“I thought you liked it.” He pushed a bit more on the door. He could force it open easily, he was a great deal bigger and stronger than she, but he loved to see her fight.
“I like when I like you. Now, no.” She gave a great heave and almost succeeded in pushing him back an inch.
“Bella, enough! I’m sorry.”
She stopped, not easing back, but not trying to push harder. “Say again.”
Paolo didn’t apologize. If he made a mistake, he fixed it or moved on, but he tried not to dwell in his failures and he did not allow others to do so.
This was the second time he’d apologized to Mirabella within a week. The second time he’d felt regret and understood the only path to fixing his mistake was atonement.
“I’m sorry.” He let go of the door; if she wanted to lock him out, he would let her now. She didn’t.
“You are … stronzo.”
“In English, you’d say—"
“I no care in English. Is better in Italian. Like testa di cazzo. Bastardo. Sfigato.”
That last one, which meant weakling or loser, actually stung. “Enough, Bella.”
She crossed her arms again. “What you want?”
“I told you. I’m here for you. I want you with me.”
“In your bed.”
“In my life.” Fired up by the confrontation and Mirabella’s stubborn resistance, Paolo had answered without thinking. Now he snapped his jaws shut.
He hadn’t spoken falsely, but that was the problem—he’d said more than he wanted known. What he felt for this woman, and what it meant for who he thought he was, he hadn’t worked that out enough for himself yet.
But it was true, so he didn’t try to take it back. Instead, he made it something he’d meant to say. He said it again. “I want you in my life, Mirabella. In my bed, and at my table. At my side and at my back. I want you with me.”
“My blood, it come today. No baby.”
Chiefly, Paolo felt relief at the news. But he was surprised to find some disappointment, too. A child would have bound her to him whether she wanted it or not.
“I’m not saying this because I thought you could be having my baby.”
“Why you say, then?”
“Because I can’t stop thinking of you.” He thought of that peace he’d fallen to sleep with the night she’d spent in his arms. He hadn’t felt it since, and he wanted it back.
He reached for her hand, and, though wary, she let him take it. “I want you in my life, Bella. I want you with me.”
“I not know what it means.”
“I don’t, either.”
She scoffed and tried to pull her hand away. Feeling as if he’d drown otherwise, he held on.
“I’m being honest, Bella. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know why I feel like I do. I only know I need you with me.”
He heard the word need this time, not want, and recoiled. Why couldn’t he keep his thoughts to himself with her? He was giving her too much ammunition to use against him.
This time, she held onto his hand. “This word ‘need.’ Is bisogno, yes? As Hai bisogno di me?
“Ho bisogno di te. Sì.”
Her smile made it perfectly clear that she knew he’d torn himself wide open before her. She looked at him like she was deciding which of his vital parts she’d eat first.
“Come, Paolo,” she said and opened the door wide.
XVI
Mirabella stepped back and drew Paolo forward, into the single room that made up this apartment.
She had been bitterly angry at him, and at herself, these past few days. From the morning she’d woken in Paolo Romano’s bed and discovered The Beast had reclaimed his place. He’d treated her like he couldn’t wait for her to get out of his sight.
He’d treated her like a whore he was done with. The only thing missing had been a fold of bills stuffed into her bodice.
Mirabella wasn’t precious about her reputation, but she was proud, and she didn’t tolerate such dismissive treatment from any man. So she’d told him precisely what she thought of him and left.
She’d walked long blocks back to this apartment, dressed in a disheveled evening gown, in the sharp glow of a late-autumn morning. A Saturday morning.
Half the residents of Little Italy had seen her lonely journey, and they’d all known what it meant.
Before, when they’d only whispered, they’d left room for doubt. Now they were sure what she was. It was a very good thing she wasn’t precious about her reputation, because they were now calling her La Puttana del Bestione.
The Beast’s Whore.
That night, she hadn’t felt like a whore. She’d felt … cherished. Even when he’d been so rough, so thoughtless, there’d been something, some kernel deep inside his behavior, a desperation that seemed vulnerable and sincere. It had prompted her to give him a chance to do better—and he had done very much better. He had cherished her.
As she’d drifted off to sleep in his arms, she’d had a thought that it might not be so terrible if he’d put a child inside her.
Then she’d awakened alone in his bed and left the room to find the Beast, cold and aloof, uninterested and eager for her to be gone.
He’d made her into a whore. So the gossips had the right of it.
Now, nearly a full week later, after she’d endured days of cold shoulders and silent condemnation, after she’d fretted that she might be bound to him by his child for the rest of her life, he’d shown up at her door.
And told her he needed her. He’d even apologized. Mirabella had a keen sense of how much each apology cost him; he guarded them like dear possessions.
Now he was in her home, such as it was. As he scanned the small room, took in the ragged walls and rusting coal stove, the two bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling, the narrow cots that served her and her father as beds for sleeping and as seating for their small leisure time, the moth-eaten blanket that sagged between the cots, Mirabella began to feel defensive. She dropped his hand and crossed her arms again.
