“Worried about what, honey?” I asked sweetly. His brow furrowed, hearing me call him anything other than his name. “I just get so bored in the house all day after you leave. I thought it’d be a good day to see my old friends. Help them out with the lunch service.”
He looked at me like I had grown another head.
“You don’t work here anymore, Sophia. Come. We need to go home.”
A tiny spark of defiance glowed inside me. Why did we need to go home? What did he want that he couldn’t take care of himself? He wanted me to go home? What if I didn’t care what he wanted?
“Actually, darling, I wanted to see when a good day for me to come back to work would be,” I said. I turned my back to him and walked to the sink to wash my hands. He hadn’t said anything back to me. Had I done it? Had I rendered Marcelo Orsini speechless? I turned the faucet off and turned to face him, drying my hands on my apron. His eyes were dark, and he was heading towards me.
I thought for a second that he wouldn’t dare cause a scene somewhere so public, in full view of my coworkers, but the set in his jaw and look in his eyes told me otherwise.
He was furious.
Chapter Six
Marcelo
I eyed Sophia from our distance. The one time in our marriage when she was speaking to me sweetly, she was disrespecting me to my face. I didn’t want to do it there. I wanted us to be at home, where nobody could hear us discuss the seedy underbelly of both our family’s businesses. I didn’t want to yell. What had she been telling the people she worked with? What had she been saying about me?
I felt vaguely self-conscious thinking about what parts of our personal lives Sophia would share with other people. Was I her monstrous new husband who she had come here to run away from? I shook the thought off, as it rang truer than I wanted it to. I took a deep breath.
“I asked you not to come back to work,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah. You asked me, and I decided against it.”
I couldn’t believe it. What had gotten into her? I tried again.
“I’d prefer it if my wife didn’t leave the house without telling me where she’s going,” I said to her, my voice raising despite myself.
“I’d prefer it if my husband didn’t expect my life to end as soon as we got married,” she said defiantly.
“I’m your husband. You do as I tell you to do!” I shouted.
“I’m your wife! Not your daughter. You can’t control me like I’m a child!”
“Your father asked me to make sure you didn’t come back here. He agrees with me. You shouldn’t go back to work!”
“Since you two have so much in common, why didn’t you marry him?”
That was it.
“Turn around, take that thing off. We’re leaving,” I told her. She looked confused as I spun her around and started undoing her apron. I took it off and chucked it onto the counter. I grabbed her arm and started out of the kitchen. She pulled away from me, trying to get free.
“Let go of me, Marcelo. I’m staying,” she insisted. I sighed, pulling her along with me. I couldn’t explain it to her just then, not when there were so many people around.
“Stop arguing with me, Sophia. I don’t want you here. We’re going home.”
“Leave her alone!”
It was a voice I didn’t recognize, one of the women who worked at the restaurant. Shorter than Sophia with light hair…and she was coming towards me.
“You can’t make her leave if she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do,” the woman said.
“Stay out of this,” I said dismissively, pulling Sophia along behind me.
“Elena, don’t,” Sophia said.
“No Sophia, he can’t treat you like this and expect you two to have any kind of partnership.”
“Shut up,” I told the woman.
“Let go of her, you maniac. She isn’t going anywhere!”
I made the mistake of stopping and turning to face the woman. Her hand connected with my left cheek, shocking me into silence for a few seconds. Sophia’s hands went to her mouth, and she looked horrified.
“Elena… oh my God, Marcelo—”
“We’re leaving,” I said, pulling Sophia with me. The woman followed.
“Elena, don’t. I’ll call you tonight,” Sophia said to her.
“I would listen to her, Elena,” I snarled. “If you follow us out of this restaurant, I can guarantee that you will never see Sophia again.” That did it. The woman stopped, and we made our way out of the restaurant. I frog-marched Sophia towards the car. She was pulling back, telling me to let go of her.
“Marcelo, let go. You’re hurting me,” Sophia said, trying to wrench herself free of my grasp. I let go. Her hand went up to her arm where I had been hanging onto her. I sighed, seeing her rub the reddened skin. Maybe… maybe that whole confrontation could have gone a lot more smoothly. Sophia—for one—could have just come with me instead of trying to prove a point, and her slap-happy friend in there could have kept her fucking hands to herself. I suppose maybe I could have asked her in some other way to follow me to the car, but what was done was done. It didn’t matter if she didn’t want to be with me, now she had no choice. It was a matter of life and death. I just couldn’t tell her that in front of all her chef friends in there.
“Sophie, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry. I asked you to do one thing. Why did you come back here?”
“Marcelo, you might know a lot of women who are perfectly happy spending their husband’s money and sitting home all day, but I’m not one of them. That’s not who you married. I want to work.”
