by Sam Mariano
Vince rolls his eyes at her, but takes her beer and pops the cap off anyway.
“Thank you,” she says, with exaggerated sweetness.
Is she trying to annoy me? Maybe he told her I get jealous and to try to trigger it. I mean, it’s fucking working; I hate this girl. But I tell myself to dial it down, because I have to get through this whole dinner without glaring her to death, and also, Vince is not mine. This is an old impulse. I’ve always been possessive with him—this is just my heart’s muscle memory at work.
Still, I hope I never see her again after tonight.
Jessica could come over and help me serve dinner, but she doesn’t. Vince and Ben take their seats at the table, and she joins them so I’m left to serve everyone like a fucking maid. Even when Jessica thanks me, it aggravates me.
I’m pretty thoroughly annoyed by the time I sit down with my own plate to join them. I didn’t sign up to come here in the first place, and now I’m basically the help. Vince’s dad is surly as hell. His bimbo girlfriend is unashamedly eye-fucking Vince while we eat, and I really want to grab a fistful of her bottle-blonde hair and shove her face-first into her salad.
This has to be intentional. No one throws themselves at another human being this hard in front of their own significant other.
Ben still doesn’t care though. He’s the only one at this table who rightfully should care, and he does not. He’s not in the least bit attentive to Jessica. When she does try to talk to him, he doesn’t answer her and she just has to move right along, like he didn’t literally ignore her as she was speaking to him.
It’s like a big, blonde train wreck that I can’t walk away from. Not because I’m horrified and I can’t stop watching, but because I’m literally stuck at this table and I can’t leave.
Vince isn’t nice to her, either. He’s nicer than Ben is, but mostly he seems to like picking on her. Maybe he’s doing it for my benefit. Maybe he’s nicer to her when I’m not here, but he doesn’t want me to think he likes her or something.
Or maybe he’s being an ass because she likes it. It certainly doesn’t seem to bother her. She still looks at him like he’s a bronzed god and she wants to lick his abs—and other areas of his body, I’m sure. It’s an awkward, horrible thought, but I wonder if she has. As much flirtation—even if one-sided—as is going on there, is it possible Vince is banging his dad’s girlfriend? Or, was. I’m sure he didn’t bring me here if he planned on continuing to bang her, but given how attractive she is and how hard she’s panting after him, I have to wonder.
I’m trying to ignore her, but when I glance her way, I realize she’s looking at me in the bright-eyed, expectant way of someone who just spoke and is awaiting a response.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, did you like your bikini?” she asks me. “Vince told me to pick one out for you. He said you liked nice stuff, so I thought you’d like that, but I’ve obviously never met you, so I was just taking a shot in the dark.”
“My bikini? Oh, yeah. Yes, it was lovely. You picked that out?”
Nodding, proud of herself, she says, “Yeah, I only had a picture to go off of when I picked out your make-up; I hope I got you the right shades.”
So, she’s Vince’s personal shopper? Cool.
“Yeah, the shades were right,” I murmur, desperately shoveling food into my mouth faster so I can wrap up this dinner and… well, actually, I probably have to clean up afterward, too. Goddamn, this is some reverse Cinderella bullshit.
I want to go to bed.
I want to go anywhere this annoying girl is not.
She’s talking to me again. “It’s so warm out tonight. We should go for a swim after dinner.”
I’m just about to tell her it’s impossible to swim after dinner, that we will both definitely die if we try, but Vince is already saying, “Good idea. Mia hasn’t been in the pool yet.”
There’s nothing I want less than to go in the pool with this girl. Literally nothing.
“We spend a lot of time in the pool,” Jessica tells me, inexplicably shooting Vince an openly flirty look, like I should find this charming.
“I can’t swim.”
It’s a lie. It’s a bold-faced lie. Vince knows I can swim, and as soon as it spills out of my mouth, he loses any trace of humor. His dark eyes land on me, conveying his annoyance. “Yes, you can.”
