by Penelope Sky
He pushed another paper toward me. “This states you have no legal rights to his company, even in the event of marriage. If Cato Marino passes away, all of his holdings in the company will pass to Bates Marino.”
I added my signature. “Anything else?” Signing paperwork was boring.
“One more.” He pushed another paper toward me. “In the event of termination of a marriage by death or divorce, you’re waiving your right to Cato Marino’s personal assets. Everything will fall to Martina Marino when she’s of age.”
“How is this any different from what I already signed?” I asked.
Cato sat beside me, his legs crossed and his face stoic.
The lawyer explained. “This relates to his personal assets, such as his home, the money in his bank account, and his investments.”
I understood we were doing this to protect Bates, but this was a personal clause Cato had specifically asked for. I didn’t care about his money, but I thought it was in poor taste that a husband would make sure his wife didn’t get a penny if he were hit by a bus. But since it didn’t matter anyway, especially since he wouldn’t tell me he loved me, I signed it and handed it back. “Anything else?”
“No, that’s it.” The lawyer gathered all the papers and then walked to the copy machine. “Once I give you a copy, the two of you can be on your way.” He quickly made them and handed the folder to Cato before he shook his hand. “Until next time, Mr. Marino.”
“Thank you.” Cato moved his arm around my waist and walked with me down the hallway. Once we were back on the street, we got into the car. The car headed for his office a few blocks away.
I didn’t know I would be spending the day with him at work again. I was hoping we could go home and have some privacy to talk.
The car pulled up to the sidewalk.
Cato didn’t get out right away. “The car is going to drop you off at the house before it returns to pick me up. I’ll be home at the usual time. No bar stops, I promise.” He smiled like the last twelve hours had been perfectly normal, like I didn’t tell him I loved him and signed off on everything that kept his money out of my hands.
“So…are we just going to pretend that didn’t happen?”
His smile fell, the light slowly leaving his eyes.
“Because you don’t strike me as the kind of man to ignore problems. I thought you were a man who faced them head on.”
He looked out the window for a few moments as he considered what he might say. He eventually turned back to me, his blue eyes cold as the sea. “What do you want me to say, baby?”
“You know what I want you to say.” It was pretty obvious what I wanted, to tell him I loved him and hear him say it back.
He looked out the window again. “Well, I can’t.”
“But you enjoyed it when I said it to you.”
“Why wouldn’t I? The beautiful woman who’s having my baby is in love with me. Yes, it fucking turned me on. But that’s it.” He released a quiet sigh when he finished speaking, as if this conversation was a nuisance.
“You would take a bullet for me, Cato.”
“Because you’re carrying my daughter—”
“That’s not the only reason. You can pretend burying my father was just a humane act of kindness. You can pretend that stopping Bates from hurting me was just instinct. You can pretend that the only reason you don’t want to fuck other women is because you don’t want to wear a condom. But when you came to France to get me, you would have done anything to get me back. You were distraught without me, just as much as I was without you. So you can say you don’t love me all you want. Because I know that’s bullshit. I know you do, Cato. And I can be patient until you grow the balls to say it.”
24
Cato
I got out of the car without looking back and stepped into my building. The folder was gripped tightly in my hand, the paperwork I needed to get Bates to calm the fuck down. Instead of riding the elevator to the fifth floor, I took the stairs just so I had extra time to cool off.
When I was deep inside Siena, she’d said the sexiest words I’d ever heard a woman speak.
I love you, Cato.
Those words would have been a nightmare coming from anyone else. I would have stopped what I was doing then and there and gotten rid of her.
But from Siena, the words were the trigger to the best orgasm of my life.
My entire body was set on fire. I didn’t even let her finish first. As if she’d pressed an invisible button, I was forced to climax, like my body needed to do it, otherwise, it would shut down.
It wasn’t just the words that she whispered to me, but the passion that fueled them, the sexy look in those green eyes. It was everything, including the baby growing inside her, the baby I put there.
I knew she meant it.
And that was the biggest turn-on of all.
