Page 51 of Bitter Poetry

Carmela stuffs her cell phone in her bag and rises without meeting my eyes.

Brigida is still fucking scrubbing.

I don’t claim to be the most empathetically attuned person on the planet, but in this business, you have to learn to read people. There’s a prickling sensation as the ants get restless under my skin. I don’t like it one bit.

“Something happen?”

Brigida stops scrubbing and scurries off into the pantry.

Carmela goes to walk past me.

I catch her arm.

She flinches. “Take your hands off me!”

I release her instantly. My brows pull together.

Her chest is heaving, but she doesn’t move.

“Can we have a truce today, Christian? Can we have one day where you don’t goad me, where you don’t call me Mrs.…”

She stops short like the name is too abhorrent to even speak. I never really thought about her feelings in all of this.

“Sure, babe.”

She inhales sharply, then suddenly giggles. I swear that sound hits me up the side of the head and shakes something loose.

I smirk.

She’s smiling, too, but it fades, and her eyes lift to meet mine. She’s been crying, but her mother’s death is still fresh… and she’s marrying a man whose name she hates. Yet there’s something more to this that I can’t get a read on. Then she rises on her tiptoes and brushes her lips against my cheek, before she turns away like she’s shy or confused about what she just did.

I’m pretty fucking confused, too.

Her hand goes to her throat, her fingers playing with the pink diamond pendant… Where have I seen that before?

“Thank you,” she says, staring at me—I’m staring right back at her. “You know, I really wanted to be Mrs. Barone.” She slips out the kitchen door, leaving me standing there.

Mrs. Barone.She wanted to be a Barone.

She wanted to be my brother’s wife.

As I push through the door and follow after her, all I can think about is that my name is Barone, too.

By the time I reach the car where Davide is waiting to drive us, I remember where I’ve seen that necklace before. Dante bought it for her birthday. Probably gave it to her after he went down on her.

She’s wearing it right in front of Ettore.

A big ass grin spreads across my face.Good girl.

CHAPTER 17

DANTE

It’s the morning of the wedding. I’ve not slept all night or much at all over the last few days. I have a two-hour drive ahead of me and a day from hell to look forward to. Worse, I know Carmela doesn’t want this, and that fucking destroys me on a whole other level.

Most of the bruising on my face has gone down, but my ribs still ache, and that will take a while. The pain centers me, consolidating a sense of purpose in my mind and laying out a path.

We have a few houses where people are taken for questioning or holding, and my AMG E-Class looks out of place in the rundown neighborhood when we pull up at the curb.