Page 67 of Bene

“Ma thought an October wedding would be nice,” Mario said.

Vanna did her very best to stay still, and not cross the room to claw out his eyes when he finally stood from the table, and Senior turned just enough for the two of them to face each other. Her future husband. Fuck him.

He was finally getting what he wanted. That was the thing here. It’s why he never pushed before. He didn’t force Vanna. Not her feelings, or her physical choices. Mario didn’t have to. He knew what he would eventually have.

Her.

“Three months,” she said quietly.

Mario smiled. “Yes, and we’ll announce it to the rest later at dinner.”

Well, he would.

She had nothing to say now.

“Hey.”

Vanna outright ignored Mario’s call behind her as she loaded the tray with clean glasses to take upstairs to Senior, and his men. She wasn’t even asked to do it—simply told to by Gemma, because apparently that was going to be her life now.

Mario’s wife.

A woman who served.

No fucking thank you.

“Are you listening to me? And could you drop the fucking silent treatment for five goddamn seconds?”

Oh, was he mad?

Poor him.

“I’d rather not speak to you at all,” Vanna replied, picking up the tray and turning to face Mario with a sardonic smile, “never mind look at you, but if you’re going to insist on me doing it, then maybe you shouldn’t complain about the attitude you get in the process, yeah?”

He blinked.

She took great satisfaction in that.

It was all she had, now.

“Vanna—”

“Excuse me,” she muttered, not even giving him the chance to speak before pushing past him in the kitchen entryway, “because I have people upstairs who want clean glasses for their drinks. And you know they don’t like to be made to wait by a woman.”

He didn’t let her get past him entirely before his hand struck out, and he grabbed her. He wasn’t easy about it, either, his fingers tightening around her wrist painfully, making her hand flex against the tray to the point that she almost dropped it.

“Let me go,” she said quietly.

Vanna didn’t even look at him.

The warning should have been enough.

Except it wasn’t.

Shocking.

Mario didn’t let go, and if anything, he just held tighter. In fact, he tugged on her arm, pulling her a little closer to him in the process so the side of her body pressed against the front of his, and she was forced to smell that spice cologne he seemed to prefer that reminded her of men like his father. Old men.

Nothing young, and fresh.