Lorenzo

The suite was empty when I woke up. I must have dozed off. She had been right there. She had fallen asleep beside me. I didn’t feel her weight on me. I ran my hands over the bed to my left and right hoping to come into contact with her sleeping form. I shot upright. The bed was empty.

I panicked.

Where was Isa?

As if she had heard me, she came out of the bathroom with her purse. She must have been in there putting her makeup on or something. I didn’t ask her. I greeted her instead.

“Hi,” I said to her.

“Hey, did you sleep well?” she asked.

“Yeah. Great,” I said distractedly as I heard my phone buzz. I took the call on the balcony, leaving her in the room. I waited until I had slid the balcony door shut before I started talking.

“What do you have for me?” I asked shortly.

“Where are you?” one of my guys asked.

“We moved hotels a couple times. What happened? Did you get the guy?”

“We don’t have an ID on him, but we do know that he won’t be bothering you guys anymore.”

“What happened?”

“He’s dead.”

I blinked a couple times.

“He’s what?”

“Dead. You guys can go back home.”

“Who killed him? Who was it?” I demanded.

“No one of importance. He was probably working solo. He’s dead now, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

I sighed. Most of the men weren’t attached. If they had families, they would care a little more about things like this. They might be able to have some empathy and understand that there was nearly nothing more painful to think of than my wife being murdered because I had failed to protect her.

“I’m not going home until there’s a patrol around the house. You set that up. Every hour of the day I want at least one person patrolling the house. If my wife gets hurt, I’m coming after you personally. Do you understand?” I snarled, surprised at my own insistence.

“Consider it done. You two can go home. I’m sending someone to your house right now.”

I ended the call and paced up and down the balcony a couple times.

It was done. Just like that. We were in the clear. We could go back home. I wanted to be happier about the news than I was, but I couldn’t help feel iffy about it. Who was the guy? Why didn’t the guys get an ID on him? What conceivable reason was there for him to be after Isa, besides to get my attention? Hitmen were taken out all the time, but this one was special. This one had made the crucial mistake of fucking with the wrong man’s woman.

I reentered the room. Isa was just sitting on the bed. She looked up when she heard me.

“Any news?” she asked casually.

“Yeah. We’re clear. We can go back home.”

Her brow furrowed, as her clear, green eyes looked at me.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

I shrugged and tried to sound flippant.

“You know. This underground mob stuff seems a lot higher stakes in the movies,” she quipped.

“Does it? What? Almost getting murdered not do it for you?” I teased her. She shrugged and came off the bed.

“Nope. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed.”

“I’m sorry your first brush with death didn’t measure up.”

It was cute. She wasn’t scared and I was impressed. I didn’t like that she could be so cavalier about her own life, but maybe she was making jokes to play off how she really felt. I wished she would tell me because she seemed to be feeling nothing.

Isa was silent the entire ride home. I kept looking over at her, trying to figure out what she was thinking. She had her sunglasses on and was absently looking out the window, running her fingers through her hair. We had both bought new clothes to wear because of how impromptu our trip had ended up being. Neither of us had been back to the house for the last two weeks. We had ended up buying a duffel bag so we could carry them home. I agreed to Isa’s request because she thought it was wasteful to have gotten the clothes and then just ditch them at the hotel when we left.

Was she unhappy that we were finally going home? Was she dreading going back? I thought about the things she had said to me. The dishes, staying home all day while I was at work. Was it really that bad? The last couple weeks between us had been amazing. She had been so sweet, and we had had sex more times during the two-week hotel stay than we had had since we got married. She had been, dare I say, happier than she seemed to be when we were at home. Shit. Maybe she really didn’t want to be back at the house. As we neared the house I decided to ask her something.

“Isa, are you okay?” I asked.

She looked over at me. Her glasses obscured her eyes, but her face otherwise looked completely calm.

“Mm-hmm,” she said shortly. I raised my eyebrows. I knew I had underestimated her in the beginning, thinking she was powerless to protect herself but what was she? Completely desensitized to everything already? How? She had only known about this part of her life, our life, since a couple days before the wedding.

“How are you feeling?”

“I just want to get back to the house, sleep in my own bed...have a home-cooked meal.” She looked over at me. “The hotels were great, but you can understand wanting to be somewhere where they aren’t charging you by the night, can’t you?”

I smiled. So she was looking forward to going back home.

“I’m sorry again about this whole mess. I am going to have security posted around the house all hours of the day. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

“Okay,” she said shortly, looking down at her hands.

I was stumped. Was she really this unbothered about the whole thing? There was no way. We got to the house, and we took the bag inside. She went directly to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge, drinking it. I tossed the bag in the laundry room and went back through into the kitchen where I saw her rifling through the cabinets for pots and pans.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“I want to cook dinner,” she said. Opening the fridge and frowning at its contents. She started pulling vegetables and fruits out, they were probably toxic to eat for as long as we had been gone. She started chucking them in the garbage, doing the same for the leftovers that happened to be in there, too. Carlotta hadn’t been by the house over the entire two-week period.

