by Mariano, Sam
“This is done,” I say again, looking back down at her. “You’re done fighting me. You’re done disobeying and being a pain in my ass. I am done with this attitude. I don’t fucking like it.”
Having the nerve to inch forward until her tits are pressed against my chest, she looks me dead in the eye and says, “Good. I don’t want you to like it.”
“Keep it up, Colette.” I push back, forcing her back against the wall. I block her in with one arm on the wall beside her head and anchor the other one on her hip. “I’ll do something you won’t like.”
“You already have,” she informs me, daring to look at me like I’m the one who betrayed her. “You lied to me. You told me I could leave, then chased me down and ruined my life for having the bad judgment to believe you. You destroyed a good man—”
Cutting her off, I lean in and grab her chin, lifting it to force her gaze on mine. “I don’t want to hear another word about that prick, you understand me? He touched what belonged to me, and he got what he got. Don’t fucking defend him anymore. It pisses me off—and yes, before you mouth off some more, I know you want to piss me off, but I don’t have the patience for it. Mouth off one more time tonight, Colette, I dare you. I won’t warn you again, I’ll just impose the fucking consequences.”
She tries to hold her ground, continuing to glare up at me, but the wariness in her eyes gives her away. “What consequences?”
My lips curve up faintly and I reach out, pushing a chunk of dark hair behind her ear. Then I trail my finger lightly across her jawline and tell her, “Test me and find out.”
She holds my gaze, doesn’t flinch when I run my thumb over her bottom lip. Finally, she says quietly, “I’m mad at you. Why is that not allowed?”
“You can be mad at me,” I tell her. “There are more appropriate places and more enjoyable ways to express that anger. Don’t do it here.”
11
Colette
I support the weight of my aching head in my hands, spreading my fingers to glare at the radio which Dante has turned up like we’re at a rager. “Can you turn that down?”
“Why?” he asks innocently, not touching the dial.
“Because my head is pounding, I want to stab something, and you’re the nearest fleshy thing available,” I mutter back.
“Maybe next time don’t drink a whole bottle of wine while you’re cooking dinner,” he suggests.
Reaching forward and cranking down the volume myself, I offer back, “Maybe next time don’t drag me over there in the first place and then I won’t have to dilute my alcohol with blood.”
Dante smirks, and I replay what I just said.
“Shit. My blood with alcohol. Whatever, you knew what I meant.”
Dante shakes his head, a roguish smile playing around his lips. “You’re drunk.”
Shoving him in the arm, I tell him, “I need to be to deal with you.”
“I’m not so bad,” he lies.
“You are so bad. You’re the worst. You’re bossy and mean and I want to punch you in the face.”
“You can try,” he assures me. “Can’t be mad when I retaliate though.”
“And punch me in the face?” I mock.
“More like smack that pretty little ass until you’re squirming.”
My stupid body soaks up his word and turns them into heat, pooling low in my belly. I scowl at my reaction and turn my head to look out the window while I unscrew the cap of the bottle of water Cherie handed me before we left the mansion.
“Are you and Cherie close?”
I glance over at Dante and see him frown in mild confusion for a moment, like he’s not sure who I mean. “The maid’s daughter?”
“She’s Vince’s sister, too, isn’t she? So she’s your cousin.”
Dante shakes his head. “We’re not close. She’s closest to Vince. Why do you ask?”
I shrug, screwing the cap back on my water. “She was much younger last time I saw her. It was strange seeing her almost an adult. It was strange seeing everyone,” I admit, glancing down at my water.
Dante’s voice is hard in the way it always is when he’s guarded. “You mean it was strange seeing Mateo.”
It was a little strange seeing Mateo, but I’m hesitant to respond to what feels like a trap. I am mildly curious about the changes in his life since last time I saw him. I’d like to see his daughter, too, but Isabella wouldn’t even know who I am anymore. She wouldn’t remember all the times I held her, daydreaming about a time when Dante and I would have an adorable baby girl just like her.
