by Bethany-Kris
“You’ve been away a lot lately,” John noted.
“Work.”
“Too much, maybe.”
“Mind your home and I’ll mind mine, John.”
“Just saying, Tony.”
Christ.
Antony rubbed at his forehead, annoyed. He’d purchased two more restaurants the past year and bought shares into a start-up investment and development company. The company was a learning curve, while the restaurants took up more time than Antony had to give. He was still working on that goal of owning half of New York in one way or another, after all.
Then, there was Cosa Nostra. La famiglia didn’t ask for time, it simply took it whether Antony wanted to give it or not. Being a Capo meant Antony was on call for the boss, his men, and other Capos who were older than him no matter what. It didn’t make a damned difference if he just got home after being gone for a half of a week and the phone rang the moment he walked in the door. If it was Cosa Nostra, he had to go.
Cecelia didn’t say much, but it had to be hard for her.
Fuck.
Antony wished he had the time to ask.
Marriage was tough. He was learning a person had to work just to make it work. He didn’t even have the goddamn time to make it work.
“Yeah, I need to figure out some guys that are trustworthy enough to take over some of my shit,” Antony muttered to John.
All the while, Vinnie kept running off at the mouth about tribute, cash, and the usual nonsense. Antony would normally pay attention to his boss—the rules were what they were for a reason—but tonight he just wasn’t in the mood for any of it.
“I might be able to help with that,” John replied. “You can’t manage everything, Antony. Give up a little control. Sit back, enjoy what you’ve got, and make them pay you.”
“I like to work.”
John chuckled. “Well, then I suppose you need to find a balance.”
“How long is that supposed to take?”
“You’re asking the wrong man. I still haven’t found mine. Between Kate, my family, and Lina being—” John cut off abruptly at the mention of his mistress’s name, tossing Antony an apologetic look. “Never mind, sorry about that.”
Antony sighed. “Still running around with her, huh?”
“I love her,” John said simply. “You love Cecelia. To me, it’s not any different.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not to me. I love her like you love Cecelia. I have to handle my business where she’s concerned. I can’t just turn my back on her, especially now.”
Antony’s confusion climbed higher. “What’s so important about now?”
“Nothing,” John said quickly.
“John.” Antony faced his friend and turned his shoulder to the rest of the room as if to block the men out from their conversation. He knew it was just the suggestion of privacy, but Antony still lowered his voice when he asked again, “What’s so important about now?”
John’s hazel gaze wouldn’t meet Antony’s. “You’ve made your position clear in regards to how you feel about my choices with Lina, Tony, so leave it alone. Besides, the less you know, the better.”
“Is something going on?”
“Nothing bad.”
“Something good?” Antony asked quieter.
“Something really good,” John said with a small smile. “Something amazing, even it was stupid of me to let it happen. But I still can’t tell anyone.”
• • •
August, 1987
“The night before Paulie’s wedding we got hammered,” John said, cutting through the top of a thick cardboard box. “The night before yours we got hammered.”
Antony helped his friend open the top of the four other boxes and pull the crap out on top that hid the guns beneath. “Your point?”
“Why the fuck are we working the night before mine, huh?”
“John—”
“I don’t even like the fucking woman and unlike you two, have every reason to want to get hammered, but instead, I’m working.”
“Antony!”
“Shit,” Antony hissed, shoving the fillers back into the boxes quickly as Cecelia rounded the attic stairs. “Hey, bella. You need something?”
Cecelia put her hands to her hips and surveyed the boxes Antony and John stood in front of. “How many more of those are you going to shove up in here?”
“A couple more,” Antony answered.
“What’s inside?”
“Nothing—”
“Antony.”
“—important,” he finished.
Cecelia’s pretty pink lips pursed in her frustration. “Why can’t it go … somewhere else?”
Because the other warehouses were full of shit Vinnie couldn’t get rid of yet because it was tagged as hot and would draw attention being sold on the streets. No one wanted the cops finding a trail that would lead back to them. Antony had the biggest attic. This worked.
“Cecelia, go back downstairs,” Antony said firmly.
She didn’t budge. “Antony.”
“Tesoro, just look the other way.”
“This is my home, Antony.”
“Mine, too.”
Cecelia frowned and it cut Antony straight to the fucking bone. There was nothing he hated more than upsetting her. Unlike most women, buying her pretty things didn’t make Cecelia Marcello happy, either. Not that she didn’t like jewelry and whatnot, but it didn’t make up for his late nights, lack of presence at home, and the silence in-between.
Truthfully, he’d been gone a lot lately, too.
La Cosa Nostra came first. La famiglia was a demanding bastard.
Antony didn’t know how to explain that to his wife.
“We’ll have them gone within a couple weeks,” John said.
“Give or take,” Antony added.
Cecelia still didn’t seem all too pleased. “Fine, whatever.”
With that, his wife turned on her heel and disappeared back down the stairs.
