by Bethany-Kris
“You’re right, you should have.”
Gian nodded. “She let me know that. Repeatedly.”
“I like her.”
“She likes you,” he replied with a smirk. “I knew she would, it was just everything else that I didn’t know about, I suppose.”
Everything else, like his wife.
Cara thought to tell Gian then and there that she had run into Elena, but only decided against it because what would be the point? His wife clearly hadn’t recognized her, and she hadn’t done anything wrong or rude. If anything, wasn’t Cara the one in the wrong, just by being pregnant with Elena’s husband’s child?
The meeting was random. Nothing more, nothing less.
Cara did have other questions, though.
Things she wanted to know.
“Gian?”
“Yes, amore?”
“Why did you marry her? Why her, Gian?”
“Why her, Gian?”
Gian tensed at the question, but only because he knew there would be no one, easy answer. It was several events, mixed-messages, and dumb feelings that had led him into the mistake of marriage with Elena. A sense of duty.
When he stayed silent, mulling over his reply, Cara took a seat at the table. “So, you’re not going to tell me?”
Gian meet her gaze, unashamed. “Of course, I’ll tell you. It’s just not an easy question.”
“You’ve asked me before, if I wanted to talk about her or the marriage. What is so different this time? Because I asked?”
“Because I wasn’t expecting it. Because back then, I was prepared to explain and knew how to say things. When you spring it on me, I don’t have time to consider ways to wall myself off from shit I don’t like to feel.”
Honesty was the best policy.
Gian had learned his lesson about lying.
Cara played with the tablecloth as Gian got one of the mini tubs of ice cream from the freezer, and then spoons from the drawer. He pulled a chair out from the table, and set it opposite to Cara, so the two were facing one another.
“Wine would probably be better for this conversation,” Gian said with a smirk, “but since you can’t drink, neither will I, and the ice cream will have to do.”
“It’s that bad for you that you need wine?”
“Whiskey, preferably. Even beer wouldn’t be enough.” Gian shook the ice cream container. “And today, it’s ice cream only.”
“So, why her?”
Gian handed Cara a spoon, and used his own to pull through the top of the ice cream. He stared at the rolled-up treat on the tip of the spoon, considering whether or not he wanted a bite before he spoke. His mouth worked first.
“I met Elena Canali shortly after her twenty-second birthday, at a restaurant, actually. We married when she was twenty-three. Just a random pass by, she was at one table alone, and I was at another with a date, of sorts. I recognized her, but only because we had previous run-ins with her father. Gabriel is a boss of another organization—one not entirely like ours, less controlled, but still Italian-based. Not that it matters.”
“Then get to what does,” Cara urged.
Gian sucked the ice cream off his spoon, then waved it at Cara. “I’m picking out important details. Think, stuff I overlooked, or should have paid more attention to. Things like a boss’s daughter being alone, without any sort of watcher or protection.”
Cara frowned. “All right.”
“She was exceptionally beautiful, and it’s one of the first things someone notices about her, even from afar. I was not an exception to that rule. She kept looking over at me, ignoring the fact I was with a woman at my table, and I caught her staring a few times. It made me curious.”
Cara took a bite of the ice cream, too. “She is beautiful, but cold, too. Even in your wedding pictures, I could see it. It’s strange.”
“It’s not strange if you know her,” Gian murmured. “Back to my story, though. I let my date go early; my mother had set it up, and back then, I didn’t mind playing into Celeste’s meddling from time to time, but nothing was coming from that.”
Gian shrugged. “Anyway, she left, and I asked for the bill. The waiter hadn’t even brought it over before Elena approached me. By the time he did get there, we were already five minutes into a conversation about who was going to run for mayor that year in the city, as the Ford family seemed like loose cannons, which teams had the best shot at the Stanley Cup, and some movie she wanted to see that was coming out.”
“Oh?”
“I offered to take her to see it,” Gian said dryly. “Call that a first date, I guess.”
Cara took a huge scoop of the ice cream. “And then what happened?”
“I mean, you could say we started dating, but it wasn’t like that really, and it was clouded by all sorts of other shit going on.”
“Like what?”
“Elena’s father was in the midst of a street war with a gang, so I had to be careful about my involvement with her seeming … to their side of things and making it appear like the Guzzi family would get involved. Petty street wars aren’t worth much except a growing body count, and the Guzzi family doesn’t get mixed up in those sorts of things unless it’ll benefit us in some way.”
“Details again?” Cara asked.
Gian laughed. “Sort of. I thought I was the one being careful, taking her out occasionally, or having her stay over at my place, but never hers. She didn’t meet my family or friends, and I didn’t meet hers. It turned out, she was the one being careful. Elena didn’t want her father to know about me, or that she was messing around with me—that’s the best way to describe what it was, anyway.”
“But you liked her?”
“Well enough,” Gian answered, choosing his words carefully. “I liked what she gave me, the pieces of her on the surface, because she never went beyond that. I liked how she was attentive to me, only. Especially when we were together, other people didn’t exist to her. She doted on the stupid male side of a man’s brain that feeds off being the man, you know what I mean?”
