What was worse was my dad supported him. He’d married me off and had become my husband’s greatest ally. He agreed with Lorenzo that I shouldn’t work anymore, which nearly blew me down because I worked for him at his restaurant.
The features in food and drink magazines. The chef interviews, the clientele who paid through the nose to sit at my chef’s table and enjoy a VIP menu, he was ready to throw that all away so I could become Lorenzo Montorini’s Stepford wife. What was it? Were the Montorinis the highest bidders? If he was going to marry me off, there had to be something in it for him. I was his only child. His only daughter. His little girl. If those things didn’t matter, I was the reason his restaurant had been getting rave reviews and VIP patrons. It cut me deep to think that he didn’t care about those things, didn’t care about me.
The manicure I had gotten for the wedding had been deteriorating with every plate I scrubbed. My hands were perpetually dry, and the multitude of nicks and cuts I had gotten from knives and cracked glasses left flaky healing marks. I would leave the Band-Aid on till I had finished the dishes then get rid of it.
How did this become my life?
I had experienced every emotion in the book, brief sparks of satisfied happiness when Lorenzo kissed me at our wedding, loss and sadness when I realized we would be getting married, disgust, anger, even embarrassment. Now I was just bitter. Bitter that this was the way things had turned out. Bitter that I was married to someone because my father had made an enemy out of someone he should not have. Bitter because the feelings of two old men, honor, or justice, or something else vague like that meant I had to become someone’s wife.
The same for Lorenzo, too. He was his father’s offering lamb, slain on the altar. Both of us were paying for the fact that our fathers couldn’t play nice together. And it was not right.
Chapter Two
Lorenzo
D’Agostino was an...interesting man, but he was generally one of high repute. He’d been a thorn in my family’s side for decades, but I trusted his pedigree and his breeding.
How the hell was it that he and his wife managed to raise a woman like Isa?
What kind of girl didn’t know how to do the dishes?
At least she could cook. Of course, she knew how to cook, she was a chef for Christ’s sake before we got married. She was no slouch either. She’d trained in Europe and could cook French and Italian cuisine perfectly. She always asked me whether the food was good when she made it for me. It was, but I’d never admit it.
Sitting around the table with my guests, I heard the clinks and bangs from the kitchen. She had been in there all night at my request, but really I thought she would have been done by now. What was she still doing in there? Breaking more of my dishes most likely. Cursing my name. Cursing our fathers for setting us up in the first place.
As far as arranged marriages went, it could have been a lot worse. She was a decent housemate. She didn’t snore, and she didn’t have any disgusting habits that got on my nerves. She didn’t do anything particularly weird like practice nudism or demand all the windows remain open at night to help her sleep.
Our fathers were who they were, so we were who we were. She had probably taken it much better than other girls in her position would. I mean, there was the whole little fact that she had managed to live most of her life without knowing the truth of her family business. If she had known how our families knew each other and how it was that her dad had been putting food on the table since she was a little girl, then maybe, she would have reacted better.
She did react better than I did though. I almost felt sorry for her in that room when her father broke the news to her. She looked so insulted, like someone had just called her and her mother a bitch. She would have looked less shocked if you told her that her whole life had been a simulation like ‘The Truman Show.’ If you thought about it… it sort of had all been a simulation.
The truth had been hidden from her, and her reaction was warranted. She was probably too much of a lady to really get into it with her dad though. I knew what my family did, where our fortune had come from, and still, the news that I was going to be married to Alfonso D’Agostino’s daughter was some of the most hideous words out of my father’s mouth.
We had fought before. I was my father’s son. As a matter of principle, we never had guns on us when we did, but he had raised his hand to me more than once. He was my father. It was his right to do it. The fight that followed the news of my marriage was one of the worst knock-down, drag-out affairs we’d ever had. I knew that, because of who we were, I couldn’t just marry anyone.
Lorenzo Montorini. That was me. My life was set the moment my father fucked my mother without a condom twenty-eight years ago. I had known that my parents would have a say in who it was that I ended up bringing into the family, but fuck, it wasn’t supposed to go this way. I knew I was my father’s son, but I hadn’t been a boy for a long time. We were men. Both of us. And what he did was foul. Would it have been so hard to ask me first? Would it have been so hard to let me go for Isa and make her fall for me myself? I didn’t want another man to be the person who was responsible for my marriage, even if it was my father. He wasn’t going to be with us in our bed every night, so I didn’t need him to hold my hand and lead me to my future wife.
My wife.
Shit, I hadn’t even been thinking about marriage when he sprang it on me. I think the thing that was the most insulting was the fact that he hadn’t even told me first. He had told Alfonso first. They had made the arrangement between themselves, and then they had come to me, as a courtesy, just to inform me that my wedding was coming up and I had to go get fitted for a tux.
