Chapter Twenty Three
After the disastrous Sunday night dinner, tensions in the house somehow rise even higher. It doesn’t seem like Mateo anticipated the turn of events, but he let Vince storm out of the dining room with Mia, merely steepling his hands on the table and getting lost in thought for a few tense minutes. Finally he pulled out of it and dinner resumed, just without them.
I’m so nervous for Vince that my stomach hurts all night. I want to go up and check on him, but I’m sure he and Mia have their own stuff to work out. I don’t even know how they work it out, because I don’t know if Mateo will let him keep her. When he stopped in the kitchen to tell me she only serves him now, it definitely seemed like he intended to keep her longer.
The following morning Mateo is at the table when I go down for breakfast. I briefly consider leaving and stopping to grab a breakfast sandwich on the way instead. I guess I can’t avoid him forever, though. We do live together.
I grab some fruit and oatmeal and reluctantly take a seat at the table. I sit in the seat that would be across from Mia, right by him.
I feel him watching me as he reaches for his coffee cup, so I look up at him, narrowing my gaze. “This doesn’t mean I like you again.”
Smiling faintly, he brings the coffee cup to his lips and takes a slow sip. “I understand.”
I frown all of a sudden, my attention caught on his torn up knuckles. He looks like he got in a fight with a brick wall. “What happened there?”
He glances at his hand, annoyance flickering in his eyes. He doesn’t respond, and I start to worry. I’m not sure why. I’m not sure what he could do that’s worse than what he’s already done. Obviously he hit someone—maybe he’s an all-around abuser now. Maybe he punished Mia for going with Vince last night.
God, I can’t handle much more of this bullshit. I’m half-ready to go running straight to Sal’s dad and sell Mateo out myself. There’s no way I wouldn’t get major daughter-in-law points for that.
“Do you hit women now, too?” I ask almost mildly as I sip my orange juice.
At that his eyes narrow with annoyance. “Of course I don’t fucking hit women now.”
“Like it’s such a stretch from what you did do.”
“Vince happened to my knuckles,” he states, meeting my gaze.
“He attacked you?”
“No,” he replies. “I hate to break your heart, but the Morelli you actually like is as capable of rape as I am.”
Stomach plummeting, I narrow my eyes at him. “Bullshit.”
He shrugs, like he doesn’t care whether or not I believe him.
“Vince wouldn’t do that,” I say, even more strongly. “He would never do that.”
Mateo sets his coffee cup down, picking up his newspaper and resuming reading it, apparently done with me.
I’m so angry he would say that, I reach over and knock the paper down so he’ll look at me.
He glares, but I glare right back. “You’re lying,” I say.
“Believe what you need to,” he replies, straightening his paper so he can ignore me again.
I’m definitely not hungry now. I wish I would’ve eaten by myself in the kitchen. Shoving my chair back, I stand and grab my dishes. My mind is racing with the garbage he just fed me, but the problem is I don’t know why he would lie about that. He’d lie, of course, but not without purpose. He doesn’t need an excuse to hit Vince; mouthing off and making a scene at dinner last night was more than adequate. And even if Vince did do the horrible thing Mateo is saying he did to Mia—which I still don’t want to believe—why would Mateo care?
Apparently I’m a sucker, because instead of going the long way out of the kitchen and heading out the back way to go to work, I go back to the dining room and stop by Mateo’s chair. He waits long enough to accept that I’m not moving, then he glances at me, cocking a dark eyebrow.
“Forget something?”
“Why would you hit him for doing the same thing you did?”
His locked jaw ticks, and he looks at his paper instead of me, but at least he answers, “Because he deserved it. Because I can. Because I wanted to. Pick a reason.”
I cross my arms, narrowing my eyes at him. “You were defending her.”
He sighs with annoyance, studiously keeping his gaze on the paper, clearly hoping I’ll go away.
I feel crazy asking, but I can’t help it. “Do you like her?”
His gaze finally leaves the paper, meeting my gaze without amusement. “Don’t you have to get to the bakery?”
“You shouldn’t make her hate you if you like her,” I state, shaking my head. “I realize you’re proficient at pushing people away, but Jesus Christ, Mateo, physically forcing yourself on her? That’s a little far. Couldn’t you have just worn on her the usual way, with your personality and mannerisms? Did you really need to turn to rape?”
