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Shaking her head, she gives a small smile.“Yes. Your rules.”
“I want you to show me respect in front of people.”
“Same,” she cuts in, but I continue.
“If we respect each other in public, great. Now, if you’re mad or want to take something out on me, you have the right to do that in the privacy of our home. I won’t ask this again. I have too many times already.”
She nods.“Fair.”
“Second. Your body is mine now, Emelia, and I know you have a past with your ex, but that has ended. If I find out you’re sharing yourself with others, they die. This is also my last warning. I don’t share.”
She gulps, not saying anything, but nodding slowly, she agrees.
“Lastly, you will always come to me if there is something or someone bothering you. If you are ever threatened, blackmailed, or in danger, you tell me. I don’t care what the risk is. I’m unhinged and a man who can be quite careless, but your safety is something I will take seriously. You are my wife; you will be the mother of my children. It is my priority to keep you alive and safe.”
“Yes. I can do that.” Her eyes seem to be void, like she’s not sure about that last rule, and I take note of that.
“Emelia, I am serious. This is non-negotiable.”
“Non-negotiable. I get it.”
“Then why do you look like you aren’t going to follow this rule?”
Dropping her head, she shakes it.“I’m just…” She pauses, playing with her hands in her lap. “I just haven’t had anyone really care if I die or live, who put my safety first.”
Her words enrage me. That is the one thing about the world we live in that I do not accept. My father protected and provided for my mother, even though she was strong enough to do it on her own, and in today’s world, it’s not like that. The men in our world treat women as collateral, and no matter if this was love or arranged, I will protect Emelia at all costs.
A flashback of my father hits me then.
“Take care of your mother for me, son, and remember when you marry to protect your bride with honor.”
I shake my head, not wanting to remember my father in that state. Death looming over him and a goodbye staring back at me when I was just a young man. Watching my father die the way he did is a great regret I will carry with me the rest of my life. And remembering the way my mother crumbled to nothing as he took his last breath is a haunting no exorcism could cure.
“Nico?”
Suddenly, I’m aware I left the moment, slipped away, and Emelia is calling out to me.
“Sorry, let’s have dessert, and then we can call it a night.” My mood shifts drastically. I don’t want to talk. Don’t want to fuck. Don’t want to make conversation or play nice. I’m officially checked out, and that’s why talking about my parents is off limits.
“Okay.” Emelia doesn’t push me, and for that I silently thank her. I don’t have it in me to fight with her again. It’s been a decent dinner, and I would like to end the evening on a high note.
We make it through dessert and head to our cabin for the night. I let Emelia have the shower first, and I take one next. Letting the hot water scorch my skin, redden it, and burn it to the point that all I can focus on is the pain. No one prepares you when you’re young for what it’s like to lose the only life you ever knew, or how to carry on the legacy while mourning the greatest people you have ever known. By the time I make it to bed, Emelia is on her side, her eyes closed, and the comforter is pulled all the way up to her chin. I don’t hear the sound of her deep breathing, but I assume she is drifting.
I listen to the waves slosh and sway outside the window, and I stare blankly at the ceiling, waiting for the night to take me. When it finally does, I see it then—the life leaving my mother’s eyes.
My alarm wakes me, and my eyes open one at a time, the sun on the horizon peeking through the window. I reach over, stop the alarm, and see my messages waiting for me, most from Giulio. I ignore them for now and run my hands over my face.
I turn to see if Emelia is still asleep, but she isn’t there. Listening closely, I see if I can hear her in the bathroom, but it’s eerily silent. Standing, I put on a black tee and some gray sweats. I’m starving and in desperate need of coffee, my head pounding. It’s been a hell of a week with work, and add the travel and all the bickering with my new bride, my head takes the brunt of it all. I can’t remember the last time I had a migraine.
Figures Emelia would be the one to conjure one. Yesterday was… confusing, to say the least. Making my way out of the cabin and up the steps, I walk into the glass-surrounded living room area of the boat. I look for my wife, and when my eyes land on her, my breath halts. She’s lying in the rays of the morning sun on a lounge chair on the deck, a coffee mug in her hand, and she is facing the mountains.
She’s fucking beautiful.
I grab a mug, pouring myself some black coffee, and Ricardo appears from the kitchen.
“Morning, sir. Mrs. Valiente said she would take yogurt and fruit. Would you like the same or something else?”
I roll my eyes, a gesture way beneath a man my age, yet I do it. My wife must be rubbing off on me. “I would like bacon and eggs benedict. And make her the same. Thank you.”
