Page 4 of His Nephew's Ex
“It was just Astrid. And it was just tonight. You’re making this into something bigger than—”
“Just tonight?” I whip around to face my former best friend. “Was this just tonight, Astrid?”
Her silence is answer enough.
“How long?” My voice cracks despite my best efforts to keep it steady.
She looks at Flavio, and he shakes his head slightly. A warning.
“How. Long?”
“Five months,” she whispers, and the words hit me like individual bullets. “It started five months ago.”
Five fucking months.
All this time and yet, she was still helping me plan tonight, listening to me worry about whether I was ready, assuring me that Flavio cared about me enough to wait. Five months of looking me in the eye while she knew exactly why he was so patient with my boundaries.
Because he wasn’t patient, he was just getting satisfied elsewhere.
“Get out,” I repeat, but my voice has no strength left. “Both of you. Now.”
Flavio’s expression shifts again, back to that calculated charm. “Bambina, please. Let’s talk about this tomorrow when you’ve calmed down—”
“I said, get out!”
“You don’t want to do this,” he says, and now his voice carries something that makes the hair on my arms stand up. “Think about what you’re throwing away. Think about who you’re making an enemy of.”
And there it is. The threat wrapped in soft words, the reminder of exactly whose nephew I’m dealing with.
“Is that supposed to scare me?” I laugh, and this time it sounds genuinely amused. “You think I’m afraid of you? Of your uncle?I run a bar in this neighborhood, Flavio. I deal with dangerous men every night. You’re nothing special.”
His eyes narrow. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” I move toward my bedroom, stepping carefully around the broken glass to avoid more cuts. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t know shit about dangerous men. But I know plenty about pathetic ones.”
I grab the first thing I can reach from beside my bed—a Louisville Slugger that Clay insisted I keep for protection. The weight of the baseball bat feels good in my hands, solid and real in a way nothing else has tonight.
“Loriana.” Flavio’s voice is sharp now, all pretense of charm abandoned. “Put that down.”
“Or what?” I grip the bat tighter, drawing strength from its familiar weight. “You’ll call your uncle? Tell him the mean lady won’t let you finish fucking her friend in her bed?”
“You’re being crazy.”
“Am I?” I take a practice swing, the bat cutting through the air with a satisfying whoosh. “Because I’m thinking I’m being remarkably sane. For the first time in six months, actually.”
Astrid scrambles to grab her clothes from my floor, her earlier bravado completely evaporated. “Flavio, maybe we should just go.”
“We’re not going anywhere until she apologizes,” he says, and the entitlement in his voice makes me want to swing this bat at his head.
“Apologizes?” I repeat. “For what, exactly?”
“For overreacting. For making a scene. For being unreasonable about a simple misunderstanding.”
I stare at this man I thought I loved, and wonder how I could have been so spectacularly wrong about someone. Six months of my life wasted on a lie wrapped in pretty words and patient kisses.
“You want an apology?” I adjust my grip on the bat. “Here’s my apology: I’m sorry I wasted six months of my life on a spoiled fuckboy-child who thinks his uncle’s reputation makes him untouchable. I’m sorry I trusted a woman who would sell out her best friend for a few minutes with someone else’s boyfriend. And I’m sorry I’m about to redecorate my apartment with your blood if you don’t get out in the next thirty seconds.”
Flavio’s face twists with rage, and for a moment, I think he might actually try to take the bat from me. But then Astrid touches his arm.
