Page 58 of Little Deer
A vicious cycle that will never end. I hope these babies are boys, let it keep going. Another girl will be the death of me. I don’t know if I have the strength to get her out this time. Maybe if I keep her here I won’t be alone. I sent the others away. Maybe they’ll have a good life. Misery loves company, so why not have someone to spend it with?
More tears slipdown my cheeks. God, she sounds so angry and alone, but also the way she speaks of her children infuriates me. Talking about keeping a daughter so she doesn’t have to endure the abuse alone. I look at the date at the top of the page. It’s definitely after I would have been born, so that has to mean she’s talking about Gia. How selfish could she be?
“Cerbiatta,what’s the matter?” Massimo’s voice demands, making me jerk my head up to stare at him in surprise. There’s a slight flare of panic in his eyes as they search my face. Then his eyes land on the journal in my hand and they narrow and he says a word that I have to imagine is an Italian curse of some kind. “She’s been dead for years and she’s still making livesmiserable,” he mutters, gently taking the journal from my hands and sitting beside me on the couch.
The next thing I know, I’m lifted into his arms and placed on his lap, his arms around me in a tight hug.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Amara and Lazaro smirk at each other, before they look back at the notes all along the wall. Sienna and Rori share a grin but say nothing.
Up until now, none of them have said anything to me about Massimo, but that’s probably going to be over soon. Still, it’s been far too long since someone’s held me like this.
And he smells so good. I want to bury my face in his neck and breathe him in. Instead I look at him in surprise and brush the tears from my face. “What do you mean?”
He doesn’t answer that, just cups my face. “Don’t cry,cerbiatta. She is not worth any of your tears.”
Is he saying that because I’m upset or because he’s assuming that something she wrote was directed at me? Either way, I tell him, “I’m angry at her for doing what she did. What she wrote. It wasn’t even about me. She didn’t care about me or Sienna. We were the reason she felt that her husband hated her. She wanted to keep Gia though if she was a girl because she wanted someone to suffer with her. It was selfish of her to even think that. On the other hand, I can see how lonely she was. How angry she was put in that position in the first place because her family made her. Betrayed by the people who were supposed to protect her. She was doing what she thought she had to, even if it was very wrong.”
He looks like he wants to argue with me, but then thinks better of it. Instead, he murmurs, “I don’t like seeing you cry,cerbiatta.”
I laugh wryly. “Then you are going to hate being around me in the foreseeable future. Post-pregnancy hormones are terrible and worse, I swear. I’ve been in shock the last couple days, butnormally I range from crying, angry, to manically happy, and sometimes just plain insane.”
“Amen to that,” Kida calls out loudly from inside the hidden office. “She’s a raging bitch too. Don’t try and take her food. She’ll cut you.” I hear snickers in the office, and I look at Massimo pointedly.
“I think the food thing is most women,” Amara snickers. “Or when men try to tell us what we should be eating.” She gives Lazaro a pointed look. Lazaro doesn’t look repentant in the slightest, and instead just gives her a heated stare that has me looking away from them. Damn, how does Amara not melt into a puddle?
“I can handle anything you throw my way,” Massimo assures me. “I lived through Sofia’s hormonal teenage years. I can survive anything.” He winks at me. “You might get upset, but you won’t try to gut me for looking at you the wrong way.”
“I’ll still do that,” Sofia says as she steps out of the office space. “Lucy, I’ll make sure you know how to do it so you don’t get blood all over the place when it eventually happens.” Then she gives me a coy smile. “And if you ever need any ammo for when he does piss you off, I have so many stories to tell you.”
Massimo tries to remain neutral about that, but there’s a barely perceptible stiffening of his body. I arch a brow at him. “Problem?”
“Nope.”
Sure.
I don’t miss the warning look he sends Sofia, who ignores him and heads over to where Amara is talking to Lazaro and Rori. Sienna is looking at one of the other sheets, a frown on her face, and her brow furrowed.
“Ignore her,cerbiatta. She’s just trying to cause trouble.”
I look back at him. “Uh huh. I’m not stupid, Massimo. You’re hot, stupidly rich, and have women throwing themselvesat you probably all the time. I doubt she’d tell me much I haven’t already guessed. As long as it’s nothing terrible, then no judgment from me.”
He doesn’t look like he believes me, but he lets the subject drop. Instead, he looks around me and smiles at Soren. “He’s tuckered out, huh?”
I nod and glance at the clock on the wall. “He’ll probably wake up soon for a diaper change and feed.” I take him in again, the still damp hair and the change of clothes. The t-shirt is gray and molds to his chest, shoulders, and biceps tightly, showing off the ink on his arms and what’s peaking out from the top of his shirt along his chest. He’s missing the gray sweatpants to match, or he’d be a walking book boyfriend fantasy.
Massimo gives me a slow, sultry smile. “Like what you see,bella?”
I blush. Damn him. I haven’t been so shy about stuff like this since I was a teenager. I’m blaming the hormones. Instead of answering—the man does not need another ego boost—I ask, “Did you get everything sorted that you needed to?”
His smile drops, but he covers it up quickly by nodding. “We got some more information that will come in handy.”
“Including who attacked the house?”
He nods. “It was your uncle, Giovanni. He’s very upset that we killed a couple of your cousins.”
I blink, and an uneasy feeling settles in my gut. Is that why he showered and changed? Was he torturing someone to get that information? I look over at Lazaro and see that he’s also wearing something different than earlier. Was he there too?
Kida’s warning earlier fills my head.Massimo is a nice guy, but he’s mafia. They don’t play by the same rules. And I don’t want you to get hurt.