“Adrian doesn’t come to family dinner anymore?” I ask, rather than touch the subject of Mateo.
“No. He doesn’t work for us anymore. For now, anyway. If I know my brother, he’ll find a way to suck him back in.”
My lips tug up faintly. “Probably. He’s too attached to Adrian to let him go.”
“Mm hmm,” he murmurs. “The men in my family aren’t too good at letting go of the things they’ve grown attached to.”
Smoothing down the fabric hugging my thigh, I tell Dante, “The women in my family don’t like being referred to as things.”
“Who said I was talking about you?”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, how presumptuous of me. Did you kidnap a toaster you were especially fond of, too?”
“It made my toast just right. Never burned it. No one could blame me.”
Despite how awful he really is, I can’t help cracking a small smile. It’s shamefully nice to fall back into a comfortable pattern like this with him.
I always felt special that Dante gave me access to his lighter side, because there is nothing light about this man. He’s a beast in every sense of the word—physically intimidating, massively built, and his insides burn dark to match the exterior. He was brought up around dysfunction and twisted up even more by the path of crime he followed. Even his friends are droll and business-oriented. Dante feels like a dark fortress to me, adept at keeping everyone out. I’m the princess he keeps locked away in his tower, and as the sole resident of his dark heart, I get to see the sides of him no one else does.
It surprises me that in all our time apart, Dante never replaced me. He couldn’t have, though. If he had, I wouldn’t be here right now.
“Tell me something,” I request, glancing in his direction. “Why didn’t you fall in love with anyone else?”
Dante’s gaze never strays from the road. “Not everyone gives their heart away as easily as you do.”
I nod my head as he intentionally insults me. “So, my love is less special because I chose to share it with someone else when I thought our relationship was over?”
“That’s right.”
He’s such a dick. “If my love is so cheap, why do you want it? Why didn’t you find someone else—someone better—to meet your needs instead of fixating on me?”
His dark eyes cut in my direction. “Oh, I had plenty of someone elses meet my needs, Colette.”
Ew. I scowl at him and a pit of jealousy opens up inside me. I try to ignore it and shut it down, but I feel everything more intensely when I’m drunk. It’s like the polar opposite of being on my meds. “And I’m the faithless whore for being in a single committed relationship with someone else. Got it.”
“You can be as insulted as you’d like. You’re the one who left my bed empty. That wasn’t my choice, it was yours.”
“And you’re the one who left my heart empty,” I launch back, shooting him a dirty look. “You’re the one who comes from the fucked up family where murdering first and asking questions later is apparently an acceptable way to deal with an errant girlfriend. I’m sorry if I wasn’t willing to risk my life to be in a relationship with you, Dante. I’m sorry that I wanted something normal and safe where I didn’t have to feel afraid all the damn time.”
“Yeah?” he asks, almost amused. “How’d that work out for you, Colette? Did you find that safety you craved?”
“No,” I snap, memories of all the times I wa
s afraid slamming into me. “I never got to feel safe. I never got to feel like I was free. I never stopped looking over my shoulder.” Shaking my head, I tell him, “Apparently there is no life after you. Not unless you’re dead. I suppose you wouldn’t be able to hurt me then.”
“Is that what you want, baby? You want to put a bullet in my chest?”
“Sometimes,” I fling back, only halfway meaning it. “At least then I’d finally be free.”
“Would you?” he asks, rather casually. “‘Cause you thought you’d be free of me if you left me, and that wasn’t true. Maybe you’re wrong about this, too. Maybe you think you’d be free, but really you’d be damned to a life of missing me and never being able to have me again.”
The damndest thing is, the arrogant bastard is probably right. When I originally got involved with him, I had no idea he would be so much like an infection with no cure. I didn’t know that the longer I spent with his sickness, the lower my chances of ever experiencing health again. He should have come with a warning label, something to advertise that being with him meant passing a point of no return. Once you let him in, he’ll ruin you—not just for anyone else, but for yourself. You’ll never be able to leave and feel well again. You’ll become dependent on him in ways that don’t even make sense.
