Page 28 of Bought By the Mafia

“No. Merely stating facts.”

“If you think you’re going to get an ally in me by trashing another woman, you thought wrong.”

He rolled his eyes. “Ugh. You’re no fun. I get why Gio likes you.”

Again, I clamped down on another gurgle of laughter. If only he knew what type of relationship his brother and I had. “Trust me, your brother doesn’t like me,” I whispered.

“Yeah, I know. You stole our family’s money blah, blah, blah. But the way he’s looking at you right now says otherwise.”

I glanced up and saw Gio staring right back at us. His gaze had been on us the entire time, I see. It was the same intense gaze that had the power to turn up the heat inside me. I felt Nico’s hand snake around my arm and he slid me towards him. I almost jumped at the sudden contact. “What are you doing?” Nico had a mischievous grin. “Just look at him,” he whispered in my ear. To anyone else, it would seem like we were a couple talking intimately. And it no doubt looked like that to Gio. Knowing him and the accusations he made against me regarding Chef Pierre, he probably thought Nico and I were arranging a hookup later. Nico chuckled. “Man, I’ve never seen him this angry before. He looks like he’s about to leap off from where he is and maul me off you.” Abruptly, he lets me go. “If you wanted proof, there it is. See, he likes you. He’s never been able to shut up about you, ever since you two met.”

“Only to curse me, probably.”

“Yeah, but I could tell there was something laden beneath those curses. Let’s just say, I’ve never met anyone love hating someone as much as he did. I mean, he once told me that—” He glanced at Gio who was still glaring at us, and went silent.

“Told you what?”

Nico chose right this moment, after all his talkativeness, to shut up. He refused to elaborate further and asking the meaning of his statement only resulted in him giving me a cryptic look. The ceremony continued with no further conversation between us. I thought I could press him further, but by the time we got to the reception, a ballroom five minutes away from the church, he was gone. I had spotted him briefly with one of the bridesmaids, but even she, too, was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s your brother?” I asked Gio when we settled down at our table. It was just the two of us so far, and the other chairs were empty.

“Which one?”

“Nico.” Just I saw him pass us and called out to him, but he didn’t respond.

“That’s Rico, the other twin,” Gio said. Of course. They both looked alike and were very hard to distinguish. “What do want with Nico? I saw you two being rather cozy in church.”

“You’re going to have to ask him. He was the one being cozy with me.”

“You have to be careful with Niccolo. He’s not your typical mark.”

“Ugh, not this again. I wasn’t trying to fuck your brother. I wouldn’t jeopardize the biggest source of money I’ve ever had by fraternizing with its employees and relatives, wouldn’t I?”

“No. You’re right,” his mood shifted and in a low and serious tone he said, “I’m sorry for teasing you. And I’m sorry about the other night. I spoke to Chef Pierre, and he described a father-daughter relationship between you two.”

I frowned. Where was this coming from? He was icy towards me ever since he came back from his work trip. He barely acknowledged my presence, and the only conversation we had was to tell me his brother had invited us to the wedding. Now he was being cordial? Something was up. “Nice to know you believe your employee over your own wife,” I said.

“I’m trying to apologize.” His voice was softer than my own accusatory one, which made me feel like a shrew, but I was too angry to care.

“Are you? Or were you embarrassed by your behavior the other night, especially after finding out you were completely off the mark? It sounds to me like you don’t want to truly ask for forgiveness and just want to make yourself feel better. So you can go back on to your usual pedestal, where you look down on me.”

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “That’s a pretty portrait you’ve painted of me.”

“Is it a lie? Sometimes,” I shook my head as I realized that I’ve constantly wondered about this. “Sometimes, I wonder why you ever married me at all.” It was obvious he hated me. He would not stop talking about it. And he seemed to not enjoy being married to me. The time we’ve spent together so far has been less than the time we spent apart. He was always on some trip or mission, and whenever we were together, we were rarely alone.

“I married you because I had to.”

I smirked. “Nico says otherwise. Apparently, Dante was the one who was supposed to marry me. Nico told me you offered to do the deed.”

“Niccolo likes to twist things. Dante already had someone he was in love with, as you can clearly see.” He nodded his head towards the couple sitting at the high table as people came to congratulate them. They looked happy, and no one could doubt they were in love. Dante’s hand would ever so gently wonder to Corina’s from time to time and Corina would lean into him as if she was unconsciously gravitating to him. The last time I saw them was at my wedding and there was a burning passion between them that did not seem to have simmered since. They were nothing like Gio and I.

“So you did it to save your brother from me. How noble.”

“Is it so hard to imagine? Do we need to re-litigate how quick you lied and stole from me?”

When I couldn’t come back with a similar retort, he leaned back in his chair with an air of smugness. I was tired of defending myself against someone who would believe nothing I said, so why bother? And besides, the twins and two bridesmaids joined us, so I couldn’t say anything more, even if I wanted to. They were all coupled up. A coupling, I assumed that only happened at this wedding and will last the duration of said ceremony. Nico was now preoccupied with his date and would whisper some inane thing in her ear that would make her burst out laughing. Rico was similar. He and his date were also preoccupied with each other, leaving us the married couple acting like two strangers forced to share a table. The minutes seemed to last an eternity. With me pretending there was interesting stuff on my phone while Giovanni took some business calls. After a while, I sent a text to my mother to see how she was doing. She gained access to her phone at the center recently, and had been ringing me here and there. From the tone of her voice, she sounded happy, maybe a little chipper than I was used to, but it could be because of the lack of drugs.

I sent her a text. “How are you doing?” She probably wasn’t near her phone and I thought she would take some time to respond, yet a message appeared immediately. “Better than yesterday. And you?”

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