Old Flame: Dante’s Story: (Morelli Family, #8)

by Mariano, Sam

  She’s not as passionate as she usually is, given her state. It’s like I’m rousing her with my lips, kissing her awake. I’ve done it before, back when she welcomed such a thing, but I know I’m probably pushing my luck right now.

  I just don’t care. Colette’s lips soften beneath the brutal, crushing stamp of my mouth on hers. I’m not here to be tender, I’m here to mark what’s mine, and that’s my mistake.

  The roughness of my kiss rouses her. I catch her gasp against my mouth, then she lets go of my clothing, unhooks her arm from around my neck, and starts shoving at the solid mass of my chest.

  “What are you—Get off me, Dante!”

  Rather than get off her, I grab her wrists and trap them against the mattress on either side of her. “What if I don’t want to get off you?”

  Her blue eyes flash angrily, and that spark of real emotion pleases me, even if the emotion is negative. “I don’t care what you want,” she tosses back. “Just like you don’t care what I want. This isn’t a relationship anymore, it’s captivity, and I’ll be damned if I let you forget it.”

  “Well, if you’re my captive, I might as well treat you like one, right?” Just to get a rise out of her, I grind my cock against her, a coldly dispassionate enough look on my face that her expression shifts through several emotions—shock, panic, then a glimmer of real fear. She opens her mouth, an inaudible denial on her lips, then closes her mouth again, just like she did back at the house when I threatened her aunt.

  “No, I suppose you would,” she says, just as dispassionately. “Well, go on, then. If you’ve brought me here to use me like a whore, go ahead and do it—just don’t expect me to care for you this time, because I won’t.”

  There’s my little stick in the mud. I could smile, but I don’t; that would alert her that the threat isn’t real, and I feel like playing with her. Reaching down like I’m going to unbutton my pants, I tell her, “Well, as long as I have your blessing…”

  Alarm jumps in her eyes again and my facial expression nearly cracks. “That was not my blessing,” she says, hurriedly. “I’m not—I’m on birth control, but I don’t have it with me. If I can’t keep taking it, it won’t be effective.”

  That drains the faint trace of humor right out of me. My blood boils thinking of Colette going to get birth control so she can fuck somebody else. I’m glad she was careful and didn’t want to have his babies at least, but he shouldn’t have had his hands—or any other body part—on her to begin with.

  I struggle to rein it in because there’s no point making things worse, but I don’t want to. I want to make her hurt the way that hurts me. I want to paint her a picture using excruciating detail. I want to tear off this godforsaken wedding dress and tell her that Declan’s death wasn’t quick and painless, that the impact from the crash didn’t get the job done, and the way his car rolled didn’t kill him, it only crushed vital organs so that when Luca climbed down to check on him, he could see the pained way her fiancé struggled to draw breath. I could tell her about the relief on Declan’s stupid fucking face when he saw Luca, thinking someone was there to help him get back to her, and I could tell her instead, I had my guy finish the fucking job. It was practically a mercy killing at that point. Not what I wanted, personally, but Luca talked me out of killing him myself. He knew I’d be too angry, and anger makes people sloppy. Plus, in case anyone asked questions about Declan’s death once I took Colette back, I needed to have a solid alibi.

  As long as Declan ended up dead before he married Colette, it didn’t matter how it got done. Still, I kinda wish I’d done it myself. Kinda wish I could hold up the hands that ripped him apart and make Colette kiss each fucking knuckle, showing me her repentance for daring let another man touch her.

  Of course, I wouldn’t get that right now, either.

  Covering her body with mine, holding her captive beneath my weight, I lean down and drag my lips across her jawline. “What’s wrong, Colette? Don’t want to have my babies anymore?”

  She turns her head trying to escape me, but she can’t. “Stop it, Dante.”

  “What if I treat you the way you say I’m treating you?” I ask, kissing her cheek even as she struggles against me. “What if I take you anyway? What if I take you every night until I do put a baby in you?”

