by Kiera Silver
“It’s just money. I can always make more.”
She smiled at him, revealing just a hint of pity she didn’t really feel. “From the first few days we spent together, I’ve known how important Boulevard 3 is to you, and how much it means to you. I know you don’t want to give half of that to me, because I promise you I’ll sell it to the first person I can find who will make your lives miserable. They might not have controlling interest, but they’d have enough of a stake in the business to make running it a nightmare for all of you.”
She shrugged as his mouth tightened with anger. “So as long as you play nice, I’ll play nice, and we’ll pretend like we have a civilized union. That means no more bringing your whores back to the house.”
His arms dropped from his chest, and he walked closer to her, seeming to have a hint of grudging admiration in his gaze. “You have more balls than I credited you for, Grace.”
She smiled at him, though it was more of a bitter slash across her face than any sign of amusement or welcome. “It’s funny, because you have considerably less balls than I estimated.”
His jaw clenched. “That’s because you keep busting them, darling wife.”
She shrugged. “And I’ll continue to do so as needed. If we can return to our previous arrangement of avoiding each other, and you keep your girlfriends away from the house, and I’ll keep my boyfriends away from the house, I don’t see why this can’t work. We don’t have much choice in the matter, do we?”
He was clearly angry again, though she wasn’t sure why. He stopped in front of her, glaring down at her. “I guess you have it all figured out?”
She shrugged, clinging to her confidence and a bit of false bravado in the face of his anger. “I’ve had some time to work things out, it’s true. I’ve accepted that I’m stuck in this marriage, but I don’t have to be completely at your mercy.”
He gave her a cool smile. “That’s good for you, because I’m not known for mercy.”
“I’m shocked.” As she uttered the words, he lifted his hand to take hold of her wet hair, wrapping it around his fist. She struggled to control her breathing and corral her escalating heart rate at his touch. It was an unfortunate truth that she was still attracted to the man she hated, but he didn’t need to know that.
“You’ve thought of everything, I guess.”
She shrugged.
“You left out one tiny detail.”
She arched her brow. “What’s that?”
He bent his head, his lips getting threateningly close to hers. “If I can’t have sex with Claudia, then I’ll just have to have sex with you.”
She glared at him. “That was nowhere in the deal.”
“I’m amending the terms.”
She turned her head before he could kiss her, feeling his lips graze against her jaw. She wasn’t certain if he was bluffing or serious, but she wasn’t about to back down. Keeping her voice disinterested, she said, “Fine. You want to fuck? We’ll fuck. But that’s all it is.”
“Sure it is,” he agreed in a mocking fashion before trying to kiss her again.
She put her hand over her mouth. “No kissing. That kind of closeness doesn’t exist between us anymore. If we’re going to change the agreement to just be fuck buddies along with being married to each other, there are still some rules in place. Just sex, and no more trying to manipulate me. I’m stuck here, so there’s no reason to try to convince me of your deep, and overwhelming feelings for me. Keep it physical, and we’ll be fine.”
He seemed to mull over her suggestion for a moment before his hand fell away, and he stepped back. “I’ll have to give that some thought, Grace.”
She kept her expression blank, as though it didn’t slightly sting to have him rejecting her when he had been the one trying to initiate. “Take all the time you want. I couldn’t care less.” She walked past him in a careful fashion to avoid touching him in any way. She froze when his hand dropped to her forearm, slowing her escape. She looked at him as coldly as she could. “What? Have you thought it over already?”
His expression was completely serious, leaving her no doubt he was sincere. “Just so we’re clear, there won’t be any boyfriends for you. I won’t have my wife screwing around behind my back.”
Anger surged through her, and she sniffed at him loudly. “If you want to play that game, then no mistresses for you either. I really don’t care what you do with Claudia, but whatever rules you impose on me, I’m imposing on you too. If I can’t have a boyfriend, you don’t get a girlfriend. I guess you’re stuck with your wife,” she said with a sneer as she tore her arm away from him.