Christ. This again.
“Sophia. Why are you making this harder than it needs to be? You don’t need to work anymore. I don’t want you to. Your father doesn’t want you to. You’ve been working all your life. Now you can do whatever you want.”
“What I want is to be the executive chef at Puglia. Is the notion of a woman wanting a career really that foreign to you, Marcelo? Have you really never met a girl who wanted a bank account in her own name and not one joint with you?”
I tried and failed not to roll my eyes. Now wasn’t the time to be having this discussion.
“How did you know this was where I would be?” she asked me. I shrugged.
“I didn’t. I checked the house and you weren’t there. You should have just told me instead of leaving the house. I’ve been trying to find out where you were all morning.”
“Why? Is my dad asking for me?”
“No… get in the car, I’ll tell you on the way home,” I told her. She looked at me like there was no way she was going to do what I had asked her.
“I want to come back to work,” she said, as if we were having a negotiation.
“You want to work, Sophia, I’ll buy you a fucking restaurant. As many as you want. Please. Just get into the car,” I said to her. She looked down before looking at me again.
“My purse and jacket are still inside.”
“Get in the car, I’ll get them,” I said. I held the door open for her, and she slid into the passenger seat. I went back inside, ignoring the looks from her co-workers. Some first impression. I tried not to think about what they probably said behind my back. What they said about me with Sophia. Her things were in the back, the locker room area where the chefs kept their street clothes when they had their work clothes on. Her purse and jacket were in the unlocked locker which had her name on it, her maiden name, “Sophia Dandolo.” I grabbed them and left, heading for the door.
“You’re a real piece of work, Marcelo. No wonder Sophie’s been miserable since the wedding.” It was that girl again. Helena? The one who had slapped me. Clearly, she had taken it upon herself to speak on Sophia’s behalf. A friend of hers. I looked at her.
“I suggest you don’t involve yourself in other people’s domestic situations,” I said tersely.
“I suggest you stop lording over Sophia like she’s a slave under yo
ur roof.”
I bristled.
“Don’t talk about things that don’t involve you. What happens under my roof—between me and my wife—is none of your business.”
“It is when she tells me everything. You can’t control where she goes and who she sees.”
“You’re right. I can’t. I can, however, tell her that I disapprove of certain people in her inner circle. Understanding that I just have her best interests at heart, she’ll understand and cut them off as per my request.”
“You’re disgusting,” she spat.
“Nice talking to you, too,” I said, walking out the door. Sophia was sitting in the car waiting for me. She didn’t look at me as I climbed in and started the engine. She took her purse and pulled her sunglasses out, putting them on.
“So, do I have to ask you for an apology, or are you going to give me one?” she asked. I glanced over at her.
“What?”
“Not something you’re used to, huh? Not a lot of people expect the barest level of civility from you?”
“What’s gotten into you today, Sophia? What’s that woman from the restaurant been telling you?”
“Don’t worry about Elena poisoning my opinion of you, Marcelo. I’m the one who’s been married to you for the last two weeks. Not her.”
I rolled my eyes. Now wasn’t the time for a fight.
“What do you want from me, Sophia? An apology? Fine. I’m sorry.”
She sniffed and looked down at her hands.
“Well, it’s a start,” she said.
“A start?”
“You embarrassed me in front of my co-workers. You made a scene at my place of work. How the hell am I supposed to go back there after this?”
“You can’t go back,” I said plainly.
“Why? Because you forbid it as my husband?” she asked.
“No… you know why we ended up getting married, don’t you?” I asked.
“Because our dads had no qualms completely derailing their children’s lives in order to secure their own futures?”
I laughed. She was right.
“Yes. I was at a meeting today, and it seems someone is not that pleased with our union,” I said.
“That makes two of us,” she muttered. I ignored that.
“Someone’s trying to kill you, Sophia,” I said all in one breath. “One of my men told me that there might be a hit on you. Someone might want you dead.”
A beat went by before she started to giggle. Her giggle grew into a laugh. She took her sunglasses off and looked at me.
“Marcelo, all this because you were worried about me?” she asked, laughing.
“I don’t see what you find so funny, Sophia. Someone’s trying to kill you,” I told her. She knew what that meant, didn’t she? Sure, she had only become hip to the mob stuff a couple weeks ago, but she knew what a ‘hit’ was, didn’t she? She knew that there were people whose job it was to kill other people for money and what I was telling her was she was a target, right?
“Marcelo, I don’t know what kind of girl you thought you were marrying,” she said. “I’m a single woman, living in New York City. Do you think I don’t know how to take care of myself?” she asked. I ignored the fact that she had just called herself ‘single.’ She opened her purse and let me look inside. Among the jumble of stuff—makeup, her phone, the case for her sunglasses—was a shiny, small handgun.