Dad had been insistent. It was Isa or nothing. I was going to marry the D’Agostino girl or we were done, he and I. I would be disinherited, and I would no longer be able to call myself Antonio Montorini’s son. What was so great about the girl anyway? Why did it have to be her? It would probably insult her a little if she found out, but she just happened to have been the daughter of the man my father wanted on his side the most. If it was anyone else who was causing my father as much grief as Alfonso D’Agostino was, it would have been their daughter. It was just bad luck that her father happened to be at the top of my father’s hate list. His men had gotten too close and a few guns had gone off, fired from both sides. Instead of taking the losses, he had come up with an unorthodox plan B. If you can’t beat them, marry your son to their only daughter and create an empire.
D’Agostino’s daughter, Isa, was… straight up, not the kind of woman I would have considered to become Mrs. Lorenzo Montorini. She was indelicate and strong willed. She was belligerent and hot tempered. She was bitchy, but fuck, she was beautiful. That was a simple fact. It didn’t matter if I thought so or not because it was indisputable as the truth. She was gorgeous.
Her hair was the same color as dark chocolate, long down her back like a woman’s hair should be. Her skin was olive and colored beautifully by the sun. Flawless, besides a light dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose, which were easily covered with makeup or could be eliminated by a visit to the dermatologist. They were charming though. She could keep them. She was sharp and striking while remaining feminine. I would bet money too that that was her original face. Straight nose with a delicate upturned tip, rose-colored full lips, green eyes which stood out against her dark features. Who could hold a candle? Who could compete?
Her body was the icing on the cake. Her curves swelled and dipped perfectly. Amazing tits, enough for a generous handful. Spare waist and beautifully rounded hips and rear. Her legs were long, but she wasn’t too tall. She was tall enough that her head came up to my chin when she wore heels. She had to look up at me when she wanted to speak to me.
She was by far the most beautiful woman at the table, even if she was not really at the table but in the kitchen. Never in my life had I had to pay so much money to get broken dishes replaced as I had since Isa moved in. I wasn’t keeping count so she could
pay me back, but let’s just say, I wouldn’t be letting her near the china tea set my mother gave us as a wedding present.
She had been so angry when she heard the news. Her eyes had flashed, and she had talked to her father in a way that would have gotten her put over one knee if she was still a child. She had more or less come around by the time it was our wedding day. She had looked nervous, and she had cried during the vows. I knew it was because marrying me was the last thing she wanted to do, but our guests ate it up. Lorenzo’s blushing bride. She is so innocent, look how she cried when he put the ring on her finger.
As a wife, she was sort of a disappointment. It wasn’t even that I didn’t like her; it was that she didn’t seem to be trying. We were like roommates. I could understand that we had just met and maybe the whole arrangement was a lot for her to adjust to in a short time, but the least she could do was try and act like she wanted to make it work. How was I supposed to if it was one-sided?
I mean, she was married to me. I had certain domestic expectations of her, but she wasn’t living in some shack in the middle of nowhere. All she had to do was say the word and she could have anything she wanted. We lived on East Seventy-fourth Street, we weren’t exactly slumming it. I thought she would have at least began some level of renovation on the townhouse or began filling it with art and furnishings she bought by way of retail therapy. She had done nothing of the sort, and it became obvious after a while that she wasn’t charmed by gift boxes and expensive price tags.
What did that mean? That I actually had to try?
At least she hadn’t tried to make excuses on the wedding night. It would have been too much if she had tried to refuse me on our wedding night. At least I could tell people I was married and it was true. I could understand that she was upset, but she had to get with the program. She was someone’s wife now. My wife. Forces more powerful than both of us had brought us together, and that was the way that it had to be. That was the way that it was going to be. I hadn’t envisioned myself getting married before I turned thirty. She and I both found out about the arrangement on the same day.
How was it that the most civil I had ever seen our fathers act towards each other was when they were arranging their children’s marriage? It had been my dad’s idea. Isa was D’Agostino’s only child, so he must have been desperate to agree to the marriage. It was a peace treaty, the two of us. It made the D’Agostinos and Montorinis a team, united against those who tried to move in on our territories.
Isa was beautiful in a way that shone through even when she didn’t try. First thing in the morning, when I would come downstairs and find her cooking breakfast, her skin was flawless and shone. Her eyes were bright and her hair, even if it was up, was never frizzy. I definitely took pride in that. My beautiful wife. My beautiful Isa. I got a lot of compliments on the way she looked, the way we looked together.
The platinum wedding band on my finger did little to deter women from flirting with me, however. A couple women at the table tonight even tried to come onto me, in the house I shared with my wife, eating the food that she had prepared. If there was a list of women who desired me the most, Isa would probably be dead last.
I gently moved Elissa’s hand from my arm and cleared my wine glass. Speaking of the new Mrs. Lorenzo Montorini, Elissa was probably the saltiest about the new arrangement. It had been ages since she and I had been together, but she never let me forget it. She would have loved to be my Mrs. Montorini. Isa could look to her for some tips. Enthusiasm and eagerness. Maybe gratefulness and submission.