Dante isn’t a sickness you can shake and recover from; he’s a disease, and once he infects you, he’s with you until you die.
The really terrible thing is how much I missed his darkness when we were apart. I missed that sick feeling of needing him. When I met Declan, I liked so much about him, but there was something he lacked. No matter how much I enjoyed his company, I never needed it. His love never wrapped me up like a warm blanket; I never craved him so much I missed him when he went to work. It wasn’t unhealthy, so it didn’t feel like love.
He wasn’t the only one, either. I’d gone on lots of first dates after leaving Dante, trying to find someone else I connected with, trying to capture some other fish in the sea. No matter how many guys I met, none of them had his unapologetic roughness. No one was as confident or aggressive as Dante. They asked me too much and told me too little. Everything was too polite and nothing—nothing—was raw.
Dante was raw. He may be brutal and mean, he may do things I hate, but nothing matched the animalistic need we felt for each other when we were together. I don’t like the tickle of it I feel right now, thinking of him with other women. I’m not a violent person by any means, but if he armed me and pointed his finger at some random woman who occupied my side of his bed while I was gone, I’d shoot her dead.
Mine.
No, Colette.
I worked too hard to pull myself out of this toxicity the first time, I won’t let him pull me back in.
Attempting to shake it off, I do my best to remember the healthier life I got used to living without him. I don’t know how I’ll hold onto it when he’s forcing me to live with him, but I have to find a way.
Normal may have been far less exhilarating, but it was also less dangerous and heartbreaking. I need to stay tethered to the world where murdering people for pissing you off is not okay.
The real world is vanilla, not death by chocolate.
Mm, now I want cupcakes.
“Can we go to Francesca’s bakery?” I inquire.
Dante glances over at me, one dark brow rising in surprise. “It’s Sunday. The bakery is closed.”
“I want cupcakes,” I inform him.
“We can stop at the store and get stuff for you to make your own cupcakes,” he offers.
“That’s fine. I probably need to be supervised so I don’t burn myself on the oven though. I had a lot of wine.”
“I think I’m qualified to keep an eye on you,” he assures me.
12
Colette
Making cupcakes gives me something to do to pass the time once we get home, but having Dante stand against the counter with his arms folded over his massive chest sets my nerves on edge. Despite his claim that I had too much wine while preparing and eating dinner, he opened another bottle as soon as we got home.
I grab my glass and take a long swig as my gaze is tempted toward him again. I see him shift out of the corner of my eye and I want to investigate, but I do my best to pretend he’s not here. Replacing my wine glass on the counter, I resume scooping cupcake batter into the paper-lined cups.
Dante moves too obviously in my direction and I can no longer ignore him. I look up at him as he tips the wine bottle and refills my glass. My gaze drifts to his strong arms—a real weakness of mine. Now that we’re home, he’s taken his dinner jacket off. He has the white sleeves of his dress shirt casually rolled up to just below his elbow, his strong, lean arms on display. I can see the pronounced veins in his forearms and I want to reach out and trace one with my finger.
I sigh, my heart and mind teaming up to torment me with memories of those strong arms wrapped around me, making me feel more secure than I ever had before.
And God, how I missed him when I first left. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I loved him so much, I craved the life I saw us having, and I knew I could only have it with him. Dante isn’t like other men. He’s not replaceable.
I surprise myself and him by asking quietly, “When you came to the flower shop that day, why didn’t you warn me?”
He sets the wine bottle back on the counter and plugs the cork into the mouth of it. “I did,” he says, simply.
My eyebrows rise and I drop the spoon in the bowl, turning to look at him. “Excuse me? No, you did not.”