“There isn’t much that’s edible in here anymore,” she remarked.

“Don’t cook. Just relax. I can order something in. What do you feel like having?”

She bit her lip thinking.

“I wouldn’t mind beef and broccoli,” she suggested. I didn’t mind that either. I made the call and turned to find she had been looking at me. Really looking at me...as if she was trying to take an x-ray. I couldn’t deal with this. What the fuck was going on?

“Isa, if something’s the matter, I want you to tell me,” I said, firmly.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she lied. I didn’t call her on it. I sighed. What sort of relationship was built on lies? Maybe our relationship was a little unorthodox, but I at least wanted her to tell me when something was up with her. Was she just moody? Was this a mood swing? Christ, was it that time of the month? I had never shared a home with a woman besides my mother, and she didn’t count because I had to live with her. For most of my life, I had had no choice. I had never lived with a girlfriend because I didn’t keep women as girlfriends. Isa was not my girlfriend; she was my wife, and the hidden world of women’s issues was suddenly front and center. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Our food came, and she picked at hers, managing to order the food into three neat piles of rice, beef, and broccoli on her plate. Perfect. Now she wasn’t eating. I caught her looking at me again—as if she was trying to blow my head up with her mind. I volunteered to clean up. I didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I didn’t want to make it worse by making her move and what not. She hardly looked present. She looked spaced out and tired at the same time. Was she sick? She stood and waited for me to come back from the kitchen, which she never did. We never went up to the room at the same time. Was it because she was scared? Had the whole experience spooked her? I tried again.

“Isa?”

She looked at me. Her face was completely flat. Inscrutable. I looked down into her eyes and cupped her face.

“I’m sorry about what happened. Nothing like this will ever take place again,” I said to her, making a promise I really could not keep. I could only ask my guys to make sure there was a twenty-four-hour patrol on the house. That didn’t mean there would be. I couldn’t assure her that they would do their job to the level I expected it to be done. I couldn’t tell her with absolute certainty that nobody was ever going to try something like this again. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. It would have been a lie. A bold-faced lie. She would never be safe again, not the way she had been before we had gotten married.

That was the truth of the Montorini name. The name I had given her. I wished she would say something. Anything. Even if she just wanted to tell me how much she regretted becoming my wife.

She inhaled deeply.

“You don’t have to apologize, Lorenzo. It isn’t your fault.”

I leaned in and kissed her. Her lips were soft and yielding when I met them. I took hold of one of her hands.

“Come,” I said quietly. She followed me up the stairs. We went up to our bedroom. I told her to wait on the bed while I ran the tub for her. That calmed people down, didn’t it? Released your knots or whatever? Helped you relax? She must have stood and followed me into the bathroom because I heard her voice from behind me.

“Lorenzo... really, you don’t have to do all this. Nothing happened.”

“And nothing will ever happen. I want you to know that, Isa. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Her face was still flat and unreadable. I kissed her on the forehead and made for the door so she could have a bath.

“Lorenzo, wait,” she said. I turned.

“Could you sit with me?” she asked carefully, like she wasn’t sure that was something she thought she could ask for.

“Where? Here?”

“In the tub?”

“Uh.... Sure,” I said, not fully understanding what it was that she wanted. She turned around so I could help her unzip her dress. It fell and pooled at her feet. I unhooked her bra and it fell, joining her dress on the floor. She turned and pulled my sweater up my body. I helped her, removing it completely along with the t-shirt I wore underneath. Her hair fell down over her breasts, obscuring them in a way that was even more erotic than seeing them on full display. I finished disrobing and turned the faucets off. She removed her panties, being the last item of clothing she had on, and climbed into the tub. She looked at me expectantly, her knees pulled to her chest.

For the first time in my life I didn’t know what to do. Did I just go in? Did she want me to do anything specific? Did she want me touching her at all? The bathtub was huge. More than big enough for two. I saw her cast her gaze down into the water.

“You don’t have to join me if you don’t want to,” she said quietly.

I climbed in after her and let her settle between my legs, with her back to me and her head resting on my chest, where she seemed to be at her most comfortable. Steam rose slowly from the bath water as I sat, naked in the tub with my wife. This was likely the first time I had been naked with a woman and not tried to make a move. Not that I didn’t want to. All she had to do was say the word and I would be ready to go. She curled into my chest, pulling her legs into her body, making herself small.

Was this intimacy? Was this feeling what people referred to when they talked about that? I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close. She seemed to loosen up as I held her. No other woman I had been with had just wanted to sit in a tub with me. Many wanted me to fuck them in the tub, but this was new. It was new, and it was nice. I rested my chin on top of her head. I could smell her hair. Like jasmine and tropical fruit.

I wondered whether she would tell me. Something was bothering her, and she didn’t seem to want to tell me what it was. She had been acting strangely since dinner. Trying to interrogate her about it was definitely not the way to go. Especially not just then. It would just ruin the moment.