Page 79 of Bitter Poetry
“Please…”
My plea only incites him. The relief as he releases my hair is brief before the back of his hand smacks into my cheek. The pain arrives in an explosion. My head thuds back against the floor, the thick carpet offering minimal cushioning from the blow—my vision swims.
“You let another man touch you again, and I will kill you. Do you understand?”
I taste blood. My blood. But I am already flying, leaving the earthly confines of my body, my mind reaching for an alternate reality where it’s Christian’s blood I taste as we share a tumultuous kiss full of hate and burning need.
Reality intrudes when Ettore pushes into me. The pain of him entering my dry passage threatens to make me hurl.
“Please,” I whisper. Tears trickle down the sides of my face and merge with my hairline. Only I’m not calling to Ettore for mercy. I already know he has none. I’m calling to the man I should have married, who then abandoned me... who I haven’t seen in more than a year.
Dante.
I’m also calling to the last link I have to him, a man who hates me—who has every right to after what I have done—I’m calling to Christian.
CHAPTER 25
CARMELA
Nothing is without consequences. As I sit at my vanity and stare at my reflection, I accept that today is a full-coverage kind of day.
Did I really think there would be no fallout after I blithely announced that Christian had touched me? Clearly I wasn’t thinking at all for those words to escape my lips in a moment of rebellion that I deeply regret.
I need to get out of this bedroom and this house if only for a while. For reasons that escape me, I also need to see Christian.
It’s a bad idea, and dangerous. He’s going to be furious, justifiably so. But I’m also feeling reckless, and I put a call through to the gate house requesting Christian to take me shopping.
I’m surprised when I get a call almost immediately that my driver is ten minutes away.
When I go downstairs, Ettore is already gone.
“Mr. Gallo left early,” Brigida tells me as she wipes down an already spotless counter in an oddly nervous gesture.
The environment feels off, like the shroud of circumstances beyond my control is leaching through. Brigida is a good woman—she was my family maid before Ettore claimed our home. My rash words will have ramifications for everyone in my husband’s orbit.
“Peter is on his way,” she says, still scrubbing imaginary dirt from the kitchen countertop.
“Peter?” My tone is sharp and brittle, much like how I feel.
The door opens as if on cue, and Peter walks in. A buzz cut, striking blue eyes, and a bump on the bridge of his nose that suggests it has been broken more than once. Peter has been part of my husband’s closest security team for some time. He’s competent, near invisible, and has never done anything to offend. But I don’t want Peter.
He stops with the door half open, his gaze swinging from me to Brigida and back again.
He slowly shuts the door. “Cold out there today.”
“Yes,” Brigida replies. “The weather report mentioned a chance of snow.”
“No.” The word carries a hint of hysteria. “I want Christian.”
Brigida stops her manic scrubbing.
At least Peter is making eye contact with me. “He has been allocated elsewhere.”
“Well, unallocate him.”
A deafening silence follows while my chest heaves and my lips tremble.
Peter ducks his head. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Gallo. I cannot fulfill your request.”