“Probably,” he says, faint amusement creeping into his tone. “She’s incredibly soft, but resilient. Easy to intimidate, but hard to scare off. Not the type to give up on someone easily.”
That sounds like exactly what he needs. “Well… you definitely took the wrong tack. You should apologize—and by apologize, I mean grovel like you’ve never groveled before—and try to make amends for being a horrible bag of dicks to her.”
He shakes his head, attention back on the newspaper. “She wouldn’t respond to that. She’s with Vince again, anyway.”
I feel a little twisted thinking he should take the girl he raped away from her boyfriend, but, well, Mateo’s a lot harder to find a suitable partner for than Vince. Vince is young. He’ll meet lots of other girls. Mateo’s never found one that really fit him. If Mia does, maybe that’s worth exploring—if he hasn’t completely fucked his chances, which is a pretty big if.
“Do you think she could ever forgive you?”
“Francesca.” He meets my gaze, raising his eyebrows. “It’s done. It’s over. Go to work.”
“Explain to her that you’re damaged,” I implore. “Maybe she’s into that.”
He ignores me.
“Like, okay, he has an evil streak that spans a mile, but also a vulnerable side. Maybe she can work with that.”
He ignores me harder.
“I could talk to her for you, feel her out. I’m actually shamefully good at making excuses for you.”
That gets his attention. “Stay out of it.”
“But—”
“No buts.” He raises his eyebrows, meeting my gaze to let me know he’s serious. “Everything is on track right now, don’t fuck it up.”
“I don’t understand what that means.”
His head falls back and he drawls dramatically, “Leave.”
I crack a smile at him for the first time since all this shit started. I feel a little guilty for it, but now I have an angle that feels a little better. Instead of him just being a heartless monster, maybe he likes her. It is in his nature to try to fuck things up with someone he likes before they ever get a chance to take off. Completely in his nature. It’s almost a signature move. He’s never taken it this far before, but Beth probably intensified the abandonment issues he already had a ton of. Goddamn Beth. If not for Isabella, I’d wish he never met her.
---
Salvatore hovers above me in bed, dropping a kiss on my lips as his wonderful body presses me into the mattress.
Since it’s harder to get away in the evenings right now, I’m abandoning the bakery during the day more often so we can have a couple hours together.
“I want to take you out,” he says, dropping a kiss on the right corner of my mouth, then the left. “We should try to have a day trip soon.”
“I would love that,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I’m definitely not going to be able to do overnights right now though. Things at my house are still crazy and Mia’s not in Mateo’s bed anymore, so he probably isn’t as distracted and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Salvatore sighs, rolling off me and onto his back. “Everything about your family kills my sex drive.”
I snort, snuggling up beside him. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he says, curling his arm around me and pulling my snug against his chest. “I know it bothers you. My ear is yours to bend. Vent away.”
“I don’t even know if I want to vent. I’m really conflicted today.”
“About which method of castration your brother deserves? Me too. I’ve gone over it a few times, but there are too many options.”
I grin up at him, running my hand through his hair. “I’m so happy you’re normal.”
“Your family sets the normalcy bar pretty low,” he reasons.
“Good point.”
“How’s Mia doing?”
I sigh, resting my head on his chest. “I don’t know. I think my brother likes her.”
“She seems to have that effect on people,” he remarks, a bit dryly. “Which brother?”
I roll my eyes, like it should be obvious. “Mateo.”
He pauses for several seconds, staring at me. “You think your brother, the one who raped Mia, likes her.”
“I know how it sounds. I can’t explain this to you in a way that wouldn’t sound twisted.”
“Correct,” he verifies, nodding once.
I shrug, accepting that. “I guess it is twisted. But I still think he does.”
“Well, I think if he did, he should’ve invited her to dinner and a movie. Since he didn’t, I’d say that ship has sailed.”
“But—”
“Sailed,” he interrupts, making a whooshing motion in the air with his hand. “And after sailing away, it hit an iceberg, split in half, and sank to the ocean floor. It’s not even a ship anymore, just splinters of wood, pissing off some fish that used to hang out there.”
“But what if they could make each other happy? Turn something ugly and horrible into something… good?”
“I don’t think your brother has the capacity to make anyone happy,” Salvatore states. “He’s too selfish. He’d need someone like Ma to put up with his shit, and that wouldn’t be making her happy, it would just be finding someone willing to be his victim for the rest of her life.”