“Yes, I did,” he answers calmly. “Not explicitly, but all the information was there, you only had to put it together. I swore to you I’d never set foot in the flower shop again after you left, so my presence there alone should have been enough to make you alert. The fact that I knew you were engaged should have told you I’d been keeping tabs on you, and the fact that I asked you not to fucking go through with it and to come back to me should have painted the rest of the picture. I wanted you back, and you knew it, but you told me to go away. You made your bed, Colette. I’m sorry if it’s uncomfortable.”
“That’s not—I don’t mean telling me you want me back. Any normal ex could say that and it wouldn’t mean, ‘if you don’t come back, I will murder your fiancé.’ That’s where you needed to be much more explicit.”
“More explicit?” he demands, his dark eyebrows rising. “You knew what you signed up for, Colette. For Christ’s sake, we were going to get married! Apparently that’s something you’ll sign up for with more than one person, but not me. It meant something to me. For better or fucking worse, that’s the promise, right? But you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain.”
“We weren’t married, Dante. We weren’t even formally engaged!”
“You knew my intentions,” he states, not accepting that defense. “We talked about getting married, we talked about the family we were going to have together, we bought this fucking house,” he says, looking around at it resentfully, almost like it became his prison once I left it. “We had a life. We had a plan. We had a commitment, and you walked away from it.”
“You let me,” I remind him, quietly.
“You were young,” he states, flatly. “I thought it was a mistake you needed to make. I thought you’d realize it was a mistake and come back home. I thought you’d make it right and we could get back to how things were.” Shaking his head, he says the meanest, most upsetting thing he has ever said to me. “You disappointed me.”
I grab onto the counter’s edge to keep myself steady, but my heart freefalls out of its cavity, hits every rib along my rib cage, and splats somewhere on the floor of my stomach. “You really put all the blame on me, don’t you? It doesn’t matter that I was afraid, or that I had a legitimate reason to be—”
“Legitimate reason, my ass. You should have trusted me. I know I handled the situation like an asshole, but I thought you knew me well enough to know I’d never lay a hand on you in viol
ence, let alone kill you. We weren’t Mateo and Beth, we were Dante and Colette. Entirely fucking different people. Entirely different relationships. You left me over something Mateo did. How fucking fair is that?”
“Fair?” I demand, wide-eyed. “You all but accused me of being inappropriate with Mateo on the day Mateo killed his girlfriend for cheating. You acted like you caught us in the act when all I was trying to do was comfort a grieving friend! Where the fuck was my mind supposed to go, Dante?”
“It wasn’t just cheating, there was more to it with Beth. Shit you didn’t know because you didn’t bother hanging around long enough for the dust to settle. Once shit got real, you couldn’t get out of here fast enough.”
“Yes, because I wanted to live!” I stare at him, wide-eyed, not understanding how he still isn’t getting it.
“Because you didn’t fucking trust me,” he says.
“With my life? No, I guess after that, I didn’t,” I admit, shaking my head. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Beth trusted Mateo—”
Not letting me finish, he seethes, “Beth trusted Mateo? Mateo trusted Beth and she turned out to be a fucking rat.”
That knocks the wind right out of my sails. “What?”
Dante shakes his head, looking off irritably at the kitchen cabinets, then back at me. His dark eyes flash with fury and he says, “She didn’t just sleep with someone else, Colette. She slept with a cop. She tried to take Mateo down. Tried to turn fucking witness and get him put away. What was he supposed to do, huh? She knew what he would have to do if he found out. That bitch gave him no choice but to kill her.”
My heart beats faster than it should when I’m standing still. I search my memory for some sign that she was trying to turn on Mateo, something she might have said that struck me as odd, but nothing surfaces. “I don’t…” Looking back at Dante, I ask, “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“Because my whole fucking world was in chaos, Colette. My brother was heartbroken, we had a mess with the cops on our payroll since we had to deal with one of them—everything went to hell because of what she did. I had a lot on my plate, and I didn’t know I had a time limit on how fast I needed to report back to you with all the information to keep you from abandoning ship.”