by Mariano, Sam
“It did work,” I shoot back, glaring at him. “It worked for me. I was finally happy again, and you destroyed it.”
He rolls his eyes at me like I’m overreacting. Like he accidentally scuffed the toe of a favorite shoe instead of murdering my goddamned fiancé.
“Go away,” I say, more loudly than I intend, but his dismissal enrages me. “You’ve already taken everything from me, isn’t that enough punishment? Just leave me alone.”
“No,” he says again.
Jabbing an accusatory finger in his direction, I open my mouth and release stupid, reckless words. “I know you did this. I know you did. And I won’t let you get away with it, either.”
“No?” he questions, as if faintly amused by my histrionics. “What do you think you’re gonna do about it, beautiful?”
His old endearment slices right through me, but the stab of pain only makes me want to lash out more. In a less drugged up state, I might call on enough common sense to think of Beth and hold my tongue, but in this moment, the only victim of the Morelli family I can think about is Declan. At the moment, I don’t give a fuck if Dante kills me, as long as he knows how much I despise him first.
“I’ll go to the police,” I threaten.
His brown eyes go dead, no longer amused. Pointing at me, he says, “Don’t say a stupid fucking thing like that again, Colette.”
“I mean it,” I swear.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. Declan wasn’t a part of your world. He wasn’t fair game. You murdered an innocent man, and you’re going to pay for it.”
Dante looks over his shoulder, checking to make sure none of the goons he must have brought with him are within hearing range. They must not be, because rather than deal with an urgent mess I’ve made by running my mouth, he looks back at me and shakes his head irritably. “Say another fucking word, Collette, I dare you. I’ll send Luca back here tonight to pay your auntie a visit.”
The venom drains out of me, along with the color in my face. “You—” I start to say he wouldn’t, a practiced belief, but then my new reality asserts itself, forcing me to shut my mouth.
If he has decided he wants me back for whatever reason, of course he would. He’ll do anything to get me back in line, hurt anyone to control me.
He’s a monster. The beautiful man I loved turned into a monster.
Or maybe he always was a monster, I just didn’t see it before.
I’m so fucked.
He cocks an eyebrow, seeming to know what I almost said. “Wanna test me? Want to find out if I mean it? Say another stupid fucking thing like that and I promise you, you’ll find out just how serious I am.”
“This isn’t fair,” I whisper, shaking my head. “He didn’t deserve to die. You don’t deserve to win.”
I don’t realize I’m crying until Dante takes a step forward and brings his thumb to my cheek, dashing the wet drop away. “Life’s not fair, beautiful. Now, shut that pretty mouth before it gets you into trouble. You’re coming with me, whether you want to or not.”
Without another word, he positions one arm around my back and one under my legs, then lifts me. Perhaps to be cruel, he holds me bridal style as he carries me out of my bedroom—me in my crumpled white wedding dress, him in his sharp black suit. He’s stepping right into Declan’s shoes without anyone’s permission, and it makes me want to spit in his face. He doesn’t deserve to wear Declan’s shoes. Declan was gallant and sweet, Dante is selfish and cruel.
I think he enjoys this, so while he holds me and looks right in my face, I tell him coldly, “You don’t hold a candle to the man I wanted to marry, Dante. You never will.”
A hateful, intimidating look shoots through his dark eyes and his jaw clenches. I know my jab landed, and it makes my broken heart so fucking happy.
“We’ll see about that,” he says, simply.
5
Colette
I watch out the window, leaning my head against the hard surface as the driver navigates us toward Dante’s house. From a few nostalgic, wine-fueled research sessions I’d never admit to in an unaltered state, I know he still lives in the same place he bought when we were together—the house I helped him pick out, back when we both envisioned our future together.
Growing up, we never owned our own home. My family moved around a lot, and while we made each rental our own while we were there, it was always disheartening when we inevitably had to leave. I didn’t like never having a back yard to play in as a child, or a place I knew we’d never have to leave as I got older. I told myself that when I grew up, I’d buy a great house to raise my own kids in. As soon as I got my first job at 17, I started saving money out of every single paycheck to make it happen.
