by Merikan,Miss
Only now I realized, as Santo listened to me, that he and Mona were the only ones to know this. I had no idea what it was about him that made me feel like I could open up to him. Was it because despite him going along with his father’s bloodthirsty plans, he was always there for me when it mattered?
“Sounds serene.”
“It is. It was...mine,” I said softly and ate some more, suddenly hit by the thought that I wasn’t likely to visit it ever again.
He watched me, chewing slowly as if he were assessing me. “What do you want to do when all this blows over?”
I wanted to ask if by ‘all this’ he meant a kidnapping, the murder of my father-in-law, and the hunt for my husband, but I decided that much was obvious already. “I don’t know. So far, my freedom has been limited to choosing furniture, Christmas decorations, and clothes.”
“You do have an eye for clothes.” Santo looked into his wine glass with a little smirk.
“Are you laughing at me?” I frowned, tapping my nails on the table.
“No. But you would laugh at me if you knew I follow you on Instagram.”
I looked up, and I quickly sipped some of the cocktail to mask how flustered that admission made me. “You do?”
Oh, God, he was stalking me online as well? I couldn’t help but be flattered, because I kind of wanted him to stalk me. Well, as long as he stayed so gallant and actually listened to what I said.
He nodded. “And you will never know which account is mine.”
“I bet it’s the one that likes all my most revealing outfits,” I said and couldn’t help being excited by the idea of him looking through my photos in secret.
His full lips widened into a smile he was trying to suppress, and in the end he hid it by drinking some wine. “There must be many accounts like that.”
“I don’t know, is there?” I asked, eating as elegantly as I could. Something was telling me he was trying to impress me as much as I wanted to appeal to him, even if nothing would come out of it. I shouldn’t be flirting with him, I really shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself when he watched me with so much attention.
“Don’t you notice how men look your way when you walk into a room? How the waiter almost spilled my wine because he was too focused on you?”
I chewed on my lip and sipped my drink. “Maybe. I just didn’t expect you to be the type of guy who uses Instagram.”
He gave me an amused look. “There are two options. Either I got one just so I can check you out every day, or I have an account no one knows about where I post travel photos and selfies of my abs. Your guess.”
I would follow that account so hard if it existed. I needed to look through the followers that had joined my network since I’d met Santo. Would I recognize his abs in pictures? Surely, most of my followers were women.
“Is that what you’d do in life if you didn’t work in the family business? Be a travel blogger?”
Santo shook his head, and we kept silent for a moment when the waiter took away our empty plates. “I don’t know what I would have done. I’d have been a completely different person. If you knew what I studied at University, you would think I was the most boring man on the planet.”
I pulled on that thread right away. “What did you study?”
“You think I threw that bait in the water just to give you an answer for free?”
I flushed, but it was true that it had been too easy to pick on. “I can’t believe your audacity sometimes. What do you have in mind?”
“You have to answer one question. But it has to be honest.” He leaned forward, and I could get lost in his eyes, green and mysterious like the depths of a lake in the woods.
“Okay.”
“When you use that vibrator, do you think about me?” He raised his eyebrows.
I stopped breathing and quickly grabbed my cocktail, but heat was already climbing up my thighs, just like his hands in my most secret fantasies. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re trying to avoid the question.”
I looked into his eyes, fighting the tightness in my chest. “Yes. What did you study?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen his smile so wide and satisfied. “Accounting.”
Despite my embarrassment, I snorted so rapidly I almost spat out some of my drink. “You’re an accountant? No way.”
“I didn’t want to do it at first. My father pushed me into it, but I learned to appreciate it. Finance is a bit like Tetris.”
“So you’re out to game the system?” I asked, but couldn’t keep my face straight.
He looked so smug when he took another sip of wine. “I already game the system. What about you? If you could do anything?”
I licked my lips and tapped the cool glass after I put it down on the table. “If you follow me on Instagram, you surely saw my designs. I would love to be involved in fashion. Maybe more as a stylist than a designer, but putting things together to create this wow-effect is something that really excites me.”
“Maybe you’ll need an accountant one day.” And the way he looked at me was somehow different, softer. Made butterflies flutter in my stomach until I felt they would raise me all the way to the ceiling.
*
The room Santo had booked for us was actually a small apartment. High up on the top floor of the hotel, with a king size bed that invited me to fall right in, with its white sheets, and a lounge area with sofas and a TV in another part of the vast space we now had to ourselves. A panorama of Rome spread out behind the floor-length windows, only reinforcing the sense of being isolated in a safe bubble.
I sat on the bed, slightly nervous with the situation between me and Santo being a constant blur. I had been angry with him after overhearing his conversation with Federico Villani, but resentment melted away with each conversation we shared. There had been so few, and yet I felt like he has been in my life forever.
Santo walked up to the bed, and only now it hit me that there was only one, but just as I thought he’d sit down next to me, kiss me, slide his hand between my legs and help me forget all my troubles, he grabbed a pillow, a blanket, and took them over to the sofa.