John hummed under his breath. “She seems moodier than normal lately. It’s not like Cecelia to outright question your business like that.”
He had a point. Cecelia usually turned cheek to the shady dealings that went on around her. Antony always appreciated it.
Antony sighed. “She’s pregnant.”
“What?”
“I didn’t fucking stutter, man.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Antony shrugged. “She just hasn’t told me yet.”
John’s brow furrowed. “How in the hell do you know, then?”
“I just know my wife. She’s pregnant. Probably scared. We still haven’t finish decorating all the rooms in this house because it’s too big to fill and we’ve lived here for a year already. She knows there are guns in her attic and drugs in the basement. We’re not living a fucking dream life here. It’s real and I’m not here every morning for her to wake up with. This is going to be a huge change.”
“Wow.”
“Someday you’ll understand.”
John cleared his throat, laughing weakly. “Yeah … someday.”
Antony turned to his friend, curious. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, Tony. Means nothing. Let’s finish this shit, yeah?”
“Yeah. Maybe then we can get a start on getting you hammered.”
John snorted. “Make sure I’m good and fucking drunk tomorrow, too.”
Antony wished his friend was joking, but he knew he wasn’t.
• • •
“John is out,” Antony informed his wife. “I probably shouldn’t have let him drink that much, but I don’t blame him.”
Cecelia didn’t act like she heard him say a thing. Instead, she kept washing dishes in her kitchen fit for a queen.
“Cecelia?”
“What, Antony?”
“I’m sorry about … earlier.”
Cecelia dropped the dish rag and turned to face her husband with hurt marring her beaut
iful features. “Was that so hard for you to tell me?”
“Huh?”
“That right there. An apology, Antony. Was that so hard?”
Antony lifted a single shoulder. “No.”
“Okay, so do it more often. Use words or something. Anything but silence and gifts I don’t want or need. I don’t want excuses for whatever you’re doing, but you need to use your words with me, too. I just … do you understand what I’m saying right now?”
Antony didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t you remember what I told you?”
“When?”
“On our wedding night,” she said, clearly angry.
Clearly his confusion was not what she was looking for.
Cecelia waved at him as if to dismiss him. “Never mind. Leave me alone for a while, please. I’m tired and I want to get this done so I can go to bed.”
No, Antony didn’t think so.
“Cecelia, don’t do that. I get I’m not around enough lately and that I’m spending more hours away from the house than I am in it with you, but I can’t help that. You knew who I was before we married. You knew that this was a part of the deal, Tesoro.”
Cecelia sighed heavily. “I know. I just …”
“What?”
“I need you here more, Antony.”
“When are you going to tell me, huh?”
Cecelia shifted on her feet, looking more uncomfortable by the second. “About what?”
“You know what. I might not be here all the damn time, but I notice shit all the same when I am, Cecelia. Like the fact you haven’t cooked eggs in a month and how you’re sleeping in until ten instead of being up at dawn like always. Because yeah, when I’m not here in the morning to wake you up, I’m calling to say hello. You’re not picking up. I worried and came to check once or twice. You’re exhausted, you’re not feeling well, and when I am home, you’ve got little to no interest in me.”
“That’s not true!”
“Yes, it is,” Antony argued. “When was the last time we fucked, Cecelia?”
“I—”
“A while,” he interjected sharply. “Why won’t you tell me you’re pregnant?”
“Because I miscarried eight months ago, but you were too busy with everything else but me to notice!”
Antony’s heart stopped. “Miscarried?”
“I wasn’t very far along and apparently it’s not uncommon for the first pregnancy,” Cecelia said as if she were breaking bread and not delivering the heartbreaking news. “I wanted to wait until I passed a certain point in this one to tell you.”
“Cecelia, I’m—”
“Don’t,” his wife interrupted. “I don’t want to hear your apologies, Antony. I just want you to realize there is more to our life than work, the mafia, the drugs you think I don’t know about in the basement, and the guns in my goddamn attic. There is more to us, okay. There is.”
Before Antony could say another thing, Cecelia left her spot at the sink and the dirtied dishes still needing cleaned, pushed past his stunned form in the entryway, and disappeared down the hallway.
They’d tried ever since they married to have children. In fact, they never actually actively prevented anything. Both Antony and Cecelia were devout Catholics and attempting to prevent a pregnancy in some way went against God’s will. Children were gifts, treasures to be cared, loved, and adored.
He wanted children. What he didn’t want was for his wife to suffer through the process of finally having one.
It took him far too long to wake from his stupor and follow his wife. By the time he did, Antony had no fucking idea where she had disappeared to in their large home, but he went to their bedroom first. The door was closed and since it was also locked, Antony figured he picked the right place. He knocked on the wood, leaning his shoulder against the door.
“Cecelia, let me in.”
Silence answered him back.
“Cecelia, let me in.”
Nothing.
Antony rapped his knuckles down to the wood one more time. “Cecelia, let me in or I will break the door down.”
Still nothing.