When I outgrew my first job, I made a more risqué choice for my second—I applied for a position as a cocktail waitress at a swanky strip club. I wouldn’t have to take off my clothes, but I could work fewer hours and make more money. Since I was thinking about going back to school and trying to find something I was passionate enough about to pursue, that sounded like a win-win.
I got the job, but Dante’s family owned that strip club, so I also got much more than I bargained for. I was only there for the better pay, the ability to save more money toward my future, but I got caught up with the distractions.
I had dated before, but I had never been pursued by anyone very impressive. When I started at the club, I drew the eye of not just Mateo Morelli, but his brother Dante, too. Dante seemed more reluctant to strike. He would eye me from a distance but he never even talked to me. I had no idea he liked me—at first, I actually thought he hated me. His brother was a different story. Mateo isn’t the least bit shy, and it wasn’t long before he was cornering me in darkened hallways, running his hands along my body in ways no man ever had.
Mateo’s attention finally forced Dante out of the shadows. He didn’t like his brother pursuing me, didn’t like that I liked being pursued, and even though he had no right and no claim to me whatsoever, he had no problem telling me so.
He was an absolute brute with an awful lot of audacity to be telling me who I was allowed to hook up with when we’d never even communicated beyond wordless stares from across the room. But it turned out, I liked that. Turned out, I liked him.
I started dating Dante and everything changed. My once-small world began to expand.
For a while, I kept sight of my goals and still saved house money from every paycheck, even after he told me I didn’t need to. The problem was, Dante loved to travel, so he was less interested in being tied to a house than I was. Back then, he lived at his family’s home—more compound than home, really. Living there with his brothers meant as long as he could get the time off work, he could easily surprise me with a spontaneous trip to Barbados, or a week holed up in a beautiful seaside Mediterranean villa.
As he and I grew closer, as we went on adventure after adventure together in place after place, my idea of ‘home’ began to shift. It became less about a specific building to raise my future children in and more about a person to have those kids with. As fondly as I’d always dreamed about a home of my own, my adventures with Dante became more important. Wherever I slept, as long as Dante was there sleeping beside me, I was at home.
Then on my 22nd birthday, Dante told me he was going to buy us an actual house.
I was ecstatic. Home shopping together was an amazing experience, too. In addition to being crazy in love with the man himself, I was in love with the house we picked out, in love with the life I thought we’d build together inside those walls. I’d walked dreamily through the bedrooms I believed would belong to our children someday. The bedroom where we would read our daughter stories each night was yellow, but her bathroom was princess pink. Our son’s bedroom was blue, and there was a basketball hoop in the driveway where he and Dante would play ball in the summer. The child in me who had never had even a small one was thrilled with the spacious back yard ours would have to play in. Dante would set up a swing set with a tree
house and a slide for them to play on. We would still have adventures, they would just be different ones. We would be a perfect little family, and I knew nothing could make us happier.
Back when I didn’t think his danger mattered, or at the very least, I refused to believe it was a dealbreaker.
What a fool I was back then. Young and in love, recklessly devoted to a dream I had of who he was instead of the reality. Now his reality has bankrupted me and countless others, and I don’t know how I’ll ever escape that guilt.
The car veers left sharply and I look up, my heart dropping in expectation of seeing something alarming. I don’t think my aunt would have been crazy enough to call the police after Dante took me, but if I’ve learned anything in the past few years, it’s that you never really know what people will do.
The driver doesn’t appear to be alarmed though. He’s taking a sharp turn, but his face is relaxed. A glance out the back window shows no blue and red flashing lights, nothing to get excited about.
As if reading my thoughts, Dante replies casually, “He’s just an aggressive driver.”
