by Sofia Tate
“Hey,” Davison says to me sweetly.
“Why is Charles following me? And how long has he been doing it?” I demand from him, not even bothering with any pleasantries.
“I can’t tell you. And to answer your second question, since yesterday.”
“Tell me the fuck why, Davison!”
I hear him groan. “For chrissakes, Allegra, just for once can you just back off and stop asking so many questions? I’m handling it!”
“There it is again! ‘It,’ ‘it,’ ‘it’! If you really do trust me, then why can’t you tell me what ‘it’ is?”
“Because I can’t,” he replies in that tone that doesn’t welcome debate.
Tears of anger and frustration begin to fill my eyes. “I gotta go,” I manage as my voice cracks.
“Allegra, wait—”
I hang up before he can finish his sentence.
I lean back against the building to catch my breath and collect myself. I need answers. I can’t ask his parents. Charles doesn’t know anything.
And then I think of the one person I can ask, as much as it’ll kill me to do it. A root canal without painkillers would be less torturous.
Suck it up. This is for Davison.
I start walking east determinedly with Charles close behind, ignoring my phone that is persistently vibrating in my purse because I know it’s Davison trying to reach me. If I hear his voice now, I know what will happen. I’ll break down in tears and completely lose my nerve.
“Umm, Miss Orsini, where are you going?” he asks, a bit out of breath to catch up with me.
“Someplace that I really don’t want to go, but I have no choice.”
“Then let me get the Maybach and I’ll drive you.”
“I’m taking the subway, Charles. Either come with me or I’m leaving you behind.”
He takes one long, deep breath. “Then I guess I have no other choice, do I?” he concludes.
* * *
As the uptown 6 barrels along Lexington Avenue, I glance up at Charles from my spot on the long plastic bench inside the train. I never realized how tall he was until now, hovering over me, his eyes constantly moving and watching the other passengers. Protecting me.
He has always been kind to me ever since I started seeing Davison, and I want to know more about him, since he is such an important part of Davison’s life.
“Charles, may I ask you a question?”
“Certainly, Miss Orsini.”
“Are you married?”
He smiles slightly at my inquiry, his eyes shutting briefly. “Millicent. My Millie.”
I tilt my head at him curiously. “How long have you been together?”
“We were married for thirty years, but we were friends before that. We grew up across the street from each other in Brooklyn.”
His use of the word “were” does not escape my attention. “Has she passed away?”
“Two years ago. Cancer. It was horrible. Mr. Berkeley was very kind and supportive, making sure Millie had the best doctors and hospice care. He let me take as much time as I needed with her. I was lucky to be with her when she took her last breath.”
A small tear escapes my eye. “Did you have children?”
He shakes his head. “We tried for a long time, but we decided that it wasn’t in our plan, so we just loved each other to the fullest. But I have lots of nieces and nephews, so we always enjoyed their company at the holidays.”
“I wish I could’ve known her.”
“She would’ve liked you very much, Miss Orsini. You remind me a lot of her.”
My heart softens at his comment. “How so?”
“You are just as strong and obstinate as she was, but more than that, you are fiercely loyal and protective of those you love.”
“Davison…”
He nods. “You’ve changed him. He used to be so cold and humorless, but I knew deep down he was just waiting for the right woman to show up. The one who would make him happy.”
“I hope you mean me,” I reply nervously.
He laughs and smiles at me. “Yes, Miss Orsini. I mean you.”
“Just checking.” I laugh in return.
* * *
Stepping out on Lexington and Seventy-Seventh Street, we head west for Madison Avenue. “At this time of day, she’ll probably be either at Sant Ambroeus or Swifty’s,” Charles surmises, naming two of the popular restaurants Ashton and her society circle frequent the most for lunch. “Let’s try Sant Ambroeus first since it’s closest. Then we can head down for the other if she’s not there.”
“Thank you for doing this, Charles.”
“Davison is like a son to me, Miss Orsini,” he announces, a statement that says everything I need to know about how he feels about his employer.
We reach the café, and I instantly spot her inside. She looks over to the window and freezes when she sees my face.
A warm hand grips my arm. “Let me go in first,” Charles offers. “I’ll ask her to come outside. We don’t want to make a scene.”
“If anyone was going to make a scene, it would be her, not me. I’ll wait here.”
I watch apprehensively as Charles walks in, making his way to Ashton and her friends. His tall frame bends over as he whispers in her ear. As he speaks to her, I can see her eyes focused on mine, blazing in anger.
Then she plasters a fake smile onto her face, delicately wipes the corners of her mouth, and rises from her chair. I move away from the window so as not to give her friends and the rest of the café patrons a show.
I take a deep breath as Ashton walks over to me, my fists clenching and releasing. Dressed in a pale pink linen sundress with matching sandals and a Lilly Pulitzer scarf wrapped around her neck, she is the epitome of a WASP princess.
She stops about a foot away from me. “Hello, Allegra. I have to say it’s a surprise to see you here, but even more with Charles. Davison not good enough for you?”
