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“Use your father and my friendship with him against me.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” This time the words do come out with more of a bite. “He was my father. He made his wishes very plain. If he hadn’t died, none of this would be happening, and you know that’s true. So what makes you think you ever had the right to change any of that?”
Salvatore’s jaw tightens, and I can tell that he’s upset that we’ve come back to this. “The fact that he entrusted you to me,” he says, as calmly as I think he can manage. “I have no entitlement to you, Gia; I know that. I always have. But your father trusted my judgment all his life. I have to believe that he would trust it in this, too.” He sighs. “I don’t want to fight over our differing opinions on the Bratva, Gia. It’s clear you won’t believe me, and you won’t be swayed.”
He pauses just then, as the rest of our dinner is brought out. The appetizers and salad bowls are cleared away, replaced with a platter that has a branzino sea bass in a pool of herbed olive oil, surrounded by roasted vegetables. There’s a bowl of coconut rice and a plate of toasted bread with butter, all of it arranged as a fresh bottle of chilled wine is set in the ice bucket.
Salvatore is silent, cutting the fish and arranging some on both of our plates. “What’s done is done, Gia,” he says finally. “What I want is for us to find a way forward.”
“You still didn’t really answer my question.” I spoon some of the coconut rice onto my plate. “Do you want children?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, eating his food in small, precise movements that betray how hard he’s thinking. “I rarely thought about it, before this,” he says finally, setting his fork down. “My entire life was devoted to your father. It consumed all of my energy. When I did engage in a relationship, it was usually casual, and rarely lasted long. Marriage was not on the table for me, since I didn’t have enough of myself to give to a relationship of that depth. And without marriage, I had no desire to have children. So now?—”
He goes quiet again, and my heart thumps oddly in my chest. I’m not sure what it is that I want him to say. All of this feels like uncharted territory, a conversation that we don’t like each other or know each other well enough to have. Yet, we are having it, because we’re husband and wife, and these are the things we need to know.
“I should say yes,” he says finally. “When I think of having children—a family—I think it’s something that would bring me joy. But not in the circumstances of our marriage. And I don’t see that those circumstances will change. You were my ward, and now you’re my wife. I married you for your own protection, with the intent for us to lead as separate of lives as possible, while you remained under my roof and within the safety of my household. That arrangement is not what I hoped for, when I imagined marriage and children in the past. But it’s what has happened. So the necessity of children is just that, Gia. Something to be dealt with when it’s necessary.”
Just like me. But for once, I can’t find the rancor within myself that I usually feel when he says things like that. Instead, all I can think about is part of what he said at the very end.
This arrangement is not what I hoped for.
That goes against everything I’ve believed since Salvatore claimed me at the altar. That implies that he’s telling me the truth, that he didn’t marry me for desire or lust, that he did believe he had no other choice than to protect me by marrying me. It shakes the foundation of my hatred for him more than anything else has so far.
Because I could hear how much it sounded as if he meant it, when he said that.
“So what now?” I ask tentatively, looking at him as I poke at my food with my fork. He glances up at me, refilling his glass of wine.
“I think that’s largely up to you, Gia,” Salvatore says quietly. And then he returns to his food, falling into silence.
The meal ends with a fruit pavlova, brought out after the dinner is cleared away. Salvatore doesn’t ask me anything else, and I’m not sure what to say. I can feel that his walls have gone back up, whatever vulnerability I might have momentarily gotten from him locked away. And mine have, too.
But I feel as if I’ve seen a little bit of a different side to him. That last bit of conversation, especially, makes me wonder if I’ve been too harsh. If I’m beginning to understand him in a way that might change my perception of what’s happened between us so far.
Salvatore finishes his dessert in silence, setting down his napkin, and picks up his wine glass as he gets up from the table. He retreats to the other side of the deck, and I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking. If he’s mulling over what we’ve talked about. I wonder if he would tell me, if I asked.
If I believe everything he’s saying, then I’m not the only one unhappy with our circumstances. And if that’s true, and we could meet in the middle somehow?—
It won’t be what I dreamed of, I thought as I watched him sit on one of the lounge chairs, his pants rolled up around muscled calves as he looked pensively out over the darkened water. But maybe we could have a decent marriage.
I bite my lip as I walk back into the villa while the staff comes and clears away the rest of the meal. I get one of my bikinis, the black one with the thin chains, intending to go for a swim. But I also want to see Salvatore’s reaction. I was covered up earlier, but now I want to see what he does. I slip the skimpy pieces of fabric on, putting my hair up in a loose bun atop my head and looking critically at myself in the mirror. There’s nothing I can see to complain about—I look slender and fit, skin tanned and smooth, and I trace my fingers over the small divots of muscle just beneath my ribs. Is he really going to be able to hold out much longer? It feels like we’ve been playing a game, one that I’m not entirely sure I know what I want the outcome of to be.
He has a book propped on his knees when I walk out, and when he looks up, I see him go very still. His gaze sweeps over me, taking in the scant black bikini, the lines of my body, all the way from my face down to my toes and back up again. He doesn’t try to hide it this time, a frank appraisal that makes my skin heat and my stomach twist uncomfortably. I should be angry at the way he’s looking at me, my mind screams, but I’m not sure that I am.
A part of me, I think, likes it. A part of me wants his approval, and I think I might hate that part as much as I sometimes hate him.
But that warmth is traveling over my skin, into my blood, down between my legs. I feel myself draw in a breath as his gaze darkens. He doesn’t move, and I wait for him to tell me to do something. To take off my clothes, maybe. To strip for him. I picture him laying me back on the lounge chair, burying his face between my thighs, pulling me astride him. All of the forbidden things that I’ve imagined and haven’t yet had, that I wanted from someone else but could still get from him.
His jaw tightens, and he looks away from me, back to his book.
A flare of anger swells in my chest, transmuting that warmth of arousal into something else entirely. My frustration with our conversation earlier, with myself for not being sure of how I feel or what I want, all of my uncertainties and anger and confusion coalesce, driving me to the easiest solution in front of me.
Fighting with him is always the easiest solution, it seems.
“Are you serious?” I snap, glaring at him. I let my own gaze sweep down his body, over the glimpse of his tanned chest in the open v of his white shirt, down to where I can see the thick swelling of his cock straining against the fabric of his pants. He’s aroused by me—that’s not the problem. The problem is that he doesn’t want to admit it.
“You came out here to swim, didn’t you?” His voice is flat, inflectionless. “So enjoy yourself, Gia.”
I suck in a sharp breath, ready to retort. But he’s pointedly ignoring me, and I’m suddenly tired. I’d intended to come out here and taunt him, aggravate him with the skimpy bathing suit and the view of me in it, but I realize that I hoped it might actually turn him on enough to stop fighting his desire instead. And now we’re just locked in another standoff, with no glimpse of peace in sight, despite our conversation earlier.