  Gasping as she shoves uselessly at me again, she says, “I’m not playing these games with you.”

  “It’s not a game. This is your life now,” I tell her, calmly, my grip on her wrists tightening as she struggles harder. “Will you hate my baby like you hate me?”

  Tears glisten in her eyes as she looks up at me like I’m being unspeakably cruel. “Stop it. Stop perverting my old dreams.”

  I shrug my shoulders like her words don’t matter to me. “You know it’s in my blood, Colette. I don’t need your consent to take you, to keep you, to make you mine. You know I don’t.”

  “You’re not as cruel as your—” She stops again, her expression unfocused for a minute, then she looks me dead in the eye. “Actually, maybe you are.”

  Colette knows enough about my family history to know I’m the son of a monster, but she also knows that unlike my brother, no fiery hatred for the old man burns in my gut. I’ll admit the old man did some horrible things, but he had his reasons so I’m not gonna judge him. While the comparison to my father is a clear insult, it doesn’t burn me the way it would if she said it to someone else.

  My brother, for instance. Mateo despises our old man, but he has more personal reasons than I do. There were things Dad did to hurt Mateo and his loved ones that he never did to me. Mateo has never been easy to love. He was a weird kid who grew up to be a dangerous man—a king in his own right, his power more or less unchecked. When we were just kids, though, our dad earned a permanent spot on Mateo’s shit list when he cost him the friendship of the only person Mateo knew he could always count on—our maid’s son, Adrian Palmetto.

  He works for us now, but only by way of coercion and Mateo’s clever knack for manipulation. Adrian hates Mateo, but he has his reasons and he still serves the family loyally, so I don’t have a problem with the guy for his personal feelings.

  My big brother, though. He claims not to hold grudges, but sometimes he makes exceptions. When he does, his vengeance is fatal if you’re lucky, catastrophic if you’re not.

  Currently he’s sitting on Dad’s throne, running Dad’s family, while our old man battles terminal illness. If it were possible to give someone a terminal illness intentionally, I would assume Mateo did. I don’t complain though because I like the way Mateo runs things, the leeway and power he gives me that our father never did. Our dad clutched his control in a tight, greedy fist. Mateo delegates—mostly to me—to free up his own time for the aspects of the business he prefers, like cushioning our bottom line and growing our portfolio of legitimate businesses.

  Since taking over, my brother has busied himself multiplying our already massive family fortune, making it look so damn easy I wonder why our dad didn’t try harder. Sure, we always had plenty growing up, but the only thing better than a lot of money is a lot more. I always thought Dad was a good businessman, but Mateo is far better. Smarter, more focused, more in control of his emotions and much less impulsive. He got the best of both of our parents, I guess, and our dad got the worst of his.

  When it comes to love and women, especially, our father’s legacy is famously horrendous. Only woman he ever claimed to love ended up dead by his hand—a path Mateo has already followed once, and if my instincts are as good as they usually are, a path he’s probably about to head down again.

  Not me, though. I’ve never killed a woman I was romantically involved with. Colette is the only woman I’ve ever really loved, and I damn sure wouldn’t kill her.

  I’d hurt her, though. I already have. A nobler man would have let her move on and marry someone else if that’s what she wanted, but I’ve never claimed to be a noble man.

  At least the worst is over. Now that she’s here
with me again and I know mine are the only hands touching her, I can wait for her to stop being pissed at me.

  You wouldn’t know the worst is over by the hatred in her eyes as she looks up at me right now, but it’s better than her numbness. Somewhere in there I know she’s still the same old Colette, because even though she means it right now when she insists she hates me, even though she wants to wound me like I’ve wounded her, she won’t say those hateful words. Regardless of how great her anger at me is right now, she won’t proclaim hatred for our unborn babies.

  Colette’s deliberate thoughtfulness is one of the many things I love about her. A lot of people will say things they don’t mean in anger. Colette doesn’t. If by some chance she did, it would gnaw at her until she apologized and assured me she didn’t mean it. It’d kill her to do it, but she wouldn’t be able to help it.