Cara shrugged, but said nothing.
“Elena works best when she controls a situation, no matter what that situation might entail. And she does that with men, specifically, because she knows she is beautiful, and she knows that using her sexuality and her sweetness is disarming to men who aren’t looking for her manipulations. They are unprepared for the attack, for the gut-punch or the knife in their back when they turn away. She makes you trust her, because why would she want to hurt you, this person she so clearly adores? And then she strikes.”
“Huh,” Cara said quietly, frowning.
“I know, I jumped ahead a bit in explaining that. It’ll make sense in a second.”
“Go for it.”
Gian took a deep breath, and another bite of ice cream, letting the chocolate and peanut-butter flavors wash over his palate before he spoke again. “We had been doing our thing for a few months or so, when she came up pregnant.”
Cara stiffened.
Gian didn’t miss it.
“Or so she said,” he added, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference. The words were out there, and they hurt to know. “I had no reason not to believe her, or to think, if she was pregnant, the child might not be mine. Things moved very fast from that point—her father was suddenly involved, and all the things people heard or whispered about that man were right in front of my eyes and very true. He’s dangerous and he’s volatile. He’s manipulative and evil. But aren’t we all, in some way?”
Gian shook his head, adding, “Elena wanted to get away from him, and that much was clear. I understood why, too, because he used her and he abused her. He was angry that she had been seeing someone behind his back; he’s so abnormally close to her, and controlling of her. At least back then. And when she refused to abort the pregnancy, he nearly beat her to death, and then had her sent to me.”
He dropped the spoon to the table with a clatter. “I saw a different Elena then, Cara. One that
was scared and small, a victim of a man she just wanted to get away from. And to this day, no matter what that woman has done to me or what she might do in the future, I still see the Elena from that day. Bruised, and swollen, with a bloody, busted mouth, and dried blood matting her hair. I see her, and I never have to think why? I think, why not? Why not hurt, use, and manipulate to be free, to be happy? Why not use all the things your father taught you to do, in order to protect and advance him, to protect and advance yourself? It doesn’t give her a pass, sure, but it certainly makes more sense, in a way.”
Cara cleared her throat. “She was lucky she didn’t lose the baby, then.”
Gian chuckled darkly. “There was no baby to lose, Cara, but I’ll get there. Corrado pressured me to do the right thing, with Elena, but also where our family was concerned. He didn’t want to face a war with Gabriel on the streets, and he knew how dangerous the man could be. So, a marriage it was.”
“And that obviously happened.”
“Quite fast, within a couple of months of announcing the engagement.” Gian took Cara’s spoon from her, scooped some ice cream, and fed her the bite, waiting for her to finish before he continued. “Leading up to the wedding, we had to deal with the usual family things. Which put Elena front row and center for her father. His way of hurting her emotionally when he couldn’t hurt her physically, was to shame and embarrass her in front of me, or others. Does he know, her father would say, how you sucked the cock of the mayor’s son to pay off my debt? Things like that.”
Cara let out a shaky exhale, and looked away. “That’s terrible.”
“It reinforced my belief that I was doing the right thing, though I didn’t love her, and I knew what a marriage with someone meant in my world. It is for life, there is no out, except for death. But I thought, I was doing the right thing.”
“And then?”
“And then a week after we married, I caught Elena drinking wine. From the moment we walked out of the church on our wedding day, something changed with her. She no longer focused on me like she had once done—all that attention, the doting and the adoration, was gone. She didn’t need to pretend, you see. Not once she had gotten what she needed from me. I was pissed about the wine, because of the baby.”
“But there was no baby, you said?”
Gian nodded once. “She tried to say she had miscarried. We weren’t even having sex; we hadn’t fucked since the night we married, so how could I say for sure that she was or wasn’t losing the baby?”
“Was she?”
“No, there was no baby. I had her records at her doctor yanked, though it wasn’t my right to, and found there was no pregnancy, at least not within the months she had been with me. Six months before we had met, there had been an abortion on file. One of several over the years. She was actually on the depo shot, and had been since the last abortion, so a pregnancy was highly unlikely to begin with.”
“Oh, Gian.”
“Don’t do the pity thing,” Gian said, shooting Cara a lopsided grin. “Not for me. I overlooked a lot of things because I didn’t want to question a woman that was clearly in need of help. I was too busy feeding a hero complex and trying to do what everyone else wanted me to. By the time I realized how incredibly fucked I was, and how much Elena had manipulated me, it was too late.”
“You were married.”
Gian’s smile faded. “For life.”
“But—”
“There is no but, not for this. Not in the position I was, and while I wanted to send her back to her father with a fuck you and a smile, I couldn’t do it. And she fought with me daily, she raged at me. I gave her the things she wanted, a beautiful penthouse, new cars, furs, nearly a million in diamonds. I gave her everything she wanted, just to keep her happy for a short while, but that was the problem.”
“It only lasted for a short while,” Cara said.
