Isa

All of it had to stay. I couldn't take any of the stuff he had gotten me. I looked at my side of the closet. The things he had gotten me were mixed in with the things I had moved in with. I couldn’t take anything. There were several pieces that I hadn’t worn, but that was just too bad.

I couldn’t stay here, and I wasn’t going to keep anything that he had gotten for me.

I knew that he deserved to be able to tell his version of the story, but hell, who said I had to listen to it in person. Being in the house, sleeping in our bed, was beginning to feel unbearable. I couldn't help thinking that he was out with her. That he was out with her when he was supposed to be here with me. That was rotten. Why would he do that?

It wasn’t as if I was leaving forever. I sort of had nowhere else to go, but I couldn’t stay here. Once he got here, he would call me, and then I could listen to whatever it was he wanted to say. However, until that time, I didn’t want to be in the house. It felt too disrespectful. I had been waiting for him. Sure, I was doing other things and preparing for the baby, but I had been waiting for him.

How pathetic was it to be the wife waiting at home for her husband to return while the man was out, for all I knew, fucking Elissa Lazzerini? I prayed that there was some way it wasn’t true. There had to be some sort of explanation. I was hard pressed to think of what that explanation might be, but I just really wanted something that both maintained my positive assessment of Lorenzo and my pride.

I stopped, hearing him call to me from downstairs. He was here.

I looked into my suitcase and wondered for a split second whether I would be able to fit in it in order to hide. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want him to come up here and find me. I didn’t want to think that when I asked him to his face about the pictures that he would lie and cover his ass because he had been doing something he wasn’t supposed to do.

Marina had a couch. She wouldn’t be mad if I asked her to crash there. There was my parents’ house, but showing up there would have potentially been disastrous. They would know that something was wrong if I showed up with a suitcase. I could hear him coming into the room and making his way to the closet.

“Isa? Why didn’t you say anything? I was calling you,” he said. He walked over and tried to kiss me, but I turned my face so it landed off center, on my cheek. “Is everything all right? Are you packing?”

“I am,” I said simply.

“Why? Where are you going?”

As far away as I can get from you.

“Nowhere special,” I said. I was purposefully leaving the clothes that he had gotten me on the hangers and inside the drawers. He must have noticed.

“Isa, stop, could you look at me, please? I haven’t seen you in days, and now you’re leaving. What’s going on?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” It was catty. I’ll admit it...but I was hurt.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll tell you where I am going if you tell me where you have been.”

He sighed. His face looked pained, as if he knew that there was something he had done wrong.

“I was working, babe,” he said wearily.

“Were you with her?” I demanded.

“With who?”

“Don’t play dumb with me Lorenzo. Elissa. Were you with her?”

“Yeah, I was. She said she had something on my dad, and I had to go ask her what it was.”

My eyes narrowed.

“You had to ask her in person?”

“Yes. Why is this a problem, Isa? It wasn’t like I was with her because I wanted to be.”

“Are you sure all you did was talk?”

“Yes. All we did was talk. She didn’t even have anything; she was just wasting my time. Isa. Please calm down. Sit. Why are your clothes in the suitcase?”

“How can you ask me to stay here when you just told me you have been out spending time with another woman?”

“I was talking to her, babe. Nothing happened.”

I walked out of the closet and to the bedside table where the envelope was. I held it out to him.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“You look and tell me,” I shot back. He slid the pictures out, reading the note Elissa had written first. He looked from image to image with a look on his face that went from curious to knowing, to amused. And then the man did the unbelievable. His face broke into a smile, and he started to laugh.

“Wh-what are you laughing at? What's so funny?”

I didn’t want him to see me cry, but I broke. I shattered like a mirror right there. How could he talk to me like that? How could he laugh at a time like this? Did he think having me see him fuck another woman was funny? I felt his arms around me and was just too drained to try and fight him off.

“Don’t touch me... I-I hate you,” I stuttered through the tears. I felt his hand in my hair. I tried to move away from him, but he was holding me too securely.

“Hey, I’m sorry Isa. I didn’t mean to make you upset,” he said.

“Well, you shouldn’t have fucked Elissa.”

“I was with Elissa, yes, but we didn’t have sex. Those shots are years old. Ancient. I told you. We used to date.”

“Did you know she had them?”

“I knew she probably had them somewhere, but I didn’t know what she wanted to do with them. To be honest, I wasn’t particularly keen on seeing those again. She came onto me, but I shut her down. She kept saying that she had sent you something. I didn’t know it was this. I didn’t think she would stoop so low.”

“Your ex is tacky and desperate,” I said childishly. He laughed and reached out for me, touching my hair.

“I’m sorry she did that to you,” he said. “Did you really believe I had anything to do with it?”

“I didn’t know what to believe. I had a million horrible thoughts about what was going on. I thought you had gone back to her, or that you and she had gotten back together right after we got married because we weren’t really having sex then... I even thought...”

“What?”

I took a deep breath, looking down.

“I even thought you had mailed it to me together. That it was all a setup, and you just wanted to get rid of me. Make me leave you and humiliate me. Stress me out so much I lost the baby.”

“Whoa, what?”

I looked up at him.

“You thought I wanted you to lose the baby?”

“I thought you wanted to get rid of me. The baby—at that point—would have just been collateral damage.”

“Isa,” he said. I looked down. I didn’t want to face him. “Isa, look at me.”

I did. His face was pained.

“Never say things like that about yourself or our child again, do you understand?”

“Don’t give me reasons to doubt you,” I said back.

He held my face and looked at me, dead in the eye.

“I need you to be able to trust me,” he said. His voice was hard.

“I want to trust you. I do. I know that Elissa was part of your past, but I can’t take the uncertainty. It isn’t good for me, and it isn’t good for the baby.”

He kissed me then—with surprising sweetness considering we had just had a fight—and looked down at me.

“I made a vow, Isa. I wouldn’t do anything knowing it would hurt you.”

“I hope you mean that,” I said and sighed. He held my hand and kissed it. Suddenly, he dropped from his towering height above me. He sunk to one knee. That gesture was globally recognizable as the one that precedes marriage proposal, but why? He did know that we were already hitched, didn’t he?

“Isa—”

“What are you doing?” I blurted out. Because really, what was he doing? Was he making fun of me? He had never done this because our engagement was something that was pre-planned and then presented to us. He had never proposed, and I had never accepted his proposal. Not officially, anyway. My father had made the announcement, and we had been married within the next fortnight. Why did it make me so uncomfortable? I wanted him to stand up. That suit was so expensive, he needed to get off the floor.

“I love you, Isa.”

“Lorenzo—”

“I do. It was hard at the start, and I know that I wasn’t any help. I’m sorry for making you regret making your vows to me. I love you...and I love our baby that hasn’t been born yet.”

“You don’t have to do all this to get me to forgive you. I believe you.”

“Then believe me when I say this. I love you.”

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DON’T STOP NOW! The romance continues in Book 3 of the Montorini Crime Family trilogy: OWN ME BAD BOY, available now at any online bookstore!

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