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Dante paused, his expression hardening into annoyance. “The Colombians have the luxury of space and privacy. We don’t have that here. We can’t open a factory in Tuscany. We’re confined to what we have—which isn’t much. I’m being the voice of reason here. The Colombians were the best partners we would ever hope to have—and you shit on all of that.”
“You shit on your daughter when you brought her to that meeting?—”
“Here we go again.” Theo raised his voice. “Shut up—both of you.”
I was tempted to pick up my chair and throw it at him.
Theo let a couple seconds of silence pass before he continued. “I think there’s only one way to go about this. We meet the Colombians, tell them what happened, and offer the ten percent they originally asked for as a peace offering. If they’re receptive, and I think they will be, then we move on.”
Dante rolled his eyes. “If only we had just done that in the first place…”
“They obviously think you’re a pussy bitch if they crossed you to begin with,” Theo said. “And that’s on you.”
Dante snapped his neck as he turned to Theo.
“So, are we in agreement?” I asked. “If this doesn’t work, we’ll move to the next idea.”
“Even if they agree,” Dante said, “they’ll probably plot to kill us anyway.”
“I’m sure they will,” Theo said. “And we’ll be ready when they do.”
“And when that time comes, we take them all out and put new people in charge,” I said. “We’ll clean house. If they weren’t so far away, I would just take over their production altogether.”
When I entered my bedroom, she was on the couch in her pajamas, ready for bed, with her makeup gone. The purple color of the bruising was distinct when it wasn’t hidden under foundation and concealer. She did a remarkable job hiding it, but all that work went to waste when she washed it off before bed…and I had to look at it.
A blanket was pulled over her body, but she watched me with sharpness. Her eyes showed more than fatigue, a deeper level of defeat. It’d been that way the last couple of days, all of her personality and presence gone. “Where were you?”
“Downstairs with Theo.” I omitted her father’s presence on purpose.
She turned back to the TV.
“Why are you on the couch if you’re tired?”
“Wanted to wait up for you.”
She’d never done that before. “You don’t need to do that, baby.”
“I don’t really have much of a choice.” She looked at the TV before she rubbed the corner of her eye with her fingertip.
I turned off the TV before I approached her on the couch. “Come on.”
She gave a quiet groan, slouched into the couch like her body had stopped working.
I felt like a father trying to get his kids to bed. I scooped her into my arms and lifted her against my chest, like she was an extra blanket I was stealing from the couch to put on the bed. I felt her arms hook around my neck and her cheek rest against my chest, so tired that she didn’t voice a single protest.
I set her on the bed and tucked her in, seeing her sexy legs disappear underneath the crisp white sheet.
She gave a quiet sigh before her tired eyes looked at me.
I changed in the middle of the room, dropping my shirt and jeans on the floor and kicking off my boots underneath the armchair. The lamps were off, and the glasses of water were on the nightstands, placed by Aldo while Scarlett was crashed on the couch. I set my phone on the nightstand then got into bed beside her.
She’d been distant ever since that night, and while I wanted her every night, I let her be. But it was hard to sleep in that bed beside her, thinking about her sexy legs in those little shorts, and not do a damn thing about it. I was in love with this woman, from head to toe, and I wanted to make her mine at every opportunity.
She lay on the other side of the bed, her back to me, the sheets to her shoulder.
I stared at her silhouette in the dark, the outline of her petite waistline in the moonlight poking through the closed curtains. “Baby.”
“Hmm?”