“You’re sure this is the path you want to take, Grace?”
She didn’t pause for a moment. “I don’t really care either way. Whether I’m having sex with you or myself, it’s about the same. It’s all about getting off and nothing else. Just think about what you want to do, but for my part, I hope you embrace the idea of celibacy.”
He laughed, clearly amused at her expense. “I can guarantee you that option is not on the table.”
She shrugged again. “I don’t care what you do. In fact, I don’t think I care about you at all.” As she moved up the stairs to the room she had claimed as her own, she repeated the words quietly to herself. If she said them often enough, she might not only start to believe them, but actually feel them too. Because right now, she did care. She cared more than she should have, especially considering the circumstances of their marriage. Eventually, when she told him she didn’t care, she planned to mean it.
He slipped in her bed that first night, seeming not to believe what she had told him. Grace refused to look at him, though she didn’t resist his physical advances. In fact, she responded with her own. She just did her best to maintain an emotional distance, so it was easier to just avoid eye contact. At one point, as he was entering her, he put his hands on her face, and their eyes locked. She saw his head start to bend, and he was clearly intent on kissing her.
She closed her eyes and turned her head away with a painful wrench, forcing his lips to land in her hair instead. “No kissing,” she said again, the only words she uttered throughout the entire event. Afterward, she rolled away and turned her back to him, and he soon left her room. She tried to embrace the hollowness inside, wanting to eliminate any emotion she might have been feeling, good or bad, at least when it came to Larenz. She didn’t want to turn into a cold, numb zombie with everyone. Just with him.
That night set the tone, and though Larenz came to her bed frequently over the next week, she didn’t speak, and she didn’t make eye contact. The sex was physically satisfying, but emotionally bereft. She suspected that he was feeling it too, because he started coming less frequently in the middle of the night. She was happy with that turn of events, or at least tried to convince herself she was. Having the kind of sex they’d been having was almost worse than having none at all, and there certainly was no lovemaking involved. Not that she wanted there to be with him, because loving Larenz was the last thing she wanted to do.
Almost a month after this new development in their relationship had began; Grace met her father for lunch. She was concerned about him the moment she saw him. He looked pale, and he had lost some weight. His normally dark hair seemed to have gone mostly gray in the weeks since she had seen him, and the bags under his eyes spoke for themselves.
As she approached the table to meet him, she bent down to give him a hug, wincing at how frail he felt. She pressed a kiss to his cheek before sliding into the seat across from him. “You look awful, Dad.”
He summoned the ghost of a smile. “You look pretty bad yourself, kiddo.”
She sighed, but didn’t deny it. Like him, she had lost weight, and she had trouble sleeping, both on the nights Larenz chose to come to her bed, and the nights he didn’t. Trying to distance herself from him and maintain an emotional wall was taking its toll on her. She shrugged. “Gotta do what you gotta do, right, Dad?”
His lips compressed
, and he looked like he might argue for a minute before his shoulders slumped. “Yeah. Tell Larenz,” he practically spat out the other man’s name in disgust, “That everything has been handled.”
She leaned closer, not wanting to be overheard. “What did you do, Dad?”
“I pulled some strings. My successor could spend years chasing the leads and not find enough to bring down the Moretti family.” His answer was vague and Grace looked at him skeptically, wondering how much he had sacrificed to cover up the evidence he had built up against Larenz and his family.
But at the same time, a surge of relief swept over her, though she wasn’t entirely certain if it was because her father had done what Larenz wanted without any violence being involved, or perhaps it was even a hint of relief for the Moretti family as a whole, knowing they wouldn’t face prison. Despite her emotional distance with Larenz, she had gotten closer to her sisters-in-law over the intervening weeks. The only one absent from those weekly family dinners was Sophia, who apparently still wasn’t speaking to her parents after learning they had lied to her all her life about her parentage. Grace didn’t know the full story, but she had heard enough to know that Sophia was entitled to her estrangement from the family.