She missed their house in Firenze, with its big windows and comfortable furnishings, its sunny courtyard and sweet citron trees. The scent Paolo loved so much, from soaps and lotions from Leonora Cipriani’s shop, reminded her of home.
This dark, dreary room was not home. She hated Paolo seeing her here; such surroundings cheapened her, dimmed her worth. Simply because he was seeing her here, she felt judged.
With too many thoughts clamoring for her attention, Mirabella couldn’t manage to make more English words, so she spoke in Italian. “You say you need me?”
His back was slightly to her as he examined the room; she saw him flinch before he faced her.
She liked that flinch; it told her he’d given her more than he’d intended to, and that made what he’d given her sincere. He really did need her—he didn’t want to, but he did.
Now that he was facing her, his eyes—so remarkably beautiful—flashed with conflict, but he said nothing. He’d said it twice, in two languages: he needed her. Now that she’d let him in, however, he didn’t want to say it again.
Not about to allow him to retract the thing that had persuaded her to let him in, she pushed more. “You said it. Now tell me how you need me, and what you want of me.”
He stared at her, his expression cool but his eyes hot. Then he turned and walked away.
There wasn’t very far he could go. The room was tiny, and she’d pulled the blanket across a few minutes before he’d knocked, so the way to the window was blocked.
He managed two steps and realized any more would require some awkward scooting, so he stopped. Looking at the beds, he asked in Italian, “Where’s your father?”
“Working. He has a project to finish tonight.”
“And you’re not helping him?”
“I’m home to make food.” There wasn’t much. They were out of money for meat, so mostly what they’d been eating these past days had been pasta and bread with coffee or tea. Her father h
ad mended a new neighbor’s funeral suit, and been paid in canned tomatoes; Mirabella meant to toss a jar in with the pasta tonight.
The meals she’d eaten with Paolo during their lessons, and the leavings he’d allowed her to bundle up for her father, made up the best food they’d eaten since Fredo had died.
“What do you want of me, Paolo?” she asked, feeling weary and vulnerable herself.
It was more than defensiveness about the condition of this room that stood in for a home. It was more than fatigue or hunger. She liked this man. The Beast had become simply a man, and, thus, she’d thought, he’d become at least a friend.
She enjoyed talking with him, trading words like swords. He wasn’t an easy man to understand, he kept himself closed and distant, but she’d thought she was learning him nonetheless. More than once, even before he’d taken her to bed, he’d opened himself a crack and let her see what he kept hidden. There was a small, very unhappy boy cowering inside the armored hide of the Beast.
In her mind, and only there, she could admit that she’d grown to more than like him.
Until he’d treated her like a whore.
So now what was she supposed to do? Let him have her without giving her anything in return, simply because he said he wanted her?
No, not want. Need.
If he needed her, he was going to have to give her something, too.
So far, he couldn’t even give her an answer.
She went to the door and opened it again. “If you’re not here to explain yourself, then go.”
Still, he stared. Cool expression, hot eyes. It was exhausting to try to plumb those eyes for every shred of insight into this man.
“Go, Paolo. I don’t want you standing in the middle of my home like a statue. You have nothing to say, so go.”
As cool as ever, he came to the door, and she thought he’d leave. Instead, he grabbed the door in his gloved hand—he still wore a topcoat, scarf, gloves, and hat—and snatched it from her. As he slammed it closed, he pushed her up against it and trapped her with his body.
He’d moved so quickly and with such force she couldn’t hold back a gasp.
Hulking over her, his face scant inches from hers, he rasped, “I told you, I’m not leaving without you.”
“And I told you, I won’t be your whore.”
His fist slammed the door beside her head. It shook with the blow and made her head bounce. “I don’t want you to be my whore.”
“Then tell me what you do want! An ornament dangling from your arm? Then come back when you have an event and need me to dangle!”
He punched the door again, twice in quick succession. “I want more!”
“What? What more do you want?”
“I don’t know!”
She shoved hard at his chest, but didn’t move him at all. “You’re an idiot, then. Or you’re a liar.”
Fury leapt into his expression, making his skin flush and his scarred lips twist. “Watch your tongue, little shrew. Someone might cut it out.”
With no thought at all to do it, operating on pure impulse and the shock of his threat, and the rage that exploded inside her, Mirabella punched him.
He had her trapped against the door, closed between the walls of his arms, and he was so near she could smell the rich wool of his coat, so all she could do was curl one of the hands she’d wedged against his chest and slam it upward.
But it did the trick. She punched the underside of his jaw and drove his teeth together with a resounding crash.
He reeled back, and Mirabella scurried as quickly as she could to the tiny kitchen area, where their one cooking knife lay on the drainboard, ready for use to prepare a meal. Now it was a weapon. She grabbed it and wheeled around to point it at Paolo.
He stood where she’d left him, looking at his fingers. A smear of blood near his mouth and on the tips of his glove—she’d made him bite something in his mouth. Oh, the delicious irony if he’d taken a chunk of his tongue.
“You are bold, woman,” he said without any evident difficulty.
“Bolder than you, who’s afraid of words.”