“That’s terrible. I hate that.”
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
“You’re a dreamer,” he says fondly, brushing a chunk of hair behind my ear. “He’s a nightmare.”
As if to illustrate his point about me, I tell him, “I can’t wait until we move to our house in the suburbs and I don’t have to deal with this shit anymore. We’ll just visit for family dinners and holidays.”
“Ma’s going to have issues with that. She’ll want to see the grandkids. I’m sure she got ‘em a mountain of presents to put under the tree.”
“We’ll have to work something out. Maybe we’ll visit your mom on Christmas Eve since there are no little kids there, then my house for Christmas. We have very nice Christmases. Mateo’s a jerk, but he’s great at gifts.”
“We’ll have to go to church with Ma for Easter. She’ll want to buy our daughter an extravagant Easter dress.”
“We can put our son in a dapper little suit,” I say, grinning.
“And get our scruffy little mutt a bow tie to wrap around his collar.”
I laugh, sigh, and wrap myself around him. I know these are impossible dreams, but they feel so close I could reach out and touch them. “Where should we go for our honeymoon?”
“Italy,” he says, without hesitation. “Puglia. I have family there and it’s beautiful. We’ll spend a few days there, then we’ll head to Sardinia and spend the rest of the time there.”
“You’ve got this all planned out,” I say, poking him in the side.
“If I can get away for a little longer we’ll hit Sicily, too. We’ll have to train for all the food though, because we’re going to be eating a lot.”
“Well, I obviously hate food, so…”
“And beaches. You in a bikini,” he says slowly, trailing his finger down my arm. “There’s a lot to look forward to.”
“I like the sounds of this.”
He nods, watching me as his hand moves to my breast, catching its weight in his palm. “Every year on our anniversary, we’ll go away together. Even after we have kids, just you and me.”
“You’re going to be such a good husband.”
He smirks. “I kind of have a cheat guide. Ethan basically wrote the good husband manual, it turns out.”
“Are he and Willow married?”
“No, he was married before.”
I raise my eyebrows. “He’s divorced and he wrote the good husband manual? Maybe you should read a different edition.”
“I know, that’s what I thought, too, but it seems like he knows what he’s talking about.”
“We should be couple friends,” I decide.
“That sounds creepy. She’s my sister.”
“Then you should be brothers-in-law and we can be sisters-in-law. I maintain my campaign about you building a relationship with her. You said you want to go out, call her and set something up.”
“We can’t all go out together in the city. I don’t think she’ll even agree to it. She doesn’t really like me.”
“Who could not like you? I don’t believe that. We’ll all go out to dinner, somewhere out of the way, not in the city. It’ll be my treat.”
“I’ll talk to Ethan,” he says, relenting. “He probably won’t agree, either. He tries to keep his distance from anything crooked, and going out to eat with a Castellanos and a Morelli sounds like his personal hell.”
I grin. “Tell him I’m a nice one.”
“Your family doesn’t have a reputation for niceness, sweetheart.”
“You can’t always believe everything you hear,” I inform him haughtily. “I heard you were a ruthless playboy asshole, and that wasn’t true.”
“Well, it was, just not for you, and not all at the same time.”
I wrinkle my nose up with displeasure. “I’m not a big fan of the playboy part.”
Smiling smugly, he lets his hand skim my bare side, coming up to catch my breast in his palm, caressing the sensitive flesh. “I was just biding my time until you came along.”
“You should’ve bided it hiking or something,” I inform him, rolling with him so he can move on top of me.
“I picked up a few tricks though, now you get to benefit from them. Think of all the orgasms I can give you on our honeymoon with my skills.”
“I don’t know,” I tell him, lightly. “I think I might need a demonstration.”
“That so?” he teases, leaning down to trail his lips across my collar bone.
“Mmhmm,” I murmur, my body stirring with interest at the mere touch of his mouth.
Bending his head, he takes a hardened nipple into his mouth. His skilled tongue swirls around the peak, then he gently sucks on it before flashing me a sinful little smile. “Like this?”
“Just like that,” I say, my eyes drifting closed. My hand comes up to caress his back, pulling him closer as he heaps attention on my other breast. His tenderness, his affection, it’s like nothing I’ve ever known before. It’s the only thing I ever want to know.