  One of the perks of loving someone so much my opposite.

  I’ll always be able to outmaneuver her pretty little ass.

  The thought brings a smile to my face. Colette misinterprets it, probably figures I’m taunting her, but really I’m just happy she’s here. She’s seen more of my smiles than anyone else so she should know when it’s a real one, but right now she’s pissed off and she sees what she wants to see.

  Glaring up at me, trying again to shove me away, she huffs and struggles, then finally stops and holds my gaze. “Are you done? I’m tired.”

  Best thing I can do is let her get some sleep. The sooner she sleeps off her grief, the sooner she can get back to accepting that she’s mine. “For now,” I tell her, nodding once.

  “Good. Get off me.”

  That time, I do.

  7

  Colette

  My back aches from sleeping so long and my body is too warm from being wrapped up in blankets all night. It’s summertime, but Dante keeps the air in the house cool, especially at night because we always enjoyed snuggling under the covers. There was no snuggling last night, though judging from the sight of the wrinkled bedsheets on his side, he did sleep in here with me all night.

  I sit up and look over at his empty spot, waiting to feel it, but nothing comes. No shameful trace of pleasure, no bitter pang of a once-sweet memory, not even sadness. I guess I’m still fogged from the Valium I took yesterday. That’s probably a blessing, so I won’t complain.

  Fabric rustles as I push my legs over the edge of the bed and I look down to see I’m still wearing my wedding dress. It’s loose, halfway off my upper body. The sight of it makes me sick now, so I abruptly stand and wrestle my way out of the once-beautiful gown. It’s ruined from sleeping in it all night, anyway. That’s okay. I never want to see this dress again. Once I get out of it, I bend down and ball it up, then I carry it into the bathroom and shove as much of it as can fit into the small waste bin.

  As soon as I make my way back into the bedroom, it occurs to me I have nothing to wear now. I go to my old walk-in closet, wondering if perhaps Dante had the foresight to buy me a couple of outfits. Actually, lack of foresight isn’t likely the reason if he didn’t. Of course he would have thought of it, but he might have decided not to get me clothes anyway as another form of punishment, or even just practicality—I’m less likely to try to escape if I’m naked.

  I hate having these nuggets of knowledge. I hate some of the darker things I know Dante’s family is responsible for because I can’t think about it now without chiding the younger version of myself, demanding to know why it didn’t bother me as much then, why I didn’t get out then, when maybe I could have.

  I keenly remember one of the first times it hit me. We were curled up on the couch, eating popcorn from a shared bowl and watching some dramatic thriller about a ring of human traffickers. Naturally, they were the bad guys in the movie, but it hit me they were the ones he sided with when I caught us shaking our heads at the screen at the same time, but for very different reasons. Me, I felt bad for the girl cowering and afraid. Him, he was impatient with the head bad guy in the scene for being too soft. We were still pretty newly dating, so I didn’t know exactly which dark deeds his family had a hand in. As we kept watching the movie, I realized my boyfriend sympathized with the villains, not the protagonists. On a hunch, I started asking him questions between handfuls of popcorn and sips of red wine—why the bad guys did certain things, or why they didn’t do certain things. He had all the answers. It was like watching the movie with a pro. Even though his knowledge led me to the impression the rumors about his criminal ties might be legitimate, it didn’t scare me.

  It should have. It should have occurred to me as I sat on that couch with him, drinking that wine he poured, that perhaps I was a mark myself. That even if I wasn’t, that he could ruin lives so casually and then go home at night to watch movies with his date like he hadn’t a care in the world meant he was someone I should stay far, far away from.

  Instead, the verification of his danger turned me on. When he took my wine glass from me and put it down, when he pushed me back on the couch and climbed on top of me, my heart certainly pounded, but not from any kind of fear. I was seduced by him in every way, no matter what atrocities he was personally responsible for.

  I was a dumbass.

  A humorless smile tugs at the corners of my lips as I replay that memory of old Colette, foolishly falling for Dante instead of using her head and running for the hills. You dumb bitch, I tell her, now that it’s too late to save either of us.