“I always carried mace with me, but after I found out about my dad, and what your family did for a living, I decided to take things up a notch.”
“I have to say, Sophia, I’m impressed,” I admitted.
“You don’t know the first thing about me, do you?” she challenged. I laughed a little. We had been arranged. She was right. I didn’t know much about her, but I could say the same thing about her in regards to me.
“You don’t know me either, Sophie. Regardless, I’m your husband. It’s my job to make sure you’re safe,” I said.
“What? Now I can’t leave the house at all? God. You’re fucking unbearable,” she said. I looked at her, surprised that she would say that to me. I was impressed. She always let me have it. She had the foulest mouth when she was telling me what she thought about it, and honestly, I kind of liked it. It was refreshing. She wasn’t mild. She was hot and fiery. Her face was like an angel, but she spat acid. I liked that element of her personality, surprisingly. That was also the part of her that lashed out at me the most when we disagreed, which was often.
Part of me wanted to tell her, but I stopped myself. It wasn’t the time. We were married; I had plenty of time, literally until one of us died to tell her that I sort of liked her, a little bit.
“I’m not going to risk your safety, Sophia,” I told her. The thought occurred to me and was scarier than I wanted to admit. I felt protective of her. She wasn’t any kind of target before we had become involved. The reason someone was after her was directly because of our marriage. It was my fault. If she wasn’t a part of my life, if she didn’t have my last name, she wouldn’t be in this position.
“What are you going to do? Tie me to the bed in the master bedroom so I can’t leave the house? Like a dog outside a store?”
She was angry. I had made her that way. I spared her the sarcastic answer I had planned because—again—it wasn’t the time. I had to think. Neither of us was safe. Where was a safe place for us to go where we wouldn’t be traced by whoever thought they were going to kill Sophia? The various homes we had in the city and its surrounding suburbs came to mind, but that was too obvious. You don’t go from your house to hide out in another one of your houses. Why did you even leave the first one in the first place? If it was your house, they obviously were going to anticipate you being there.
This was more pressure than I thought it would be. Where could we go? I couldn’t afford to pick somewhere and have it infiltrated. Not when I had Sophia with me. If I was alone, that would have been another story, but this was serious.
Chapter Seven
Sophia
We sat in silence in the car.
I shot a couple of texts to Elena so she wouldn’t call the cops on Marcelo. I should have been madder when she slapped him, but I was mostly just stunned that she had bucked up enough to do it. He deserved it. He was being unreasonable. He deserved a few more slaps. If she wanted to dole them out to him, I wasn’t going to stop her. If anything, she was just peeling back the curtain a little more. Most people got to know their partners through dates…Marcelo and I were doing it through public altercation.
With the nature of our family business, maybe it was in our blood? Who could blame us?
Elena had been staunchly against the two of us getting together, and this little incident was not going to do anything to get her on his team. If anything, she likely hated him even more. For a horrible split second, I thought he would hit her back.
Our marriage would have ended the second he laid a hand on her. For real. At least, if nothing else, I knew he wasn’t violent towards women. I supposed I could look forward to him not victimizing me in the future. God. Were all the things I thought about him so grim?
Buildings, cars, and trees whooshed by as I looked out the window, Marcelo in the driver’s seat. The neighborhood wasn’t familiar. We weren’t going home.
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
“Somewhere safe,” he said vaguely.
“Ooh. Guess that contract to kill me is a really big deal, huh?” I said.
“Don’t make jokes, Sophia. This is serious. I don’t want you in the first place someone would look if they wanted to find you. If they want to get to you, they are going to have to go through me.”
I sighed and looked out of the window.
“How long will I have to stay there?”
“You won’t have to stay there; we will be staying together. We’ll stay until it is safe to go back home.”
“I don’t have any of my things with me,” I said.
“You have your phon
e on you. There is nothing in the house that you can’t replace while we are away.”
Marcelo. What would he do when he finally met a problem he couldn’t solve by throwing money at it? Marcelo’s wealth was definitely something he led with. A terribly unattractive trait if you asked me, but it was just one on the list of hundreds. Up until I had moved in, he had lived in that enormous townhouse on his own. Every single room was expertly furnished like he had people over all the time, but as far as I could tell, he didn’t. Did he own a single piece of clothing that didn’t have a European designer’s name on it? All that stuff he kept getting for me…as if when he finally broke a certain dollar amount on the things he had bought for me, I would magically transform into the woman of his dreams, stop complaining, and never be cross with him.
The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance Page 5