Vito laughs. “I’ll handle Thomas Perri, Boss.”
***
Christy
Over the next week, pretty much every moment is spent at Tony’s side. Every once in a while he needs privacy but I’m never far from him. Dominic still studies me as if he’s trying to figure me out, however, he never says a word or treats me with anything but respect.
It isn’t until almost an entire week has passed that we have our first argument. We’re at his bookstore, I’m reading an Italian dictionary, trying to become comfortable with the language. Once again, I feel useless as Tony and Charlie argue over a shipment that was supposed to have arrived and hasn’t. After Charlie slams out of his office, I give it a minute before I bring up what I had been thinking.
“Maybe I can help around the bookstore or something? For a little while, before I go back to nursing. To you know, keep busy.”
The lines appear on his forehead for the first time in almost a week. “You aren’t going back to nursing.”
“What?” I cannot believe how flatly he says it. As if he was daring me to argue with him.
“You aren’t going back to nursing,” he says it slowly. I’m not really surprised other women have tried to kill him. “You are going to focus on our children and home. You haven’t even done anything around the house to make it yours.”
Oh my god, I’m back in the fifties. “I love being a nurse. I didn’t work so hard for my degree to become a stay-at-home mom.”
“You will love being a mother. How does it make sense to long for so many years to become a mother, then let someone else raise your children? No. If we need a nanny to help, fine, but no one else will raise our children but us.”
His question stings. When I was with Eddie, I told him that I wanted to stay home with our child for at least the first year. He had refused. Three months was fine, any longer and I would be spoiling our child. Also, where was the money going to come from while I was home? Yet the way Tony says it, like a decree, annoys the fuck out of me.
“I loved being a nurse. It takes a lot out of you, but it was a part of who I was.” I need him to understand that I do want to go back to nursing. “Not immediately, but eventually.”
Leaning back, he studies me. “You let the job consume you. You loved being a nurse because it gave you an outlet to help people the way you weren’t helped as a child. Eventually, is when the kids are in high school, and they don’t want anything to do with us anymore.”
I roll my eyes. “Did I slip and fall into the fifties? What about when you aren’t here, and I’m raising a half dozen kids all by myself? How will I take care of us?”
He laughs, and oh lord, the sound skims up my tummy and fills me with liquid heat. “There’s over sixty million spread out over a half dozen accounts to take care of you and our kids when I’m gone. And Dominic would always make sure you are taken care of.”
Holy shit, sixty million dollars?
“Don’t look so excited. We Sabatinis live long lives. My great-grandfather was ninety-seven, in great health and had all his wits about him when he passed. The only reason he died was because his wife died first. After she died, it wasn’t a year before he followed her. My grandfather was the same at ninety-five. His wife died, and it was only a few months before he passed on too. As much as I hate my parents went so young, I think it’s how they would have wanted—together.”
I’m drawn to him, and he pulls me into his lap. I love being in his lap, with him all around me. I feel so safe in his arms. “It was a car accident, wasn’t it?”
Nodding, he runs a hand down my back. “They died on impact, thank god. My wife was in the back seat. It’s how she got hooked on painkillers. Then she couldn’t even keep her shit together and overdosed on them a few years later.”
“I’m sorry you lost all three of them so close together.” I look at the picture of his parents on his desk. His father was as handsome as he is, and his mother was beautiful. Reaching for the picture, I run a finger over his father.
“I didn’t miss my wife but with her death, Anthony found out I supplied her with pain pills when she ran out of the ones the doctor gave her. He blamed me and went out on his own. She was a shitty mother in life and in death.” His bitterness causes an ache deep down. He’s had children, raised them and then lost them. Nodding at the picture. “My mother was the only real mother my sons had.”
I spot something in the
picture. “Rosie? I thought your mother’s name was Sophia?”
He smiles as he nods. “It was. My parents didn’t have a conventional beginning either. Her family and mine had bad blood. My mother hated my father. He didn’t understand why. He fell for her, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Remember I told you about her love of Shakespeare? My father called her Rose from those lines in Romeo and Juliet. Eventually, it became Rosie. It was just between them. She didn’t answer to Rosie to anyone but him.”
“So you get it from your father? The not taking no for an answer.” I trail a hand over his cheek.
“Hm, yes. I’m a Sabatini through and through. We go after what we want and we keep it once we have it.” He purrs as he grabs my ass and squeezes.
Laughing, I catch his hand. “What is this on your ring?”
Bringing up his hand, he shows me. “It’s a lynx. This was my great-grandfather’s. He had it made in honor of a lynx saving his life and it becoming the family pet.”
“A lynx as a family pet? How did a lynx save his life and not eat him or something?” I run a finger over the ring.