I want to argue. I want to say I forgot. I want to add lies and make it worse.
“Oh, well, you could still hang out in the grotto,” Jessica tells me, but she looks confused. “I mean, whether you can swim or not, you could… hang out in there.”
“Mia can swim.” He cuts me a pointed look, reminding me without words what he said about me lying. I thought he meant about Mateo stuff, not in general.
Jessica gives up trying to recover this conversation and turns back to her food. Then, a moment later, she changes the subject and addresses Ben and Vince, getting more stony silence from Ben, and mildly tolerating nods from Vince.
As much as she annoys me, I’m actually tempted to feel bad for this girl. If this is what dinners were like before I came, I do not envy her.
Chapter Fourteen
Vince
Jessica is awesome.
I didn’t plan on using her attraction to me for my own gain because that’s a dick move, but seeing how pissed off Mia has been since Jessica walked in the door ? I’ll be a dick.
Two things you need to know about Jessica: yes, all that enthusiasm is real, and she uses flattery like it’s currency.
Mia doesn’t know this about her yet. She doesn’t know Jessica will probably be flirting with her before long—that’s just Jessica’s way. She only knows Jessica is flirting with me. Flirting hard and openly—and all night long, because once I realized how much it was annoying Mia, I made sure to drag the night out.
“He should be in, like, magazines, right?” Jessica gushes to Mia, when I come out of the water and run my fingers back over my head to sop out some of the water.
Mia’s lip curls up in disgust and she glares at Jessica like she’s just kicked a toddler and reaches toward the edge of the pool for the margarita she left there.
Jessica either doesn’t notice Mia’s reaction to her or doesn’t care. It’s probably the latter. Jessica looks like she does and acts the way she does, so she is no stranger to women not liking her. It won’t make a difference. She’s going to keep being as bubbly as ever and making Mia want to drown her.
It’s awesome.
Frankly, the fact that Mia isn’t this possessive with Mateo, but she is with me, gives me hope.
Though, considering Jessica around Mateo for even a few minutes ends with Jessica being brutally murdered in my head—and it’s probably Meg doing the murdering, but hey, it could be Mia. Mateo would never have long enough with Jessica to get murdery himself.
Turning my thoughts from Mateo, since that bastard doesn’t deserve to pollute this great moment, I look over at Mia. She’s still sulking. So I swim over to her and take the drink out of her hand, taking her by the hand and tugging her back toward us.
“Come on, have fun.”
She’s close enough and we’re far enough from Jessica that she can mutter half-jokingly, “Why don’t you ask your girlfriend to come have fun.”
“You’re cute when you’re jealous.”
She rolls her eyes at the size of my grin, then swims over to Jessica even though I know it’s gotta kill her.
Jessica bounces, because Jessica looks very good bouncing. “Yay! Let’s play Marco polo.”
Mia looks like she’d rather die, but she goes along with it anyway.
I join in. Jessica catches me, that way she can tackle me and plaster her wet body all over me. I mean, this is never the worst part of the game, if I’m being honest, but it pisses Mia off enough that she gives up and climbs out of the pool. I watch her adjust the scant fabric to cover her ass, a big smile on my face.
“Aw, come on. You done playing already?” I call out.
/>
“I am done playing,” she informs me, bending to pick up her drink. She brings it to her perfect lips as she approaches the lounger to grab a towel.
The wind’s kind of chilly, so she’s probably cold now that’s not in the heated pool. I sort of want to follow her and take care of her—take her upstairs and get her into something warm. I’d much rather get in bed with her than stay down here with Jessica.
“Don’t,” Jessica says, lowly.
I glance over at her, raising a questioning eyebrow.
“Stay here. Play with me. Let her pout.” Her voice is at a more normal decibel now, not the bouncy sorority girl tone she usually talks in. Floating closer, she drapes an arm around my neck and smiles, pulling herself against my body. “If you go running to her rescue now, she’s going to keep being a little bitch to you.”
I roll my eyes. “I wasn’t going to ride to her rescue.”
