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It being barely spring and not, in my opinion, nearly warm enough to be sunbathing, I’m dressed in white linen pants, Italian loafers, and a pressed black polo shirt.
This is about as casual as I get.
Jeans are for riding a motorcycle. Sneakers and t-shirts are for the gym. I absolutely do notowna fucking hoodie.
My predilection for style and fine fashion certainly stemmed from growing up as master tailor Bruno Sartorre’s son. But it was honed under Vito’s fashionable eye and taste for luxury. I mean, you only get so many turns around the sun. Dress for the occasion.
“Well, okay, not a solution. But getting a side piece might certainly make your life a little happier.” He smirks. “Not to mention your dick.”
I’m always slightly amused at the differences between my birth father and my adoptive one. Bruno prided himself on good manners and didn’t approve of crude language and swearing. Meanwhile, I can’t imagine Vito not talking like a sailor about fucking, genitals, and other similar topics that would have given my father a stroke.
“Well,” I lift a brow. “I’ll consider it.”
“Do. It saved my marriage, Dante.”
I roll my eyes, suppressing a grin. I already have a pretty good understanding of the…I suppose you could saygray areas…of Vito and Giada’s marriage.
While Giada was still alive, my adoptive parents werefamouslyat each other’s throats half of the time and locking themselves in their bedroom to hate-fuck each other’s brains out the other half of the time. I don’t know—and can’t imagine a world where I’dneedto know—the details of whatever their “arrangement” was. But I do know Vito had plenty ofgoomarsin and out of the house—and I would suspect Giada did as well, she was just a hell of a lot more discreet about it.
“And your dearly departed wife? What did she think of a side piece ‘saving your marriage’?”
Vito puffs on his cigar and shrugs. “I doubt she thought about it very much at all. She was too busy fucking the gardener for the last ten years of our marriage.”
I snort a laugh.
“Dick like a fuckin’ donkey, or so I’m told,” Vito continues, holding his hands easily a foot apart from each other. “I’m amazed she could walk at all after we hired him.”
I grin. “Well, maybe I’ll need to hire a gardener, too.”
The second I say it, a strange sensation ripples over my skin: a feeling somewhere between anger and revulsion that I’m not quite able to pin down before it slithers away.
“Maybe.” Vito turns to me and lowers his sunglasses, his brow furrowed. “Listen. I obviously don’t know her that well, but evenI can tell it takes a special sort of man to handle a woman like Tempest Black, my friend.”
“I don’t need tohandleanything,” I grunt. “She and I understand what this is.”
“Of course, of course,” Vito sighs, waving his cigar. “But only a very foolish man would walk into this thinking he’d never have to handle his wife. And you, Dante, are not foolish.”
My brows draw together as I lean back in my lounger. “She can do whatever the fuck she wants, for all I care. There’ll be nohandlingof any kind.”
“Ha! Spoken like a man who’s never been lived with a woman,” Vito grins.
I sigh. “Amused by all of this, Vito?”
“Hugely,” he chuckles, stretching as he leans back in his chair. “Oh, did she ever acknowledge your gift, by the way?”
I roll my eyes. “My gift” wasn’t frommeat all. It was all Vito’s idea, and when I nixed it, he had one of his people send the fucking package over to Tempest anyway on my behalf. This was a week ago, right after Tempest signed that goddamn blood marker.
When I don’t respond, Vito turns to me and lowers his shades again.
“You’re still sore about that?”
I turn to glare at him. “I just don’t like people putting words in my mouth or speaking for me,” I mutter.
This time he’s the one who rolls his eyes, shoving his cigar back between his lips as he waves me off.
“Listen tosignoreDrama Queen over here. No one was putting words in your mouth, Dante. It’s simply customary to gift a ring at a time like this, regardless of whether it’s ‘real’ or not. You might not like Ms. Black?—”
“She’s a fucking witch with a mouth like a sailor who dresses like she’s fronting a grunge band,” I grunt. “Not liking heris an understatement.”
