Page 108 of Marry Me Not
They were hard and angry. But after a second of me staring right into those blue depths, they softened. Flickered with understanding.
I was introspective enough to know where all my insecurities stemmed from. Now he knew it too.
Getting over them? Well, I was a work in progress. But it didn’t escape me that he’d been aiding the progress in subtle ways.
The waiter came by to explain the menu, which was a relief since I hadn’t absorbed a single word I’d read. Either he was the world’s best salesperson, or Cosimo was even hungrier than I was, because we somehow ended up ordering every single dish I expressed even a remote interest in. It was easily enough for four people.
When the waiter left, Cosimo leaned back in his chair and glanced around the restaurant. A short chuckle escaped him.
“What is it?” I asked.
He nodded toward the poster hanging over the bar. “La Dolce Vita. Reminds me of Romolo’s Fellini phase.”
“Romolo had a Fellini phase?”
“He’s a movie buff. When we were teenagers, he forced Alessio and me to sit through multiple Fellini marathons with him.”
“Did you like them?”
“I thought they were boring as hell.” His mouth curved faintly. “I never had any desire to revisit them, but maybe I’d appreciate them more now that I’m older.”
I tried to picture a younger version of him sitting through old Italian films beside his brothers. It was strange to imagine Cosimo as a boy. “Are you and your brothers close?”
“We are now after Dad’s death.” His gaze lowered briefly to the table. “Probably closer than we’ve ever been. But it wasn’t always that way.”
“How come?”
He straightened out his cutlery, seemingly unsure of how much of an answer he wanted to give me. The firelight flickered over his face. Despite his hesitation, he looked more relaxed than I could ever remember him being.
“My mother deliberately tried to keep us divided,” he said, reaching for his wine.
I frowned. By now, I’d thought I understood the kind of person Vita was. Manipulative. Power hungry. Controlling. But Cosimo’s tone made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight.
There was more to it, wasn’t there?
“Why would she do that?”
Cosimo swirled his wine. “My mother puts on a certain face for the world. My brothers and I are the only ones who’ve ever seen the real her.” His voice stayed even, but there was ice beneath it now. “I think she always knew if the three of us got too close, we might stand up to her. She didn’t want that.”
“How did she try to keep you divided?”
“When we were younger, it was logistics. She encouraged Alessio and me to move out, leaving Romolo at the penthouse with her.She invited us over for dinner, but always individually. Then, as we got older and started working for Dad, she made him place us in different parts of the business, working on different things.” His jaw tightened. “Sometimes she’d tell Romolo I’d complained about him, or tell me that Romolo had complained about me. Little things. Things with enough truth in them to make them believable, but enough distortion to create distrust.”
The unease in me swelled.
“We were busy. Never fully caught on to what she was doing,” he continued. “Didn’t have enough honest conversations.”
Heat brushed over my cheeks. I knew a thing or two about that.
“But you’re united against her now.”
“We are.” There was no triumph in his voice. Only caution. “I hope it’ll be enough to keep her from getting what she wants.”
The waiter returned with some of theantipastiwe’d ordered, and for a moment, the conversation paused while he explained each dish. I only half listened. I was too distracted by the unexpected commonality between Cosimo and me.
When the waiter moved away, I reached for an olive and popped it into my mouth. “My dad tried to create distance between us too. He always favored Rafe over me and Elena, and he made sure we knew it. When you’re a kid, all you want is for your parents to love you, so for a long time, we resented Rafe. We thought he was stealing Dad’s attention from us.” I rubbed my thumb over a stray crumb on the tablecloth. “It took us years to understand what holding that attention on himself cost Rafe. My brother was always trying to protect us, even when we didn’t see it. I still regret how coldly my sister and I acted toward him before we learned the full story.”
Cosimo studied me. “It’s good that you had Elena.”