Abruptly, something her father had said caught her attention, and she frowned. “What do you mean, your successor?”
“I’m retiring, honey. I can’t do my job anymore, not in good conscience. It’s the only alternative I have.”
She reached across the table to squeeze her father’s hand, hating how broken he looked. She didn’t try to persuade him to change his mind. “I’m sorry about you being forced into this, and I feel awful that I didn’t recognize that I was being manipulated. I should have known that a man like Larenz would have an ulterior motive for approaching me.”
Her father squeezed her hand in return. “Moretti’s the fool for not actually falling in love with you, sweetie. He would be a lucky man to have you, and he’s the one who’s not worthy of you.”
She nodded. “I know. I just wish I’d been more practical instead of getting caught up in the fantasy he spun. He was the worst thing that ever happened to us.”
Her father stilled for a moment, and then nodded before taking a long drink of ice water. “He isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to us, but maybe it won’t have to continue for long.”
She liked her father’s optimism, and she hoped he was right. Now that he had fixed the investigation so that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to bring down the Moretti's, and her father was retiring; there was no reason to hold her hostage.
She might be able to convince Larenz that it was time to dissolve the marriage. Her heart skipped a beat at the idea, and she assured herself it was simply from excitement at the idea of finally being free of Larenz. The love she’d felt for him had withered and died.
Of course it had, because she had ruthlessly sought that goal and pruned every bud of emotion as it tried to bloom. Being free of him was a thrilling prospect, so why did she suddenly feel a different kind of aching numbness inside?
It was a disquieting sensation that led to thoughts she didn’t want to explore. She forced them aside and focused on her father instead, telling herself she was looking forward to being free of Larenz Moretti and their sham of a marriage.
Chapter Seven
“Ease up there, Larenz,” said Armo.
He ignored his brother’s advice as he slammed his fist into the already-bruised face of the bookie that had been caught skimming profits off of his bets.
“We already decided that he wasn’t worth killing,” said Dante mildly, as though he didn’t care much either way. “If you’ve changed your mind, it’ll be considerably less messy if you just shoot him and be done with it.”
Annoyed with his brother’s admonishments, Larenz allowed himself two more swings of his fist before dropping the unfortunate bookie onto the dirty floor of the bar. This wasn’t Boulevard 3. It was a seedy little neighborhood bar where Lenny was the big turd in a small bowl, and he thought he’d be safe here, going to ground after realizing the Moretti brothers knew he’d been stealing from them.
As soon as the three of them had stepped inside, the few patrons had scattered, and the bartender had disappeared into the back room. Lenny had quickly realized he had no friends among the lowlifes with whom he associated, and he’d tried to talk his way out of a beat-down. Then he’d tried to buy his way out, offering to repay the money that he’d skimmed three times over, but Larenz hadn’t been in the mood to accept his offers.
He kicked Lenny lightly in the ribs, reassured that the other man was still alive by the way he groaned and curled his knees up to his chest. “You don’t fuck with us, Lenny. Leave the money you owe us and get out of town. I won’t be so generous next time.”
Armo knelt down beside the other man, not touching him when he said, “You can have a night to recover from your near-death experience. Be gone by tomorrow, Lenny.”
The other man nodded and whimpered as he held himself in a fetal position. He was probably going to really need more than a day to recover from the beating Larenz had administered, but that wasn’t Larenz’s problem. He wanted Lenny out of sight and out of the city before he changed his mind about letting him live.
They left Lenny on the floor, and the three of them approached the bar. There was still no sign of the bartender, so Dante swung himself over the counter and grabbed a bottle of top shelf liquor and three glasses before returning to the other side of the bar, and took a seat on Larenz’s other side. Larenz took the glass he was offered, and tossed back the shot as though it was water, though it burned his throat all the way down.