I roll my eyes. That old adage about a leopard never changing its spots? Too fucking right.
Charles plants himself just a few steps away with his back to us, again watching and scanning. Protecting me.
“Now,” Ashton says to me, her voice not disguising her contempt for me, “what could possibly be so important to interrupt my time with my friends?”
Okay, Orsini. Showtime.
“You need to stay away from Davison. He’s going through enough without you.”
She pauses before speaking again and sighs. “Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like more than to be out of his life completely, because that would mean I wouldn’t be in yours either. But, like it or not, our fathers are in this together, which means I’m involved. I’m just trying to help him. What has he told you so far?”
Okay, she knows everything, so just play along.
“Only his side of it. Now I need to hear yours.”
She moves closer to the building, indicating she doesn’t want the entire Upper East Side to hear what she’s about to tell me. “Very well.”
I follow her lead, standing inches apart now, as she begins to speak. “My father got Davison’s father involved in the scheme with these businessmen from Chicago to drill for bio oil, bilking pensioners for their life savings by telling them they’d make a ton of money. The Chicago men used Berkeley Holdings as a legit front thanks to Dominic, their CFO. Then my father found out the guys had ties to the Mob. So now, Davison and I are trying to convince both of them to go to the Feds and tell them everything.”
I’m keeping a straight face, nodding along to pretend I know all this already, but inside, I’m screaming and cringing with each word coming out of Ashton’s mouth.
“Then my father started getting strange phone calls threatening him, which I happened to hear once when I picked up the line by mistake. I went to Davison and told him, and now I don’t know what’s happening. The phone calls have stopped, as far as I know.”
“When did the phone calls start with your father?”
“
I guess about a month and a half or so ago.”
Right around the time when I was in Italy.
“Does that sound similar to what Davison told you?” she asks, watching me for my reaction.
“Pretty much,” I lie through my teeth.
“If that’s all, I’m going to join my friends,” she announces, her back already facing me.
“Of course. Thank you for speaking with me. I appreciate it.”
I’m about to tell Charles that I’m ready to go, when Ashton calls my name. “Allegra, you didn’t know anything until I told you just now, did you?”
What the hell. It’s not like I’m planning to see her again.
I turn around to face her one last time. “No, I didn’t,” I confess.
She crosses her arms. “Wow. You’re smarter than I thought you were. It must’ve killed you to come here to talk to me.”
I swallow in my throat. “You’d be correct with that assumption. However, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect him.”
I finally reach Charles, but not before Ashton addresses me one last time.
“You must really love Davison.”
I look back at her, directly in the eyes so she’ll get the full effect of what I’m about to tell her with no chance of misinterpretation.
“I’d take a bullet for him.”
Chapter Eighteen
Davison
The only other time I can recall being this nervous to see Allegra was when I went to see her at her father’s butcher shop to ask for her forgiveness when she saw me with Ashton at the Met and thought I was cheating on her behind her back. But this is worse because as happy as I will be to see her, I have information which Charles passed on to me that I’m not thrilled about in the slightest. She texted me a few hours ago that she needed to see me ASAP.
Too fucking right.
The elevator’s bell signals her arrival. Today was a scorcher of a summer day in New York City, the kind that makes all five boroughs one giant sauna. She steps out in a tight white cotton dress, the one she was wearing when I saw her singing in La Diva’s garden, and her flip-flops, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
At the sight of each other, the same words in a matching tone of frustration spill simultaneously from our mouths: “Why didn’t you tell me?”
We both laugh nervously, though I think I have more reason to be angry at this moment, regardless of what she has to tell me.
“Do you want to go first?” I ask.
“I suppose. Let’s get this over with.”
Taking her hand, I lead us over to the living room, settling us down on the sofa. She doesn’t let go of me, staring right at me, her soft brown eyes steady. “You should’ve told me about your father’s scheme with Ashton’s father. It would’ve kept me from thinking stupid shit, like a fleeting thought I had that you were losing interest in me.”
Oh, baby, what the fuck?
I rear back in shock, my heart dropping at her confession. “Are you kidding me? You can’t honestly think that would ever happen.”
“I said it was a fleeting thought, Harvard, so relax.”
“Fine. But she told you everything?”
She sighs. “Yes. Except now I need to know why you had Charles following me around for the last twenty-four hours.”
I’m frightened to tell her, but I can’t keep anything from her. Not anymore.
“I received several anonymous phone calls, and in the last one, the man said some untoward things in reference to you.”
She smirks. “That’s a gentle way of saying he threatened my life, right?”
I nod silently. I watch her reaction carefully. She seems calm, taking a deep breath, and before I know what’s happening, she crawls into my lap, placing her head in the nook between my neck and shoulder. I instantly wrap my arms around her waist, her gentle hands in mine.
“Do you understand now why I kept everything from you?” I ask her gently. “You’re not angry with me for doing that, are you?”
She takes her hands from mine to gently cup my face between them. “Of course I’m not angry, Davison. But I wish you had told me because it’s just as important for me to protect you as it is for you to do the same for me.”
