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“Davide might seem like he’s strong, but my brother is fragile. You don’t know what he’s been through, and I won’t let you hurt him. I’m warning you right now, be careful.”
“I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
She cocks her head to the side. Her lips pull back into a sneer, but she only shakes her head, turns on her heel, and marches away. I watch her go, totally taken aback by the vitriol.
I’ve never met someone who seemed to hate me so much for absolutely no reason. Maybe she’s got this idea in her head about what I’m doing here, but she has to understand that this is an arranged marriage and I had nothing to do with it. Or else maybe she’s just completely nuts and I’m going to wake up one night to her stabbing me in the chest with a rusty knife.
Either way, I’m shaken when I head back to dinner. I do my best to smile and engage in conversation, and I tell Alessandro about fifteen times about how good everything tastes—which isn’t hard since it’s actually outstanding—but I keep catching looks from Laura. Nothing overtly hostile, but it’s like she’s keeping an eye on me.
Dinner wraps up, and Davide and I walk back to our house with Elena and Laura. They head into their own homes, and once I’m inside with the door firmly locked behind us, I head upstairs to bed. Davide chats about the night, but I don’t have it in me to mention the conversation with Laura.
I keep thinking about what she said. You don’t know what he’s been through. She’s right—Davide’s obviously gone through some kind of trauma. He mentioned the panic attacks and needing to be in wide-open spaces, and there are the burn scars all along his left arm. Whatever happened left its mark, physically and emotionally, and maybe Laura’s worried that he hasn’t processed everything yet.
And maybe she’s right. Davide’s difficult to read on a good day. Sometimes he’s burning hot and can’t keep his hands off me, and other times he disappears for days, barely sleeping and never eating. I don’t know what to make of it.
“You okay?” he asks once the lights are off.
I roll over, turning my back to him. “I’m fine. Just tired. I think I drank too much.”
“You can say no next time. I know you’re not comfortable yet, but nobody will be insulted.” He rubs my shoulder and I do my best not to shrink away from him.
I don’t want to feel this distance but Laura’s warning keeps playing in my head. There’s so much I don’t know about my husband, and even if his sister is being kind of crazy and overprotective, she’s right that there’s a whole world to Davide that I don’t know about.
And I have no clue if I’ll ever get him to open up.
Chapter 21
Davide
Business picks up after family dinner. Uncle Luciano doesn’t make any more brazen attacks like he did against our ships, our warehouse, and one of our soldiers, but now that there’s blood on the ground, I’m busier than ever. I act as the liaison between my organization and the Rossi Famiglia, and there’s a massive shipment of weapons coming in via our trucking route in a few days. I’m tasked with making sure that it’s secure.
Which means clearing out the warehouse and finding space for everything, hiring muscle to keep it all under guard, and setting up a secure travel itinerary.
I’m out late every night and up early every morning, and it feels like my wife is nothing more than a sleeping body in bed. We barely run into each other, and when we do, it’s like we’re speaking different languages. I want to ask her about the office and I want to see her new desk, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to go up there. The walls feel tight, and I’m already running on edge as it is. I don’t want to risk having an attack right in front of her. I suspect she already thinks I’m a psychopath, which is bad enough.
“Everything’s good on our end, bro,” Carlo Rossi says on the day of the shipment. “Trucks left Philly about a half hour ago. They should get to you in like twelve or thirteen hours. Go get something to eat, maybe sleep or whatever, it’ll show up in the morning.”
“I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep until the merchandise is where it needs to be.”
“You really think this Santoro guy is that crafty, bro? Our truckers are top-notch guys. It’ll be fine.”
I smile bitterly to myself as I pace across the empty warehouse. My footsteps echo up into the metal rafters while my soldiers watch on. Tensions are very high.
I like Carlo Rossi. There’s no bullshit to that man, and even though he comes across like he’s all frivolous jokes and empty smiles, the man has a good head on his shoulders. But he doesn’t know Uncle Luciano.
“I’m trusting you,” I tell him, because there’s one enormous flaw in this entire situation.
The drivers aren’t my people.
“Bro, relax. We got this.”
I hang up and bark orders at my soldiers. There isn’t much for anyone to do since everything’s been prepped well ahead of time, but I need an excuse to blow off this nervous energy. Bruno eventually pulls me aside and tells me to calm the fuck down because I’m driving everyone crazy, and I tell him to go fuck himself, and he ends up dragging me outside to smoke a few anxious cigarettes. I don’t even enjoy them, but it’s better than feeling like I’m trapped in a cage again.
Hours pass. Simon shows up with dinner for the men on duty and forces me to take a nap in the back office. I sit on the couch, my sleeves rolled up and my top buttons undone, and stare at the wall. There’s no way in hell I’m going to fall asleep, not until we have all the guns where they need to be.
“You could try closing your fucking eyes, you crazy person,” Simon says when he comes in later that night. He pours us drinks and sits next to me on the couch. “Father’s confident in the plan, you know. He thinks you did a good, thorough job setting this up.”
I grunt at him and throw back the whiskey. It’s good stuff, but too bad I can barely taste anything right now. “Uncle Luciano’s fucking clever. Dad should know that.”