He considered the knife in her hands and gave her a look that said, quite clearly, Really? Again?
And then he walked toward her. There had been only a few steps between them anyway, the whole span of the apartment was only a few steps, and he was within arm’s reach almost at once.
Lifting the knife to the height of his chest, and the cold stone he called a heart, she said, “I will do it.”
“I’m well aware that you would,” he said—and grabbed her wrist. Rather than take the knife from her, however, he took another step closer, so that the point of the blade pushed ever so slightly into his coat. He shifted her arm a little, changing the position of the knife so if she pushed, it truly would be his heart she pierced. “Do it.”
She didn’t. Of course she didn’t. They stood like that, on the edge of murder, and stared at each other.
“I’m no idiot. But maybe I have been a liar. What would you do if instead of a lie, I told you I might love you?” he asked. His voice was soft again. Not hesitant but entirely without confrontation, despite the knife still so close to his heart and poised to be closer.
The question he’d asked seemed to explode in her mind. He loved her? “You love me?”
His mouth twitched in one of his aborted smiles. “I don’t know, and that’s the truth. I don’t know what love is, what it feels like. Any feeling I’ve thought was love shriveled and died. Any people I’ve loved have turned from me. So I don’t know. What I know is when I’m away from you, I feel the loss, and all I can think of is how to get back to you.” Leaning a hair closer, putting the slightest bit more pressure on the point of the knife, he said, “Kill me or come with me, Mirabella.”
“To what? What is there for me with you?”
He blinked, and she saw that the question hurt him. It hurt her, too. She wanted to hear devotion in his words, the love he’d spoken of but hadn’t quite offered. But a man like this, was he capable of love? He didn’t know, so why should she take a risk?
Because she wanted to.
Her hold on the knife had loosened; Paolo eased it from her hand, and she didn’t protest as she watched him set it back beside the sink. Neither he nor she moved otherwise.
“Do you want marriage?” he asked softly. “Would that be something for you with me?”
“Would you offer?”
The gleam in his eyes hardened, and he became the dealmaker, unwilling to put everything on the table. “Do you want it?”
Did she want it? To be the wife of Don Romano? The Beast?
There could be a kind of power for her in that; not her own, but the afterglow of his. She could make something for herself of that. It might be her only path to making anything for herself in this place.
There was no denying his allure—not only the allure of his power, but of the man himself. He was very handsome, and intelligent, and interesting. There was a humor in him she didn’t think he realized. Sometimes, she really liked him and enjoyed being with him.
Other times, he left her raw and stinging. And sometimes she wanted to kill him.
Did she want to be married to a man like this—so mercurial, so capable of brutality, and of cruelty? Was he capable of love or any good feeling? He himself didn’t know the answer, so how could she?
“I don’t know,” she said, because it was true.
His mouth twitched. This time, Mirabella lifted her hand and set her fingertips on his lips. “Is it such a terrible thing to smile?”
He took her hand from his mouth and held it. He was still wearing his gloves and everything else. What an odd thing, to have this wild, wrenching talk while he was dressed for a walk in the cold.
For a moment, he simply looked at her, his eyes shifting back and forth. Then he said, “It hurts.”
“Come now. It’s not so much to offer. A simple smile needn’t expose you so much.”
“Bella, I
mean it hurts.” He lifted the hand he held and set it back on his face, pressing her fingertips to the hooked scar at his eye, making her trace it. Under the scar, she felt something almost rough, as though the bone beneath his eye had been broken and hadn’t healed quite right—not far off, but not perfectly. If not for the way the scar there already changed his face, that slight wrongness in the bone might have shown.
He brought her hand lower to trace the scar across his mouth. He moved deftly, with precision; without aid of a mirror he knew exactly where each scar began and ended.
“I think these, how they were made, damaged something under my face. It hurts to smile.”
“How were they made?”
For a long time, he didn’t answer. They stood where they were, his hand lowering hers from his face but keeping hold. His eyes slipped away from hers, seemed to focus on a point just to the side of her shoulder.
He was still focused on that point when he finally said, “The night my sister and I arrived here. We were set upon by three men. They beat me, slashed and stabbed me. They savaged Rina. Then they took everything we had and left us for dead.”
“Oh, Paolo.” The soft exclamation was a sigh lifted on a waft of her sorrow.
His expression closed and went cold at once, and he focused on her again, his eyes narrow with offense. “Don’t. Fuck your pity.”
Mirabella wasn’t put off by his tone; she felt she knew this Paolo best of all. “I don’t pity you,” she threw back. “You’re too much of a bastard to deserve pity. But I can have a care for your trouble, Paolo. My emotions are sophisticated enough to discern between compassion and pity. Yours, clearly, are not.”
“Anger is all I’ve needed or wanted.”
Mirabella understood anger. She’d been born a fighter. Like her mother. But there was more to life than fury. She’d had the love of her mother and father, and then simply her father, to show her that. Had Paolo had no one? What of this sister he spoke of? Did she not show him love?
Could she take on the burden of loving a man who didn’t know how to love? And if he didn’t, then why had he used the word? To manipulate her?
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 19