“Yes, you were,” she says, still smiling like we’re flirting, even though we’re definitely not. Now both of her arms are around my neck, her legs wrapped my waist. “Don’t you do it. Be a dick for a little while longer. Dicks get far better results than nice guys.”
I sigh, catching her around the waist and tugging her off to the side. “Fine.”
“Don’t look, either. She’ll watch. Pretend you don’t care enough to check. I promise you, she’s watching.”
I shake my head at her, smiling. “I thought you were coming on a little strong tonight, even for you.”
Jessica winks and flounces away from me. “I got your back.”
---
We play in the pool for a while longer, then we get out and I chase Jessica around for a minute, whipping the towel at her.
Ben’s gone upstairs already. He got bored of watching Jessica flirt with me in the pool—he doesn’t care, he just mostly only finds her worth paying attention to when she’s naked. I think it’s fucked that she’s with him, but hey, if she’s satisfied, that’s her business.
Once we dry off I chill downstairs with Jessica for a little bit, then we both head off to our respective bedrooms. Mia is already in bed when I get there. She’s curled up on her side away from me, but I can see she’s wearing one of the bra and panty sets I bought her tonight. Her hair is damp, so it looks darker than usual. Visions of her ass emerging from the pool are floating around my head again, making me hard.
I need to fuck her soon.
Maybe tonight.
It’s not very late so I doubt she’s asleep, but she hasn’t moved, despite clearly knowing I’m in the room now. I head to the bathroom to get out of my wet clothes. I’m feeling a little optimistic. I pull on a pair of boxers and climb into bed with Mia.
I love sleeping next to her again. It’s one of the things I missed most when we were apart—just the feel of her skin against mine, holding her while we slept. Toward the end I stopped holding her because things got so bad, but I spent a lot of nights since regretting that. I should’ve never let that happen, either.
“You look good in these,” I tell her, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her toward me.
“Thanks,” she murmurs, rolling over to look at me. Her eyes drift from my face to my shoulders, across my bare chest. Then they drop lower, as if to check if I wore anything to bed, but they dart up fairly quickly once she sees I did.
“See anything you like?” I tease.
Mia rolls her eyes, faintly smiling. “If I have to meet anymore Morellis, can you only introduce me to the ugly ones?”
I laugh at that. “There aren’t a lot of ugly Morellis, honestly. Inside we’re all fucked up, but not so much outside.”
“That’s so unfair. You should all be ugly so it’s easier for people to stay away. Instead you have all these sexy bodies and beautiful faces and you pull us right in. It’s not right. Someone made a big mistake with this family.”
I shrug. “At least you know you’ll have pretty babies.”
“Look who suddenly wants babies,” she murmurs, lightly poking me with her index finger.
“I’m still kind of glad I didn’t give you one back then. I should’ve, it would’ve been smart, but he would’ve still taken you, and I’d be pretty pissed off if Mateo ended up raising my kid.”
“You resisted all this back then. You didn’t want to bring any more innocents into this family, remember? That was never my favorite decision.”
“Well, apparently you were never going to have any with him, either,” I point out.
She’s quiet for a minute, watching my chest instead of my face, then she says, “He was going to give me a baby. We were waiting on Meg to okay it, but even if she didn’t, he said he would eventually.”
I really don’t want to talk about him, but she’s calm, and even hearing that doesn’t rile me like I expect it to. Maybe we can talk about him for a minute. “Doesn’t seem like that’s fair to Meg,” I volunteer. “If she wasn’t okay with it, why would he want to hurt her like that?”
“It wouldn’t have been about hurting her; it would’ve been about giving me what I wanted. Mateo accepts there are casualties when he makes a move, but… he likes to give me what I want. He loves me.”
I was hoping she would be less Mateo-centric tonight. After our conversation about him on the balcony, it seemed like I actually got through to her a little bit.