But, no, I didn’t feel the same way. I thought my silence confirmed that. It was the kindest way to reject her, to let her down easy. I was still rock hard between her legs and committed to what we had. A confession of love wouldn’t change that. But I didn’t want to talk about it either.
I assumed we could just move forward and forget it ever happened.
For her sake.
But then she threw all of my gestures in my face. She argued that I felt the same way, but I didn’t have the balls to say it.
I had bigger balls than anyone else in this world.
Trust me, if I loved her, I would say it.
I didn’t.
She was the only woman who had my fidelity, but that was because I enjoyed our chemistry so much. She was the only woman who slept beside me every night, but that was because it’d been one of her demands. She was the only woman who’d met my mother, but that was because it’d been out of my control. She tried to see the love in my actions, but in actuality, they meant nothing. I buried her father because it was the right thing to do. I shot Damien because that asshole shouldn’t have shot her in the first place. I bent over backward to take care of her because she was growing my daughter inside her. I could admit I felt something special for her that I felt for no one else. But that didn’t mean it was love. It was lust, friendship, respect, admiration…but not love.
I made it to my floor and headed to Bates’s office.
He was on the phone when I walked inside. “Hang up.”
His feet were on the desk, and he was smoking up a cloud. “I gotta go. Cato just walked in, and he looks like he’s gonna throw a hissy fit.” He hung up and tossed his phone on the table. “I’m surprised your little spy isn’t here.”
“She’s on her way home.”
“Thank god,” he barked. “If I had to look at her face every day, I would just head to another branch.”
Hopefully, his attitude was about to change. “After your little outburst in my office yesterday, Siena offered to do something.”
I tossed the folder at him, and it slid across his desk.
“She strikes me as a woman who offers to do a lot of things…” He grabbed the folder and opened it.
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re suicidal.”
“I am when she’s around.” He flipped through the pages. “What the hell am I looking at?”
“Do you not know how to read, asshole?”
He lifted his gaze and glared at me.
“She offered to remove herself from any possibility of inheriting anything from me—in any shape or form.”
His finger slackened on the papers, and he almost dropped them on the floor.
“In regards to the document, if something happens to me, whether we’re married or not, my share of the business would be transferred back to you.”
He flipped through the pages until he found that clause and her signature.
“She also signed off on giving Martina all of my assets in the event something happens to me. The trust will hold on to it until she turns twenty-one.”
“Who’s Martina?” he blurted.
“My daughter, idiot. That’s what we decided to name her.”
“Martina Marino…it’s cute.”
“I know. On top of that, Siena removed herself from ever inheriting any of my personal assets in the event of my death. There’s no wiggle room around it. There’s never any possibility of Siena getting a dime from me personally or getting anything from the company. If I die, it’s all yours.”
He flipped through the pages and read the sections Siena had signed.
“She and I aren’t getting married, but that’s included in the unlikely event it happens, a glorified prenup. So will you calm the fuck down and give her a break? That woman doesn’t want anything from me but me.” As I said the words out loud, I thought about last night. I pictured the way her lips moved when she told me she loved me, the way her breath fell across my skin. Her sultry voice made my skin break out in goose bumps.
Bates finished reading it and returned the folder to the desk. His feet were still up on the surface, and his cigar had been abandoned. He picked it up again and took a few puffs, slowly letting the smoke release from his mouth.
“You have nothing to say?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“Maybe?” I asked. “No, asshole. You were wrong. I denied her access to my personal assets just to see what she would do. But she signed it anyway and didn’t blink an eye over it. No other woman would have done that, even if they weren’t a gold digger. It’s totally fucked up.”
He held the cigar between his fingers and let the smoke rise to the ceiling. “Alright…maybe she’s not as bad as I thought she was.”
“She’s nothing like you thought she was.”
“Let’s not forget how this fuck-a-thon started, alright? She lied to you. Lied to your fucking face.”
“But she’s never been after my money.”