The spike of alertness pierces my Valium-fog and brings me over the threshold into awareness. Awareness is terrible and heavy and it expands like anxiety in my chest. I regret not thinking now, not at least telling Dante before he hauled me out of the house to please bring my medication. Then again, I’m sure Dante Morelli will have no trouble procuring drugs for his captive ex-girlfriend—he just has to know I need them.
Swallowing and sinking back into the seat, I turn my face to look out the window again. “If you’re planning to keep me for a while, I need Valium.”
Apparently thinking I’m joking about the hardship of being in his company, a short, scoff-like laugh escapes him. “Sure you do.”
“I’m not kidding,” I snap. “I don’t take it all the time, but I have anxiety attacks and when I do, they help calm me down.”
Since he dismissed my initial request, I look at him to make sure he’s taking me seriously. My chest tightens up just thinking about being in that situation, trapped inside my own fears with no escape, nothing to ease the intensity.
Dante’s face is set in a ferocious scowl. “What are you talking about? You never had anxiety when we were together.”
“I’m aware. I do now.”
“Why?” he demands, like if I just tell him, he can scare off whatever demons sneak inside me and fix it for me.
I can’t help but shake my head at his obliviousness. He really has no idea the effect he had on my life, does he? It’s normal to him that I found my friend dead, that I comforted her murderer with whom I once had a romantic entanglement. He doesn’t understand how terrifying it was to leave him after all that, and he clearly doesn’t understand that even after I left him, he was never really gone. Instead of a warm, physical presence in my bed each night, he became a terrifying ghost, haunting me, living inside my mind as an ever-present threat that no amount of hours spent in therapy or a considerate boyfriend-turned-fiancé doing his best to understand what I’d lived through could fix. Nothing the normal world had to offer could heal the wounds Dante and his family left on me. I may have gotten out alive, but I never truly escaped them.
Now I know I probably never will.
In a sick, twisted way, it’s almost reassuring. I didn’t want to be, but boy, was I right. I wanted Declan to be right. I wanted my therapist to be right. I wanted it to be true that my fears were a mere result of an unhealthy experience, scary scars from a dormant trauma, but the threat wasn’t real. It was all in my head.
Now the threat is sitting beside me, so what the fuck did any of them know?
Still oblivious to all this, Dante demands, “Did that lawyer get you hooked on fucking drugs?”
“Please don’t,” I say quietly, shaking my head as much as I can with it leaning heavily against the back of the seat. “Don’t talk about him. Declan didn’t get me hooked on anything. I have a prescription from my psychiatrist, but I don’t imagine you’ll let me see her anymore, and my bottle is back at my aunt’s house.”
Dante is completely lost by all this new information about my reality. Maybe it should reassure me that he wasn’t full-on stalking me, but it doesn’t really matter now. “You see a psychiatrist?”
“Don’t worry, I was careful not to talk about anything that could implicate anyone in your family in any of the criminal bullshit I know about. There’s doctor-patient confidentiality to begin with, but… I covered your asses, anyway.”
“That wasn’t…” He trails off, still frowning, and shakes his head. “That’s not why I was asking.”
I know he doesn’t get it. I’m furious at him about a lot of things, but not about that. I’m aware that it’s not his fault and he doesn’t know any better. I know Dante’s family isn’t normal; I know his way of thinking isn’t normal. I lived that life with him for a while, and when I left, I remember the jolting culture shock of ordinary reality afterward, but Dante has never been removed from his way of life.
Morellis do not see therapists. They need to more than most of us, but they don’t. Any therapist worth their salt would try to help them unravel the layers of their dysfunction, and their way of life depends too much on preserving it. Normal has no place in their world, and if you live there with them for long enough, it becomes worthless in yours, too.
I can’t let that happen again. I can’t let him pull me back in. Not now. Not after what he has done.
Somehow, some way, I need to keep my heart closed this time—no matter how forcefully he tries to get back in.
6
Dante
I expect to have to deal with Colette’s temper when we get home, in fact I’m almost looking forward to it, but now that she’s mentioned needing Valium, I look at her calm sadness a little differently.