“He loved Meg, too.” Mia’s eyes move to mine, and I raise my eyebrows just a little, still calm, but reminding her. “Remember that? Remember when she was his mission? Remember when he was willing to burn Chicago to the ground for her? Now he’s willing to burn her for you. What happens to you when it’s some new girl?”
“I don’t want to think about this.”
There’s torment in her eyes, like every word I say hits home. I pick up steam just seeing it. I don’t want to push her. I hate to hurt her. But I also want to, because I want her for myself. If I can inflate these perfectly reasonable doubts, if I can keep her here with me and make her like it here, I can take her from him. It’s only been a few days, and she’s already letting me plant doubts. I’m starting to understand how it was so easy for Mateo to control Mia. It was his actual proximity to her. Among the people around her, he had the strongest personality and the most conniving skill set; he’s good at manipulating people who aren’t easily manipulated, and Mia is. She must’ve been literally effortless. I don’t know how he knew that so immediately after meeting her, I sure didn’t, but he does have a much more predatory nature. He seeks out weakness like a heat-seeking missile so he can exploit it to his advantage. I don’t look at people and wonder how I could use them. I never wanted to manipulate her, that’s not my thing, but this is the first time I’ve been able to see how easy it must be.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Mia. Just being realistic.”
“I hate how everyone says things like this about Mateo. He isn’t some fickle manwhore, bouncing from one girl to the next. He isn’t some unhinged murderer, killing women who bore him. He isn’t anything like the image you guys try to paint of him.”
“Do you remember last time you thought that, though? When I tried to warn you about him, and the whole house tried to warn you about him, but he bought you some pretty dresses and spun his web around you and you believed him? We were all right then, too. You’ve always been easily fooled by him, Mia. What if we’re right again and you’re wrong? Again? He could do worse to you now than he did then. Say you made it back to him and all this happens—what then? There’s no one around to save you if he turns on you, Mia. Meg’s proof of that. Who’s standing up for Meg?”
“No one needs to stand up for Meg,” she says, vaguely annoyed. “He hasn’t turned on Meg. She’s still in his bedroom, popping out his babies. He still hasn’t impregnated me. So he spends more nights with me than her—so what? Their relationship is less physically passionate than ours—he says they connect in different ways. He treats us differently, but we’re different people with different relationships; that’s not better or w
orse. That’s not Mateo turning on her. You guys are all being alarmist and I hate it.”
“You can’t still be that naïve about him, Mia. You can’t be. There’s no way.”
“I’m not being naïve. Things are a lot calmer with you gone. Mateo doesn’t flex his evil when there’s no provocation. He likes the calm. He likes the peace. He enjoys the life we’ve all made together. The business side of things is in-hand, he has a good, loyal group around him now, and he has the women he loves to come home to. Life is pretty good for him. Or, it was, until you took me. I have no idea what life’s like for him now.”
She’s glum by the end of that, and I decide it’s time to stop talking about him. Planting doubts is fine, but letting her drift back into worrying about him is not.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” I tell her evenly. “Perks of having two lovers—he still has one to keep him company.”
Mia rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure he’s barely even noticed me missing—definitely. That sounds right.”
“I’m not saying that. But he’s fine.”
“I wish I could talk to him.” She looks up at me now, flashing me those big blue eyes. I have to bite back a smile if she thinks she’s being subtle. “Maybe you could just let me call him from a burner? Not to tell him where I am, but just that I’m okay, so he knows I haven’t been hurt.”
“Nice try,” I tell her, reaching out and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
She remains soft and earnest. “But I wouldn’t tell him anything—you know I won’t if I say I won’t.”
“That’s not going to happen, Mia. You’ve betrayed me for him before, and I’m not about to give you the opportunity to do it again. There’s literally no chance. I don’t trust you enough.”
“I don’t want him to hurt you, Vince,” she tells me earnestly, holding my gaze. “I never wanted that. I still don’t want that. If you’d let me make contact, I’d promise not to say anything to compromise you. I could just tell him I’m alive and okay, and just hear his voice for a minute.”