I squeezed my legs tighter and smoothed out the front of my skirt. I couldn’t stop the sense of disappointment trailing through my veins, but it was for the best. I was still Seth’s wife, and he could still return home to take his rightful place. Nothing good would come out of having an affair. Not when Santo’s father was so deeply against him having anything to do with me.
The awkward silence was broken by the buzzing of Santo’s phone, and he picked it up quickly.
“I’ve already told you that we didn’t make it for the flight.”
I flinched, wondering if it was even true. Maybe he secretly wanted to spend this evening with me, undisturbed in the safety of the hotel room. Did he expect me to approach him this time if I wanted to?
Santo scratched the back of his head, pacing in front of the sofa.
“I know where they might be getting passports if they haven’t yet gotten them. I’ll go there as soon as I’m in New York. What? Of course she’s here. Why would I lie about that?” Santo’s frown deepened. “Carlo had it coming. Fine.”
Santo came up to Lucrezia and put the phone on speaker mode.
“Hey there, baby girl. My boy Santo treating you good?” Vincenzo laughed, and despite him being on the other side of the ocean, it made my skin crawl.
I couldn’t have stopped the scowl on my face even if Vincenzo stood right in front of me. Hearing his voice felt like having his tongue lick its way into my ear. “Good evening, brother-in-law. I’m very well. Thank you for letting me know something bad is going on,” I said sternly.
“You know me, always looking out for you. And you’re practically a widow, so you don’t have to be so coy with me.”
Santo’s sneer deepened.
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean,” I said, even though my stomach was slowly filling with hot coa
ls.
“‘Course you do! You knew I had the hots for you since we first met. I can’t wait to get a grab of that a—”
Santo lost his patience. “She’s a Villani woman now, Vincenzo. You’re forgetting yourself. She’s not some slut you picked up at a club!”
I exhaled, glancing up at him, staying silent while the men argued. This was the safest way to dodge a bullet.
Vincenzo gave a loud sigh, blowing into the speaker. “Still such a good boy. Women might act all offended when you’re forward, but that’s exactly what they want. You learn that, and maybe you’ll finally get some. But fine. We’ll talk in person.”
“Glad to hear you’re in such a good mood, anyway,” Santo said in a much calmer voice, but the tension was still visible on his face. I couldn’t believe he was able to ignore the mocking, but maybe it was because nothing about Vincenzo’s comments was true. “We will arrive soon enough, and we can deal with the mess together.”
“Ring me up once you land,” said Vincenzo, before adding in a much lower tone, “See you soon, Sister-in-Law.”
I shuddered, rolling the bottom of my skirt in my hands even as the connection ended. That was the last thing I wanted.
“Motherfucker!” Santo lashed out unexpectedly, and I yelped when he turned around and kicked a little side table so hard it fell over. The vase that had stood on it crashed to the floor, shattering into a million pieces. He was heaving and loosened his tie.
I leaned down and covered half my face in my palms, watching him grow more tense with each second. Did he only now realize the danger of blindly following Federico’s plan?
He paced around for a moment, but then looked back at me, and rushed over. He scooted by my knees and glanced into my eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
My shoulders sagged, and I stretched my fingers, trying to loosen the tension in their joints. “You don’t scare me,” I said, looking back at him. If anything scared me, it was the disgusting pig of a man I was forced to interact with over and over.
“Vincenzo won’t hurt you either, okay?” He squeezed my hand, but then quickly pulled away and got back to his feet.
“How do you know? He keeps bothering me. He even tried to molest me back at home. And it’s not like I can chase him away by suggesting who my father is,” I whispered, increasingly nervous.
“He did what?” Santo groaned and took off his suit jacket. The turtleneck sweater made him look sophisticated, as if he walked out of the set of a black and white movie.
I flinched, crossing my arms on my chest. “He was touching my buttocks and being overall disgusting. He just won’t listen to a no.”
He sat on the back of the sofa, frowning at the beige carpet. “We’ll find Seth,” he said in the end.
I exhaled. There it was again, the duties I needed to fulfill, no matter how badly I didn’t want to. I straightened up on the bed as an idea sparkled shyly somewhere at the back of my mind. “Maybe all this trouble would disappear, if you became the next Don.”
Santo glanced up at me, wide-eyed. “That’s not how things work.” He started pacing the room again, unable to find a place for himself. “We just need to get Seth back. The guy’s soft, and unobtrusive.”
But I wouldn’t be brushed off so fast. “I might be wrong, but after Vincenzo, aren’t you and your father the most important men in the Family?” It certainly seemed like that, even though I didn’t try to inquire about the actual hierarchy.
Santo watched me, leaning against a window so clean that for a second I envisioned him falling out, and my heart stopped. “My father would not agree to that. I was raised to be the perfect candidate for the next consigliere to replace him once he retires. I assure you, Seth will be easy to control. The only issue is Acerbi, who might try to meddle.”
I stood up slowly. “Why wouldn’t he agree? You’d be perfectly capable to do this. Much more so than those two brothers,” I said, and it wasn’t an empty compliment. I believed Santo would make an excellent leader.
