there.
It made my nerves scatter as a jolt of electricity coursed through me.
He slipped his hand to the flat of my stomach and closed the gap between us by pulling me flush against him. My back to the hard walls of his chest. He pressed his head to mine, allowing his hair to drift over mine.
I watched the dark black strands of his mingle with the white strands of mine. Darkness and light.
Just like us.
Different. Too different. Day and night were never together. Not for long, just that breath of the evening, but it was always clear that the two could never coexist at the same time.
Like us.
Every time we were together, something would happen to highlight all the issues we faced. Something would happen to keep us apart.
It saddened me, because I was pretty certain that at one point, we were just a guy and a girl who were in love.
I knew I was.
I turned to face him, turning into his embrace, and he moved to my lips. Kissing me.
I sunk into the kiss, wanting it so badly my body ached for it. Ached for him.
But we needed to talk.
I pulled back, stepping back out of his arms so I could look at him.
“I’m sorry. It’s… I can’t control myself when I’m with you.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
If I wasn’t mistaken, he looked nervous too.
“Me too.”
He held my gaze, making me melt even more.
“I was going to stay… I mean… years ago. I thought of staying and not going to Europe. It was why I waited so long to tell you. It was stupid to do that… to wait. Maybe if I’d told you what was going on, we wouldn’t have argued so badly, and everything else that happened would never have happened. Maybe.”
It was a maybe, because in my head me leaving had opened the door for him to be with Marissa. Perhaps before I was just standing in the way. They’d suited each other. Same temperament, same wild streak. She would have loved to be married to the mafia boss. She would have loved the whole dark underworld life. The money, the power. Everything.
Me? I didn’t know about it. I didn’t care about those things.
I just cared about him.
“It wasn’t for you to do anything.” Claudius shook his head. “What happened was my fault. All mine. I knew you were working toward a big goal, Europe was a big chance for you to do more, be more. But the idiot that I was never saw that. I was selfish, very selfish. Like I am with everything else. I got a chance to fix things, and I never took it.”
“Did you want to? Did you want to fix things with me?” My voice quivered.
“Of course.”
“Why didn’t you? I was stupid. I waited that day thinking you’d come and at least say goodbye to me. Pa had to drag me away. Then I waited at the airport, but you never came.” That sarcastic laugh escaped my lips again. “I don’t think I ever cried so much. I hate crying in public. There I was at the airport, bawling my eyes out with my parents trying to console me. And strangers.”
He blinked and looked me over. “A woman. A woman probably around late sixties with a blue handbag. Silver-streaked hair. I thought she looked like a Sunday school teacher. She handed you a packet of Kleenex and a little chocolate bar. I was too far away to hear what she was saying, but I figured it had to be that thing where having something sweet helped to reduce shock.”
My heart… froze, and that chill expanded to my core, making me feel like my lungs were about to collapse in on themselves.
The chill tightened my chest, constricting my breathing. I barely registered that my hands had moved up to my mouth.
What was he saying to me?
He was there?
“You… went? You were there?” My eyes welled up with tears.
He nodded slowly, and there it was again. The feeling that I’d missed a chunk of something. Like someone had erased my mind of things I should know and didn’t.
“I was there. Of course, when I got to your house, you’d already left. There was no one here. So, I went to the airport, and I watched you. I watched you leave, and I did nothing.”
“Why would you do that?” I really didn’t understand. Not one bit.
“Ava, when you love someone, you have to know when to let them go. You have to let them go so they can achieve what they need to achieve for themselves. We wanted different things. I thought we wanted different things.”
Different things. That argument we’d had was so horrible it wasn’t like anything was even established on what we wanted. He’d just ripped into me about dropping a bomb on him about leaving. He’d called me selfish for not considering what he wanted but never said.
We’d ended that argument with me running away in tears after I said to him he should feel free to go screw whoever he wanted; he was free of me and my long-distance relationship. That was it. Our big bust-up. We’d never argued like that before. Never, and the way that we’d argued signaled the end.
My lips parted. “What did you want?” I wanted to know. To finally know what he wanted.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small blue pouch. The delicacy almost looked comical in his large hands.
I didn’t know what it was.
He stared at it for a few seconds, then loosened the little blue ribbons that pulled together to close the pouch. Reaching inside, he took out a beautiful, beautiful engagement ring. So shiny it sparkled and the princess cut diamond in its center twinkled.
“I wanted this, you to be mine.”
My chest caved, and I could no longer stand up. I had to retreat to the nearest chair.
I sunk into it trying to process what he was saying.
He moved over and crouched down in front of me, taking my hands, holding them in his. I remembered talking with Marissa and telling her that Claudius had no plans for us.
I’d thought he had no plans for us. How was I supposed to know that he’d had the mother of all plans?
“Why… how? Claudius, how is it that this looks so much like you wanted to be with me, but you ended up with Marissa?”
“That’s just it. Exactly it, and it’s time y
ou know the truth. The whole truth.”
Chapter 11
Claudius
* * *
Eight years ago…
I downed my drink and reached for another.
This time though I just grabbed the fucking bottle. Better to get wasted and forget.
Forget it all. The last year and a half of my damn life where I’d been this stupid sap to a girl I wanted to make mine.
I think Ava and I broke up.
I think we broke up… It kind of didn’t feel quite real.
The last few days hadn’t felt real. Like they didn’t happen. As if I made it up. Must have been because here I was in the office downtown with the engagement ring I was supposed to give her still in my back pocket. While… my Angel Doll was in Paris, probably with some French guy’s hands all over her. All over my girl.
Except if that was true, she really had left and she wasn’t my girl anymore.
My Ava.
She came and told me she’d gotten the chance of a lifetime to work as an apprentice at some fancy celeb restaurant in Europe. She’d be gone for a year.
It sounded amazing for her, but I freaked and lost my cool. Why? Because I had plans for us.
I was going to ask her to marry me. That was where I’d start and take it from there. I wasn’t Luc or Henry. They had their heads screwed on the right way.
All I knew was kill or be killed, but I’d change things up for her.
No, I wasn’t about to become some schmuck and hand in my pass to the life I lived now, but there were ways of doing things.
Well, I didn’t have to think about that now.
The door opened, and I readied my gun.
Who the fuck could be coming in here at this time? I came here to be alone.
Raphael wasn’t known to come back here, and his men wouldn’t either.
I shared this office with Luc and Henry. As far as I knew, both were with their women.
Henry popped his head in and grimaced when he saw me.
“Jesus, I was hoping I’d be wrong.” Henry smirked.
“What the fuck do you want?” I snapped at him.
Dirty Hearts: A Bad Bod Mafia Romance Page 9