Never Cross the Mafia Don's Hidden Lover novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Storm

Nobody at the table moved.

Then Nonna picked up the ladle and gave me more gravy.

"Eat," she said. "Liars don't get to ruin dinner."

Dina said a word I'd never heard her say in front of my grandmother.

Nonna didn't even blink.

Elio didn't say anything at all.

He sat with his hands flat on my father's table, very still, the way he'd sat in the café looking at the plate of a Lincoln.

The storm came off the lake while we drove back to Bratenahl.

By the time Tino turned in at the gate, the rain was going sideways and the trees along the drive were bent double.

The power flickered twice in the front hall and stayed on.

Nonna went to bed with her rosary.

Dina went up with a bottle of wine and said, "Don't wake me unless somebody's dead."

I took a shower so hot it hurt.

I put on the white cotton nightgown Nonna had bought me at the drugstore because my slip was ruined.

Then I went back down to the kitchen.

Elio was standing at the big window over the sink, watching the lake throw itself at the dock.

He'd taken off his jacket and his shoes.

He was in a white T-shirt and gray trousers, and the scar under his collarbone showed pink at the neck of the shirt.

"Tell me what it says," he said, without turning around.

"The statement?"

"All of it."

I sat on the counter.

The same counter.

"It says he comforted me." I heard my own voice go flat. "That we made love, and in the morning I said I needed air, and I left for the clinic. That he has reason to believe I was confused."

Lightning lit up the lake.

Elio's hands were gripping the edge of the sink.

"He came to the clinic at two fifty-one," I said. "In a bloody shirt. He never touched me. He never even kissed me after the cake."

"I know."

"Everybody will read it. His mother. The bank. The squad room. They'll read that my husband had me on our wedding night, and it'll be on paper, signed, forever."

He turned around.

His face was dark in the window light.

"What do you want, Viola?"

Nobody had asked me that in a very long time.

Not Trent.

Not the bank.

Not even me.

"I want to be the one who says what happened to me," I said. "Just once."

He didn't move.

"I said when it's not paper," I said. "Right here. On this counter."

"I remember."

"Well, he just wrote on the paper that he had me. He gets to decide that too. Unless I decide first."

I slid down off the counter.

I walked across the kitchen to him on bare feet.

He watched me come the whole way.

"I want a night that's mine," I said. "Not his alibi. Not his wife. Not the Don's girl the whole city made up. Mine."

"Viola."

"Ask me."

His eyes went over my face.

"Do you want me?"

"Yes."

"Tonight?"

"Yes."

"If I take you upstairs, I'm not letting you go until morning."

"Good. I don't want you to."

He lifted his hand, the way he had on the kennel floor.

Two fingers on my cheek.

This time no puppy.

This time I turned my face into his palm and kissed the inside of his wrist.

He made a sound.

Then his mouth was on mine.

It wasn't the counter.

It was slower, and much worse, because he was taking his time.

He kissed me like he'd already lost the argument with himself and was glad.

His hands slid down my back over the thin cotton and pulled me in until I could feel every breath he took.

I pushed my hands under his T-shirt.

His stomach jumped under my palms.

"Your hands are cold," he said against my mouth.

"Surgeon's hands."

"Warm them on me."

I did.

I spread my fingers over his ribs and up his chest, over the hard muscle and the new scar.

I knew that scar.

I'd made it.

When my thumb crossed it he shut his eyes.

Thunder rolled over the house so hard the glasses rang in the cupboard.

He picked me up.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, and the nightgown rode up to my hips, and he groaned into my neck.

"Your shoulder," I said.

"Tell my shoulder to complain tomorrow."

He carried me up the stairs.

He carried me into a room I'd never seen.

Tall windows, a bed the size of my first apartment, the lake going wild beyond the glass.

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