I don’t like Colette drugged up and foggy. I’ve seen the men in my employ use that method of controlling the girls we sell, but the idea that I let Colette go back to the outside world where she was supposed to be safe from those risks and it happened anyway when I wasn’t there to protect her? Un-fucking-acceptable. I’m even more satisfied I killed that useless lawyer fuck now. Clearly he was not a man and couldn’t take care of her, regardless of what Colette convinced herself.
I look over at her again, listlessly staring out the window. This is not the Colette I left behind. My Colette knew her place, certainly, but that’s not what this is. This isn’t natural. This isn’t respect or submission or even going along with something she actually fucking likes, this is just… I don’t know, but I don’t fucking like it.
I tell myself she just needs to sleep off the drugs her aunt gave her, sleep off the shock of today. Even though I hate like hell to admit it, what she’s been through today is probably enough to traumatize anyone. It won’t last forever though, and once it runs its course, I’ll have my Colette back.
By the time we make it back to my house, Colette is asleep. I pick her up and she stirs, but rather than react like I’m her enemy, she curls her arm around my neck like she used to and murmurs, “I smell violets.”
She sure as shit does not. A little thread of affection winds its way around my heart. “You want me to get you some violets?”
“Mm. I like violets,” she murmurs before her head drops heavily onto my shoulder.
I know she’s only being pleasant because she’s high and half-asleep, but hearing the tone of her voice sound the way it used to when she talks to me makes me feel so fucking good. Even though this might get off to a rough start, I know it will all be worth it in the end when Collette is mine again—heart, body, and soul.
God, I can’t wait. I wish we could fast forward to that part, to her softness, her sweetness, the loving way she had about her. I spent so many nights missing her tender touch, and now she’s finally back in my bed, even if she doesn’t want to be here.
I put her down on her side of the bed and she tucks her hands under her face. Her eyes are closed and she
’s still in that godforsaken wedding dress, but I want to hold her while she’s not in a position to fight me. Sometimes I like a little fight, but not right now.
I ease down on my side of the bed, kicking off my shoes and sliding closer to Colette. I wrap my arm around her, ignoring the scratch of the rough fabric that makes up her dress, and yank her back against me.
A soft little moan escapes her and she rests her hand over mine. A hot surge of lust goes straight to my cock at the sound of it, at the feel of her receptive to my touch. On impulse, to free her from the tight confines of the gown, I start undoing the pearl buttons that go down the back.
My intention is only to loosen the dress so she can sleep more comfortably, but the sight of her bare back is so irresistible, I have to lean down and place a tender kiss against her skin.
Colette sighs and moves restlessly. I should stop bugging her and let her sleep despite the swatch of white lace I can see now, despite my desire to further undress her, to peel off that lacy bra and take her beautiful tits in my mouth. God, it’s been too long. I almost let her go and ease back off the bed, but then she turns her face toward me and sighs softly as my hand brushes her back.
Fuck me. My cock strains against the crotch of my dress pants. I roll her over just to see what will happen, climb on top of her like I used to. I’m close enough that she barely has to move her arms to reach me and when she grabs a fistful of my black jacket and a fistful of my dress shirt, I assume the jig is up and she’s about to lay into me.
Her eyes drift open, but I can see she’s still not right. Half-asleep, dazed, not really with me. There’s a dreamy look on her face like she’s happy to see me, and that sure as hell wouldn’t be there if she were fully awake. I wait to see what she’ll do, then get a shock when she yanks me closer to her body and nuzzles her face into my neck.
“Beautiful wedding,” she murmurs, almost incoherently. “Oranges on top of…” I wait for her to finish, but she trails off and slings an arm around my neck. I don’t do the decent thing and wake her up—I let her pull me in for a kiss I don’t deserve. I’ve been craving the taste of her for so damn long, I can’t even remember a time I wasn’t waiting to feel the soft brush of her lips again.