My heart jumps into my throat.
God, I love this woman so fucking much.
But I’m still anxious for her reply to what I’m going to ask her. I grip her tighter in my arms. “Now you need to tell me something.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
“Why did you meet with Matteo?”
She lifts her head from my shoulder, her eyes boring directly into mine. “It was totally by chance. He had a job interview in the area and was killing time.”
“Did you talk about me?”
She shakes her head, but now smiling, thank God. “Yes, you came up in our conversation.”
“Do I need to kick his ass?”
Now she starts laughing for real, cupping my face in her hands. “Oh, my sweet, possessive, territorial boyfriend,” she coos. “No ass-kicking will be required because you’ll be surprised to hear that he totally picked up on your chest-thumping Allegra is my woman caveman vibe back in Italy, so don’t worry about that. He gets that and respects it.”
I grunt. “Good.”
She gives me a quick peck on the lips. “But I’m flattered all the same. Now, tell me what you’re going to do about your father.”
“I gave him an ultimatum. Either he would report to the Feds of his own volition or I’d do it for him. So far, he hasn’t done anything.”
“Then you need to talk him into it, Davison,” she insists. “He’s a bastard for what he did, but he’s still your father. You have to help him, as much as it’ll kill you to do it.”
My Venus—the voice of reason.
“I agree. I’ll call my mom and family attorney. I’ll ask them to meet me tomorrow at the house so we can all talk to him together and try to get him to come to his senses.”
“That sounds like a very good plan,” she concurs, leaning in to give me a long kiss, soft and reassuring.
“I’m glad you know everything,” I tell her when she pulls her luscious mouth away from me.
She coils her legs around my waist and leans her forehead against mine, holding on to me as if her life depended on it as I grip her tighter, only reinforcing my firm belief that she is my own personal life preserver, unwavering and steadfast. “Me too, Harvard. Me too.”
* * *
Allegra
The next morning, I’m lying in bed staring at Davison, who’s finally sleeping soundly. He kept me up most of the night, tossing and turning. I know without hesitation what caused him to sleep so poorly—the knowledge that he has to confront his father today, his own parent, to turn himself over to the authorities for his crimes.
He looks so peaceful and beautiful. The stubble on his face sends me reeling with the heady thought of him scratching my inner thighs and pussy with his jaw, stimulating me and hurling me straight into a prolonged orgasm.
Suddenly, he stirs, snapping me out of my fantasy. He flips onto his back and opens his eyes. His head turns to me, those luminous emerald eyes of his making their first appearance of the day, taking me in.
“I love waking up and the first thing I see is you,” he says in a raw voice, “with those mesmerizing brown eyes of yours staring back at me. It’s the highlight of my day.”
I reach out to stroke his jaw, then lay my head down on his hard chest with my face angled so I can look him in the eyes. “Likewise, Harvard. I hope you finally got some decent rest. You were so restless during the night.”
His eyebrows furrow in concern. “I didn’t keep you up, did I?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m more concerned about you. Are you ready for today?”
“Not really. But I know something that will calm me down.”
“Something of an erotic nature?” I joke, my hand traveling south down to his torso.
He grins wickedly at me.
“Usually, you’d be right on the money, baby. But no. This time, if you’d be all right with it, I want you to sing for me.”
I stop my hand and tilt my head at him curiously. “You never fail to surprise me. And I’d be happy to, because I think I know exactly what you need.”
“You always do, Venus.”
He smiles at me as I sit up, my knees under me and my hands on top of my thighs. I clear my throat and take a deep breath as I launch into “Musetta’s Waltz” from La Bohème, an aria I practiced again and again with La Diva.
As I sing the lyrics, I act it out, winking at Davison coquettishly, beckoning to him with my hands, swiveling my shoulders back and forth. And he is totally loving it, judging by the huge, mischievous smile on his face, and the growing bulge I spot under the cotton sheet.
When I finish, he yanks me down to him, clamping his lips over mine as his hot, silky tongue plunges into my mouth.
We kiss and kiss for ages. When we pull apart, he caresses my face, with so much love in his eyes. “Thank you for the distraction, Allegra. That’s exactly what I needed.”
I softly stroke his strong jaw with my hands. “I wish I could do more for you.”
His eyes soften. “Baby, all you ever have to do for me is just be with me and love me.”
I smile back at him. “That’s easy enough to do.”
He pecks me on the cheek. “I’d better get moving. I want to get this over with. You’ll wait for me here, right? I want you to be here when I get back.”
“There’s no place I’d rather be,” I reassure him. “Luciana is going to come over and practice with me while I wait for you.”
He nods. “Thank you, my love.”
I watch as he heads for the bathroom, soaking in the view of his sculpted back and firm ass, listening as the water is turned on in the shower.
My heart is breaking for him. He is the strongest man I know, but I also know how much this is killing him. And because of that, I know my love for Davison Cabot Berkeley will never cease, forever boundless with me.
Chapter Nineteen
Davison