“I couldn’t keep her happy, because she had gotten what she wanted from me, and as of that point, I was only a nuisance. So, I moved out, about a year after we married, though we hadn’t been even sleeping together or using the same bedroom from almost the day we married. We did it quietly, we were careful about our public side, making sure it still looked like we were a happy couple. We didn’t want to provoke her father, after all. Then, as time went by, we stopped pretending unless it was something big or important, like a wedding, a funeral, somewhere our faces might be shot on the news, or whatever.”
Cara reached out and stroked Gian’s cheek, surprising him at the tender touch. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, bella. It’s circumstance and details. That’s all it’s ever been, Cara. I don’t have a paper to say I’m divorced, because I can’t. Men like me can’t be divorced without ruining everything we worked for. And a divorce might push an already violent man over the edge—something else my family can’t afford right now.”
“What about … other relationships?”
Gian shrugged. “I haven’t had other relationships. For a while, even after we separated, I was faithful. Then one night, I met someone, and I was out of her place before morning even came. I didn’t have time to be in a relationship, or the effort it would take to keep up the charade. When you came along, I wasn’t so jaded toward women, because I hadn’t needed to be in a long time. I had no reason to distrust you, not when you showed your cards that first night, telling me what you did and didn’t want. And my God, there was something about you that made me sit down and pay attention. It just blew up from there.”
“And you were fucked again.”
Gian smiled sinfully. “I didn’t mind, Cara. Not with you. You made me love you, and I wanted to be with you, so I was going to try and do that. I just didn’t know how. I was trying to tell you before you found out in Chicago. I knew I should tell you, but it isn’t the kind of conversation that is usually brought up when you first meet someone. As time passed, it became more of me not knowing whether you were going to be with me, or go your own way, so I held off again. I asked what you wanted with me, in the future, and you only said me. You said me, love. I just didn’t know how to tell you the situation without ruining us. I didn’t want to ruin us. And then you were gone.”
“I should have listened to this when you offered to tell me before,” Cara said sadly, her hand still cupping his cheek, and her thumb stroking sweet lines on his jaw. “I’m sorry that I didn’t.”
“Circumstance and details have put me back in the position where I have to play house with a woman I despise, who I don’t trust. I wish I could be rid of Elena, but I can’t send her back to her father. Not that it would do me any good, because she would still be my—”
“Wife,” Cara interrupted gently.
“Exactly. I’m sorry that I can’t give you the things you deserve. I’m sorry that I love you, Cara, but I can’t shout it to anyone who will listen, or make a huge show of getting a ring on your finger and walking you down the aisle. I’m sorry that I was selfish and put you in a position where your worth is tied to my choices. I can’t make a home with you, not one that will ever feel proper or permanent, because I fucked up once, and here we are.”
“Gian.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I wish I could say something different, but it’s the only thing I have right now. I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” Cara whispered.
“Gian?”
Gian reached for Cara through his groggy haze of sleep, hearing her call of his name, and wanting to bring her closer. He found her side of the bed empty, and promptly opened his eyes wide. Cara stood in the bedroom doorway, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. A quick check of the clock said it was way too early in the morning for her to be up. Cara didn’t get out of bed before eight, not if she didn’t have to.
“What are you doing out of bed?” he asked her.
Cara pointed at her rounded stomach, pouting in the darkness. “He makes me pee a lot.”
Gian’s tired laughter rung out in the bedroom, and he fel
l back into the bed. “Go to sleep, Cara.”
“In a minute.”
“What is it, mon ange?”
“Did you set up the crib?”
Gian cleared the sleep out of his voice, saying, “Yeah, it needed set up, didn’t it? You fell asleep early, I had nothing to do.”
“Could have woke me up. There’s all sorts of things we could be doing that are fun in bed, you know.”
“You need to sleep more than you need me waking you up to get a good fuck.”
Although, he was down for that, too. Just not when he could see she was tired as hell.
Cara slipped into the bed, and tucked herself close to Gian’s side. Rolling over, he brought her head to his naked chest, and let his hand rest on her lower stomach. A possessive, protective swell washed through his bloodstream at the feeling of his son shifting under his father’s palm, one of the first movements Gian had felt of his child.
“Cara?”
“Hmm?”
“I would rather set up a nursery in the penthouse, if you would be willing to stay there, I mean,” he said.
Cara let out a soft sigh. “I don’t know about that one.”
“I don’t have to be there, if you don’t want me to—”
“Aren’t things complicated and difficult enough with all of this? Do we need to add in that sort of thing, too?”
“I’ll do whatever you want, love. You know that.”
“I do.”
“But my son is, and will always be, non-negotiable between us. For him, and for you if you would let me, I will move the world. I won’t compromise about my child. Not when it comes to caring for him, or providing him with whatever he needs, not to mention his mother.”
“I should hope not.”
“Then consider the penthouse now, and what it would mean to be somewhere that’s safer, better watched, closer to certain places you frequent. It would also be easier for me to come, on that side of things.”