Santo shook his head. “My father wouldn’t agree to support such a development, and I’d be as good as dead. It’s out of the question, Lucrezia. You know very well that what we want rarely aligns with what we get.”
I approached him slowly, looking out the window, at the city beyond. “He’s dangerous, isn’t he?”
“I know my father…cares for me in his own way.” Though saying that, Santo sneered. “But he gets what he wants. It’s what he does. So I did the accountancy course, learned standard Mandarin, and got made. It’s not that I’m…afraid of him.” He tapped his fingertips against the glass. “It’s hard to explain. I respect him in many ways, and I don’t want to disappoint him. I don’t want him to think that I failed. That he set me to a task, and I wasn’t capable enough to complete it.”
I nodded. I understood that Santo’s father would be more important to him than the woman he’d met only a few weeks ago, but it still stung to know that he’d rather give me back to another man than fight for us. Maybe I was being silly. Romantic like a teenager who didn’t yet know any better. “When I was still a little girl, I loved my father. That was before I realized how dangerous he was.” Words stuck in my throat, and I massaged it gently.
My heart skipped a beat when Santo entwined our fingers. “How did you realize? I’ve met women affiliated with the Family who don’t realize what their husbands and fathers do. Or at least pretend not to.”
I squeezed his palm hard, and all of a sudden my pulse quickened, as if I were about to run for my life. “I saw him kill someone.”
Santo took a deep breath and pulled me against his chest. It didn’t feel like he was taking the opportunity to make a move on me. He was just there as a sturdy presence to support me. Like a shield that would not yield no matter what.
I tried to even out my breathing, so that I wouldn’t start crying again, but the vivid nature of my memories made it so difficult that it took me a long time to speak again. “Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to stop being scared.”
“You will. I will make sure you’re safe,” Santo whispered against my hair. “I will take Seth back home, get my father on board with this plan, and make sure Seth understands it means he doesn’t get to touch his wife. I will make it work.”
It sounded too good to be true. Forcing my husband away from me was so wrong, and yet there was nothing more soothing than Santo’s arms around me. I could lie in them forever, completely safe. I should not be agreeing to this, but I couldn’t find the strength in me to argue right now, even though what Santo was proposing put us both in permanent danger. He’d eventually be pressured to marry someone else, and all we could ever have would be moments stolen from an estranged husband and an unhappy wife. It was selfish of me that I wasn’t yet pushing him away but, Seth wasn’t here. He was on the run and would never know what happened in this room.
“I’m safe with you.”
Santo took a deep inhale, and his heart beat fast under my cheek. He didn’t say a thing, just held me tightly. I didn’t know how long we stood so close to one another, but eventually I squeezed the hand I was still holding. “I trust you.”
Santo licked his lips, and I wanted to kiss him so badly my own lips itched. “I will make sure you can choose a man you like once the issue with Seth has been handled. I don’t want you to feel trapped.” But in his eyes, I could blatantly read that while he was trying to give me an open door, what he really wanted was to never let me go.
I swallowed, shaking my head. “It’s not that simple. I am his wife, and if someone found out, nobody could save me.”
Despite his words, Santo’s hands still travelled down my back and to my hips. “So you want to stay with him? Just because he is a better choice than Vincenzo?”
I moved my fingers up his chest and clutched at his lapels. “I want someone else.”
Santo let out a low groan. “As far as I remember, you didn’t want to be my paramour.” But he must have known I lo
st that battle, because his hands found their way to my ass and squeezed it.
“I don’t. But I still want you,” I whispered, already leaning in to his lips, with the swarm of butterflies inside me spinning at a rapid pace. But Santo didn’t just tease me, he was quick to answer all my needs and leaned down so we could kiss.
At first gently, as if he were afraid he’d spoil the moment if he were any more intense about it, but then his tongue became increasingly hungry for exploration, and I could barely breathe when my heart started racing.
Before I even knew it, his hands crawled under my dress, and he squeezed my ass with more force. “I could eat you up,” he groaned into the kiss.
“Let’s see who eats who first,” I whispered back and pushed my hands under his turtleneck, tracing his strong body. I wanted to memorize every detail and carry them with me forever.
Santo nipped on my lip, and I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Even if nothing worked out later, we had this one night to gorge on each other. No one was here to rush us or walk in on us. We could finally take our time.
Though judging by the way Santo touched me and backed me toward the bed, we wouldn’t be wasting even a moment.
I held on to him, quickly pushing up his turtleneck. I was a little girl on Christmas Eve, and he was the most impressive present underneath the tree. He needed to be unwrapped.
Santo grinned. “Just don’t leave any marks. Wouldn’t want the girls following my Instagram disappointed.” He let go of my butt only to unzip the back of my dress.
“You will give me the name of your account by the time I’m done with you,” I said, stalling for a moment when I realized how bold I was. But he didn’t seem to mind and grinned at me in challenge.
He made a show of finally taking off the turtleneck, and I bit my lip both at the sight of his muscles, and the masculine scent that hit me at once. “You will never get it then, because you will never be done with me.” He pulled on the front of my dress, making it fall to the floor.