  I finally pull open the door of my walk-in closet, reaching inside to turn on the light. I remember the last time I opened this door, too—to clear out all my shit when I thought he was letting me leave. I’d been so uncertain that day, already missing him, wondering if I was making the right decision. My heart ached merely moving my things out of his house, so how much more intense would the ache get?

  The closet isn’t empty, but it doesn’t have as many items as it used to, either. Dante always spoiled me when it came to material possessions, and I think he has more money now than he did back then. A few nice dresses hang from the racks, a few pairs of shoes line the bottom—black, shiny, patent leather pumps, some Manolos that tell me he remembers my favorite brand of shoe. I spot a cute pair of Manolo sandals with a shiny black strap around the ankle and across the toe that I instantly love. Dante could never pick out a shoe to save his life, though, so the sight of these perfect ones only pleases me for a moment before settling in my stomach like a ball of unease.

  Did someone else pick them out for him? It may seem unfathomable that a normal man might make his girlfriend pick out shoes for the woman he was ditching her for, but Dante is such an asshole sometimes, I honestly wouldn’t put it past him. He wouldn’t even lie about it, he would just straight up tell her she had to pick out some pretty shoes for me, and I had better like them.

  I draw the Manolos out and try them on. It’s a low heel so it’s more comfortable than some of the ultra high ones he has bought for me in the past. Leaving those on, I check out the other shoes and also fall in love with a warm, cinnamon-red pair of pumps that make me think of Christmas. Stepping inside, I move each hanger to see what I might be able to wear. Other than the dresses that look suitable for family dinner at Mateo’s house, there’s just a green silk skirt with a white blouse and blue blazer.

  I actually would have probably worn a pencil skirt around the house when I was dating Dante, but now that I’m stuck here I don’t care about impressing him. I want to be comfortable, so I step out of the shoes, push all the heels back where I found them, and shut the closet door.

  I go through all his dresser drawers next, thinking maybe he cleared one out for me, but there are no comfortable clothes belonging to me here. On top of the dresser is a recognizable pink striped bag from Victoria’s Secret. I can’t imagine him going there by himself either, but I peek in the bag and see it’s full of bras and panties in my size. He must have bought these to tide me over until he retrieves my things. At least, I assume he will at some point retrieve my things. Seems a was
te to leave all my perfectly good clothes at my aunt’s, where I was staying until the wedding since my apartment lease was up a month prior.

  I wonder now if doing things differently would have changed how it all turned out. I had lived with Dante outside of marriage, but even engaged to Declan, I wouldn’t move in until we were married. If I’d been in bed beside him on the morning of our wedding, if I’d been in the car with him on the way to the church, would he still be alive? I don’t think Dante’s goons would have run the car off the road with me inside, but perhaps Dante would have just acted sooner.

  Or maybe the fact that I refused to live with my fiancé helped him justify his actions, helped him sell himself on the lie that I didn’t love Declan, that he could squeeze him out of the picture and win me back if he really wanted to.

  Leaving the bag and shaking off thoughts of Declan, I rummage through drawers trying to find something to put on. Dante mostly wears suits and button-down shirts, so there’s not much in the drawers. Gym clothes, a few sweaters, a pair of high-quality charcoal gray vacation shorts, a pair of jeans I don’t recall ever seeing him wear. Sleep pants and a few T-shirts. I suppose I could wear one of those.

  Sighing, I grab a black T-shirt that smells like him and pull it on. Figuring I’m here by myself, I don’t bother with pants. My stomach clenches around nothing, reminding me that after being in bed for so long, I’m also starving.

  As I make my way out of the bedroom, I can’t help wondering if Sonja still works for him. I imagine she does, but I obviously don’t know her schedule anymore.

  Sonja had never been particularly fond of me before I left Dante, and the loyal servant won’t like me any more after all that went down. A sane person might think that Sonja would hate him as much as I do, but that sane person would be wrong.