I planned to keep my time at home short, though. I knew the family was probably wondering what I was up to, curious about why I’d become MIA so often recently. But as much as part of me desired to shout my love for Kelly from the rooftops, that would never be practical.
In actuality, it’d be positively stupid.
I didn’t want my family to know yet. Maybe ever. As soon as they did, they’d start asking about her, expecting her to show up at the mansion for family gatherings like our Sunday dinners. Yet, Kelly couldn’t do that. Being in that house would make what we did too easy to detect, too obvious. She’d catch on immediately if she were there.
Between the basement where we sometimes got rid of threats to the family and the headquarters on the third floor, omitting certain pieces of information from her would no longer be enough. And I didn’t want to bald-faced lie to her. I loved her too much to do that. It’d feel too much like a betrayal.
Now I had to tell Kelly I needed to cut our weekend short, which sucked. She’d had to take her mother to some doctor’s appointments today, so I hadn’t seen her after I’d fallen asleep. I’d awakened to an empty, cold bed, and it’d made me feel kind of hollow inside. I couldn’t wait for her to show up here at the bistro so I could have her in my arms again.
As if me concentrating on her so fiercely had summoned her out of thin air, she arrived. I hopped up to greet her.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I said as I draped my arms around her, but her posture felt oddly taut, like a rubber band about to snap. “Everything okay?”
“My brother came over while I was there at the apartment.”
Well, shit. That couldn’t be good. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s all right. I just want to focus on something else.”
“Want me to shoot him? I could make it look like an accident.” I’d meant these words as a joke, as a throw away to make her smile, but it had the opposite effect. She peered up at me as if I’d said something unforgivable, as if I’d just slapped her across the face. “I’m kidding, of course. You know that.”
Yet she continued to study my face as if she didn’t know that. As if she felt unnerved by something.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked her again, feeling worried now. I wanted to hold her, to kiss away whatever this was, but she pulled back.
“I’m going to go work on the deposits.”
“Baby, wait…”
But then my cell chimed with an incoming text, this time from Dante Bianchi.
Need to move up the date to ASAP. Can we meet Sunday at midnight?
Fuck.
I’d intended to plan out his exit strategy before now, but since I’d made Kelly my priority lately, my progress on the Dante exchange front was nil. It would take time to put this together as well as considerable effort. Not to mention collecting favors from people who’d undoubtedly want one back.
“It’s fine,” Kelly spoke to me from my threshold, keeping her back to me. “You’ve got work to do, and so do I.”
Then, she was out the door.
After our rather uncomfortable interaction at the bistro on Friday, things between Kelly and I seemed a bit tense. We went to bed without making love that night, and I couldn’t get her to tell me what was wrong. Saturday, too, felt off.
She seemed preoccupied and stressed, and I desperately wanted to kick her brother’s ass. Everything had been wonderful until she’d spoken to him. He’d been a thorn in our sides since the get-go, and now whatever he’d said was affecting our precious time together. I would’ve given everything I owned to find out the contents of their discussion.
Luckily, Sunday morning I’d awakened to find her nuzzling up against me in her sleep, and everything escalated quickly from there. We’d basically attacked one another like starving people attacking an offering of food. After that, things sort of equalized and we went back to taking delight in one another. I was so relieved to have everything return to normal.
I’d told Kelly I had to run some errands and wouldn’t be back at the suite until late tonight, which while technically wasn’t a falsehood, it still made me feel sleazy.
I already had to conceal so much from her, to cover up so many of my family’s secret dealings as they related to the endless amounts of money being filtered through the bistro. Cash that went through her sweet, innocent hands. I hated to add yet another omission to the pile, but it couldn’t be helped.
I’d already finished a serving of Rosa’s excellent antipasto salad and was most of the way through her stuffed rigatoni when Alessandro started snooping.
“You going to leave the plate, Marco?”
I ignored him and kept shoveling in the food. The sooner I was done, the sooner I could get out of here and prepare for my meeting with Dante. Besides, I really was hungry. Multiple sexual encounters all day long would do that to a guy, and earlier, Kelly and I had attempted to make up for our lost time.
“Haven’t seen you put it away like this since before the fire,” Gabriel added, never one to pussyfoot around a difficult subject.