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Looks like that hope is dead in the water. She’s expecting me to have the conversation I’ve been avoiding for two days.
I hand my keys to Joe, the caretaker of all my cars, and head into the house. Graziella is standing in the drawing room to my immediate right as soon as I clear the doors. Dressed in a pink dressing gown and matching high-heeled slippers, she’s holding a glass of wine. From her heavy-lidded gaze, I can tell she’s already had a few drinks.
“Glad you could make it home,” she slurs, glancing at the clock on the wall.
I look too and I know I’m almost an hour late, but at least I made it. That’s a lot more than I’ve done in the past.
I head for the bar and pour some gin before I turn around and face her where she’s reclined on the chaise lounge.
“We have to talk about this, Marco. You can’t keep avoiding the conversation.”
“Told you two days ago there’s nothing to talk about.”
“There is, Marco. Don’t you see? This changes things,” she says, sitting up and spinning around so that her long legs are curved to the side. The dressing gown parts showing me a glimpse of her creamy thighs.
My dick jerks in my pants as though he hasn’t feasted enough tonight, and when I look up into Grazie’s eyes, I see the knowing smirk. She knows me almost as well as I know my damn self.
“You know why I won’t do this, Grazie!” I say through clenched teeth.
“You’re not being fair, Marco! This isn’t all about you!”
“It fucking is if I say it is!” I shout, tossing my drink back and throwing the glass into the fireplace where it shatters.
The flames dance on the broken shards of glass creating illusions of amber-colored beauty when all I see is pain, deception, and rage.
“You haven’t even given me a chance!” she cries out.
“A chance for what? To pull the wool over my eyes again and to fall for your lies? To get my family excited and anxious that the DeLuca bloodline is growing? Or what? To get me hopeful that I have a fucking heir to inherit the wealth I’ve built with the blood on these hands?” I ask, standing over her and shoving my hands in her face.
“Please, Marco,” she sobs.
“Please what, Grazie? Please. Fucking. What?”
“You weren’t always this angry.”
I sneer at her. “You made me this way. You and that bastard father of mine.”
“Don’t say such horrible things,” she pleads and the tears fall from her eyes like they always do, but I won’t fall prey to them this time.
“Every now and then, you show me a glimpse of the man I fell in love with. You show me a peek at the man who was my best friend who cared about me.”
Graziella stands and places a hand on my chest, and I cringe.
“You still care about me. That man is still there inside of you, Marco. I know it. I can feel it when you kiss me. When you hold me and make love to me, you drive deep inside of me and expel the demons from your soul. It was on a night like that a few weeks ago that we created this child,” she says softly, grabbing my hand and placing it on her belly.
Do I dare dream again? Should I even hope?
No, I won’t. She fucking killed all of that years ago, and I won’t be her fool again. Choosing to believe her has sentenced me to a lifetime of misery.
“You have to trust me this time, Marco.”
“Trust you? I trusted you when you told me you were pregnant at the beginning of our marriage. I was devastated when you lost that baby. I remained by your side through your grieving and all only to overhear a conversation between you and your mother, God rest her soul, that you’d lied to me. She was begging you to tell me the truth. The truth that you’d never been pregnant in the first place!”
“Your attention was wandering. It was the only way that I could keep you with me!”
“By lying to me? My attention wasn’t wandering. I was struggling with my cousin’s murder!”
I don’t dare tell her I’d been on a killing spree because of the murder.