Antony took one step back from the door and then kicked below the door knob with his booted foot. Under the force of his hit, the door cracked and gave way. Cecelia stood in the middle of the room with her arms crossed and a severe expression.
“I was coming to open it!”
He shrugged. “You took too long. I asked three times.”
“No, you demanded and I was in the bathroom.”
Oh, well …
“Sorry?” Antony offered.
Cecelia huffed. “I really like our home and I would prefer it if you didn’t tear it to pieces.”
“Sorry,” Antony said again, more sincere the second time. “I really am … about everything, Tesoro. I’ll figure something out so I can be here with you more.”
“There’s more to this,” she said.
“There’s us, too. I know.”
“I get you can’t help it, but try.”
Antony agreed. “Did you try to tell me about … losing the pregnancy?”
“Yes,” his wife said. “I called you at work, you kept interrupting me and told me you would get back to me. You didn’t. And then you didn’t show up at home until three days later.”
“Back in December?”
“A couple of weeks before Christmas.”
Antony felt like an asshole. “Does anyone else know?”
“Other than our priest who said it was God’s will and the doctor who told me it would pass, no.”
Antony flinched. Cecelia wasn’t one to use such vehemence in regards to her religion or the church. She held Him above all things in her life, even Antony to an extent. Antony respected his wife for it because he understood that was just who Cecelia was.
“Cecelia—”
“Why take that away from me?” she asked quietly, wetness glazing her eyes. “Why?”
“I don’t know and I won’t have the right answers for you.”
“I didn’t want answers from you, I wanted you here.”
Yeah, he was getting that, now.
“You shouldn’t have gone through that alone, Cecelia. I’m … this shit won’t happen again.”
“Actually, it probably will. You were right, I do know this is a part of our life. I had known it before I married you and I told you I was okay with it so long as you kept loving me the way you did. You’re going to come and go. Please remember me more in-between, Antony.”
“I can do that. Just so you know, I never forget you, anyway. But I can make you aware, too.”
“Good,” she whispered. “That’s all I’m asking for.”
“So, a baby, huh?”
Cecelia smiled. It was genuine and true. It warmed his cold soul right down to the core. “A baby. Due in April.”
A baby.
Chapter Eleven
October, 1987
Antony adored watching Cecelia when she was enraptured by something. It didn’t matter much to him what it was she was enjoying, so long as he got to see her in the process of it. Cecelia loved opera; Antony could do without it. He couldn’t, however, pretend like he didn’t know how much pleasure his wife took from it.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Cecelia asked beside him.
Antony didn’t take his gaze off his wife for a second. “Very.”
Cecelia gave him a look from the side, her lashes fanning over her cheeks as she smiled a sexy sight. “You’re not even paying attention, are you?”
“I am. To the most important thing in the room, Tesoro.”
“You’re too smooth for your own good, Antony Marcello.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Cecelia giggled. “What else do you hear?”
“That we Marcellos are a filthy bunch.”
“Well, one of you, anyway.”
“Happy anniversary, Cecelia.”
She smiled.
It was blinding and per
fect.
Just like her.
Antony wasn’t ever going to take advantage of having a wife and lover like Cecelia again.
“Happy anniversary.”
Antony tilted his head toward the curtains that led out of the private booth. His mind was nowhere near opera and given the way his wife was staring at him, neither was hers. “Let’s get out of here, huh?”
“No.”
“No?”
Cecelia shook her head. “No, but you can come over here.”
Her offer was blatant and suggestive. Antony’s cock thickened at the thought alone.
“You might not like what I do to you if I get up from this chair and we’re in a very public place, wife.”
“You bit the server’s head off when he stared at me for too long earlier; the poor kid has not been back since so we’re not going to be interrupted, and you know I always love what you do to me. Get over here, Antony.”
He didn’t need to be told a second time.
Antony stood, crossed the small space between him and Cecelia in two short strides, and pulled his wife from her chair, hoping she wouldn’t expect it. Cecelia released a quiet gasp that was swallowed by his punishing kiss. Driving his hand down the side of her silk dress, Antony fisted the fabric at her hips, pushed against her backside with his other hand, and forced her into his body so she could feel the length of his erection straining against his zipper.
“Feel that, Cecelia? That’s what your goddamn teasing does to me. You better be willing and ready to make good right here and now.”
“And just what are you planning to do?” she asked in a whisper.
Antony grinned, knowing damn well it looked wicked. “Why don’t we give a little show while we watch the show, hmm?”
Cecelia sighed like his words had been the one and only thing he wanted to hear. “That’s terribly bad.”
“You don’t love me when I’m good.”
“You don’t know how to be good, Antony Marcello.”
“You married me, Cecelia.”
“That I did.”
Antony spun Cecelia around so her back was tucked tightly against his chest. He moved them forward away from the plush leather chairs in the private balcony booth, keeping a firm hold around his wife’s midsection as they came to the partition wall that overlooked the opera theater. He placed Cecelia’s hands to the banister.