He sucked the tip and let the smoke escape his slightly parted lips. “Alright, I’ll chill out. Maybe she’s not the manipulative thief I thought she was. I’ll be civil to her. I’ll even ask her how her day is going. But I still don’t think this woman is right for you, Cato. The entire beginning of your relationship was a lie. If she were a man, she would be dead right now. Maybe she doesn’t want your money, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t play you for a fool.” He turned his head and looked out the window. “We’ve had this same conversation a million times, so I’m not going to have it anymore. But as your brother, I have to be straight with you. I think you deserve better.” He held up both of his hands. “That’s all I’ll say about it.” He took another hit of his cigar until he reached the butt then dropped it in the ashtray.
I sat in the leather armchair and rested my ankle on the opposite knee. Since Siena had come into my life, we hadn’t talked the way we did before. Bates resented me for being so merciful to the woman carrying my child. A distance had developed between us, but it’d grown so much in the last few months. He used to be my closest friend. Now he was just…Bates. I missed that bond. “She told me she loved me last night.”
He stared at me blankly, like he didn’t know how to process that. He opened his left drawer and pulled out two cigars. He tossed me one. “You need one of these.” He tossed the lighter next.
I lit up and let the smoke enter my mouth. “She said it twice, actually.”
“Like you didn’t hear it the first time,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m guessing you didn’t say it back.”
“No.” I didn’t smoke at the house anymore because Siena was there all the time. I tried not to smoke at work either because it stuck to my suits and I brought it back into the house. But right now, my need to relax outweighed Siena.
“She must have been pissed.”
“No, actually.”
“No?” he asked in surprise. “That’s the most awkward thing in the world—tell someone you love them and listen to crickets. When did she tell you?”
“While we were fucking.”
He nodded slowly. “More awkward.”
I didn’t tell him how much I’d enjoyed it, how I came harder than I ever had.
“And you just kept going?”
“Yeah.”
“And then what happened?”
I shrugged. “We went to sleep. Woke up the next morning, and I pretended nothing happened. But when we were in the car, she cornered me. Said she knows I love her even if I won’t admit it. And she can wait until I grow enough balls to actually say it.”
He lit up his second cigar and took a long puff. “Well, do you?”
“No.” I’d said it many times, especially when my mother asked me.
“You’ve made a lot of exceptions for her. I can’t blame her for thinking that.”
“She misinterprets a lot of things I say and do.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I’m not calling you a liar, but a man doesn’t remain celibate when a woman is gone because of lust…there’s needs to be something besides lust to keep him faithful. You didn’t fool around once in two months, even when I dragged you to the bars and the women dropped in your lap. You always left. How do you explain that?”
My arms sat on the armrests, and the cigar hung between my fingers. My gaze turned to the painting on his wall, something someone must have hung a decade ago. Without really looking at it, I stared at the dull colors of the flowers.
I didn’t have a logical counterargument against my brother’s words. Those two months were difficult for me. My dreams were filled with her beautiful face, and my broken heart never seemed to heal. It was in a constant state of pain. I had every right to fuck whoever I wanted, but returning to that lonely lifestyle made me sick to my stomach. Now that I had something meaningful, something that actually made me happy, going backward would just be painful. I hadn’t desired another woman in the first place. I hadn’t desired anyone because I was numb.
My brother kept staring at me. “If the woman already loves you, what’s the harm in saying it back?”
“I told you I don’t feel that way.”
Bates gave me a sad look, like he didn’t believe a word I said. “If you do all those things for her, but still don’t love her…then what does love actually mean to you?” He cocked his head as he examined me.
My mouth was immobile because I didn’t have an answer. We slept in the same bed every night, we were having a baby together, and I was committed to someone for the first time in my life. She was the only person I’d ever met who wasn’t impressed by my money, and I think that rare occurrence made me feel poor rather than rich. She saw me for what I really was, all the good and all the bad. I didn’t like someone having that kind of hold over me. This woman had more control over me than anyone else in the world, more than all my enemies combined.
She knew exactly who I was.
That terrified me.
I didn’t want to give her any more power.
Because it would destroy me.
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