“You’ve been a real bastard lately,” said Armo affably.
Larenz glared at him. “Give me another.” He tapped his glass on the bar so Dante would know what he meant. When he had a full shot glass again, he sipped this time. He didn’t want to lose control and get drunk. Not since he planned to go home and have emotionally empty sex with his wife.
He scowled at himself, hating that he could even think that. Since when did he give a fuck about an emotional connection with the women he banged? It shouldn’t matter if it was his wife, or some random one-night stand. He had sex, and he did it to get off, not to get some sense of emotional fulfillment. He wasn’t the sap that his brothers were; both of them had changed completely after falling in love with their wives.
He stiffened and quickly forced his thoughts away from that path. He didn’t want to even think about loving Grace. She was as stubborn and coldhearted as he was, and he was actually reluctantly impressed at how long she’d held out, and how well she maintained the distance between them. He was also frustrated as hell, and he was certain he’d been doing more than his fair share of snapping at his brothers and being a general asshole.
“We’ve both been there,” said Armo as he clapped his hand on Larenz’s shoulder. “You remember what a mess I was when Katie came back into my life, and I found out about little Lukas.”
Larenz nodded sullenly, looking at his whiskey and not his brothers. He wasn’t in the mood for a heartfelt conversation, but apparently they didn’t care what he was in the mood for. This was beginning to feel disturbingly like an intervention.
“I think I had it easy with Grace,” said Dante. “Once I realized I was falling for her, and I decided to let it happen, things just clicked into place.”
Larenz glared at his brother. “I’m not falling for Grace. She’s a means to an end, and nothing else.”
Dante snorted softly, looking unconvinced. “You should just have sex with her and get it over with, man. I mean, you don’t love her or anything,” he said in a mocking fashion.
Larenz glared at his other brother. “We have sex.”
Dante arched an eyebrow. “Really? I figured she’d cut you off, and that’s why you’ve been such a bastard lately.”
Armo shot Dante a look. He sounded more sympathetic when he spoke. “I’m surpr
ised to find that you guys are having any kind of relationship. You seem so distant from each other at Mom’s dinners.”
Larenz nodded. “We’re as emotionally far apart as you can get. I think the sex is just a way to punish each other.” Now that he had said the words, he realized the truth of them. It would have been easier for both of them if they steered clear of a physical connection, but inflicting orgasms on the other that lacked any emotional depth or sense of connection were actually more of a punishment than a reward.
He was trying to force her to connect with him again, and she was making it clear she had no interest in doing so. Was that why he had continued to go to her room? It certainly wasn’t because the sex itself was satisfying. He could have the same kind of meaningless orgasm with his hand and be finished a lot faster. So why did he keep returning to her?
“You hurt her pretty badly, Larenz, but it’s probably not too late to salvage the relationship. She seemed to be most upset about the fact that you lied and tricked her into falling in love with you.”
“Thanks, Freud, I couldn’t have figured that out for myself.” He shot a sour look at Armo before draining his whiskey and inclining his head towards the bottle, waiting for Dante to pour him another.
Armo ignored his words. “My point is, she was clearly feeling something for you, at least enough to be convinced to marry you at the drop of a hat. If you’re really interested in preserving the relationship, you could build on that. You could make her love you again as much as you love her.”
Larenz froze, the glass sliding through his hand to land on the bar with a thunk. The liquid inside splashed onto the bar and his fingers, but he barely noticed. He turned slightly in his stool to glare at his brother. “I don’t love her.”
Dante laughed harshly. “Sure you don’t.”
Armo was slightly more sympathetic. “I’m sure you don’t want to, and you’ve probably convinced yourself you don’t, but it’s plain to us that something is different with you. From our own experiences, we know only a woman can fuck with your head like this, and leave your heart shredded. Whether or not you’re ready to admit it, you’re in love with your wife. The only way you’re going to be happy is if you get her to love you again too.”