She was Isa’s direct opposite. She had the stature and build of a model. Tall and willowy, underfed in that way that is trendy on high fashion runways. Her hair was black, she would dye it and her employment status was ‘gainfully unemployed.’ There was always someone with long money and deep pockets that kept her in designer dresses, and I knew she wanted it to be me. If a wife was all I needed, I wouldn’t even have been that mad if my dad had selected Elissa.
Too bad she wasn’t a D’Agostino.
I wondered how Isa would feel if she saw Elissa all over me the way she was. If she knew what was good for her, she would be jealous, but whom was I kidding? How did I know she didn’t have men flirting with her despite the fact that we were married? It had only been two weeks, and she was still upset. We lived together; she had to come around some time; she had no choice. Besides, I had ways to convince her.
Chapter Three
Isa
Maybe it was petty of me to think so, but I believed Lorenzo held business dinners at home just to annoy me. The meal was over, and the house was finally silent. I was relieved at the peace, but more than that I was happy that I no longer had to listen to my husband laughing and flirting with other women while I tore my hands to ribbons trying to get the dishes clean.
One of the women around the table with him that night had been Elissa. Elissa Lazzerini. I had had to hear from my mother-in-law, Lorenzo’s mom who she was. She had been one of the few friends on his side who had been invited for the wedding. I wondered what the connection between that beautiful, statuesque woman and Lorenzo could possibly be, but I had pretty much known it instinctively when I had seen her. They were exes. They used to date, and who knows what else. Maybe I had beaten her to the finish line she was trying to cross with Lorenzo by becoming his wife and effectively blocking her prospects.
There was always a second wife. Or third. Maybe that marriage would actually be real. Maybe she’d get an engagement ring and everything. Lorenzo’s mom, Lavinia had basically warned me that that one had never really gotten over her son. Tough shit, I thought. Her feelings were none of my business. Whatever unresolved issues she had with Lorenzo, she could have brought up at the ceremony when the pastor asked whether anybody had any objection to our being married. Seeing as she hadn’t brought up anything then, she had made the choice to forever hold her peace. I didn’t have to be in the room to know that she had been all over him. I didn’t have to be in the room to know that he had let her flirt with him, knowing I was in the house, as they feasted on a meal I had slaved over a hot stove to make.
It wasn’t that I was jealous. There was nothing to be jealous about. I had done it. I was the one with the Montorini last name and she wasn’t. I was the one he went to bed with every night and she wasn’t. I had won the race. It wasn’t a race I had been trying to win, and sure, I didn’t particularly like being in my position, but I was in it…meaning Lorenzo had to respect it.
I didn’t care what caliber of trollop he had had in his past life. All I wanted was not to be exposed to anything by way of his infidelity or disrespect. It didn’t matter that we weren’t in love, we were committed, and he wasn’t going to do that to me.
What the hell was she playing at, continuing to come to the house? An ex was an ex, what did she still want from him? His friendship? Surely he could see the way that she looked at him and put her hands all over him, as if she was checking him for weapons? The disgust I felt was simply because it wasn’t proper. It wasn’t right. I didn’t like her. She seemed like she was the type who would ransack your whole house when you broke up with her and release a sex tape. Honestly, if he was going to cheat on me with anyone, I just didn’t want it to be with her.
I heard him make his way upstairs. I took longer to go up because he didn’t bother clearing any of the dishes from the table. It was late, would I...?
No.
Fuck it.
I loaded the dishes into the dishwasher and started it up. It wasn’t cheating. What the hell was the machine there for if not to wash the dishes? I would be awake before him at any rate, and I would be able to unload them before he saw and pretend I did them all by hand. It wasn’t a lie if your husband was being irrational in the first place.
I walked upstairs after him, giving him time to finish in the shower. He didn’t tend to take that long, but I did it out of respect. We were more roommates than a married couple. I didn’t want to be more put upon by him than I
already was. In addition to that was the fact that he would be naked. I’d seen him completely disrobed before; I mean, we had had sex our wedding night and we slept in the same bed, but it was always easier to withstand his advances when I didn’t have to see him like that.
The body on this guy was the kind built from heavy lifting in a gym, not the leaner, more sinewy look that guys who built their bulk on construction sites or doing other manual labor had. He was proportioned like a perfect GI Joe toy, wide in the shoulders and back and tapering into a narrow waist and hips. Every part of him was swollen with muscle, and I was painfully aware of it. Black hair grew on his chest, arms, and legs. I liked that he didn’t get rid of it.
He was something else. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen, and he was mine to jump on every night. Why was he such a pain in the ass? Why did he make it so difficult for me to want him? It wasn’t the wanting him that was difficult. I wanted him, and I wanted him bad. It was acting on that want. Let’s face it. We were married, who the hell else was I going to go to when I wanted to get off? I hadn’t looked left or right since we had gotten together, and I trusted… or at least I hoped that he hadn’t either.
Going Once, Taken Twice: A Dark Romance Page 19