Page 95 of Mafia Bride
But Vacation Santino is different than Workday Santino. Or maybe this guy making bad jokes and detouring to pass the Coliseum as if everyone doesn’t know what it looks like isn’t Vacation Santino. Maybe the guy in the aviators colorfully cursing in traffic as he laughs about being on the wrong side of the road is Italy Santino, and the other guy, who drives on the right, is America Santino.
I feel myself slipping further into the deep that is Santino DiLustro.
I feel it happening in real time. It’s terrifying. I miss him being an asshole.
Except I don’t. Because if I could keep this version of him, be it Italy Santino or Vacation Santino, I would for an eternity.
After leaving Rome, Santino puts the top up as we head onto a highway. The rush of the tires under me puts my mind into a pleasant fugue.
Am I happy? Is this me accepting who I am, who I always was?
Or is this what I feel like in the absence of terror?
We pull into a breathtaking house by the sea with sweeping eaves, a tiled roof, and windows surrounded by lush vegetation. I can’t see the ocean very well, but can hear it the second he opens my door, and I’m in utter paradise.
“You approve,” he says as if he’s asking, which as usual…he isn’t. He’s stating a fact with a twinkle in his stupid beautiful eyes.
“You want me to say yes,” I reply, spooning him a question as statement like a bit of his own, sweet medicine. I’m not as confident as he is, but it’s a start.
“You will.”
Before I can come up with an answer, he scoops me up under the knees and shoulders the way he did when he took me out of Loretta’s and—swinging the door open—carries me into this impressive villa, buzzing like a newlywed, and sets me down at the back of the house. It’s surrounded by towering indoor plants and a bank of windows that touch both the floor and ceiling. The ocean sprawls out before us, deep and vast and wine-dark.
“If you insist on your own room”—he gestures behind him—“there are plenty to choose from.”
A shot of heat burns through me and rests in my core. He said it casually, fully expecting me to claim the opposite side of the house from him, and yet I feel like he knew exactly what kind of thoughts entered my head.
Sharing a bed with the king.
Every moment of intimacy we’ve shared flashes through my mind like an old film reel. Pressed against the pool with a kiss. Held down and spanked raw. Bent over the table as he mouths a description of what, when, and how he’s going to take me.
He’d do those things to me.
All I have to do is let him.
He says nothing. I say nothing.
It’s time to put some more space between us so I can think. Time to forget everything that happened on the way here. Time to dig out the Santino-shaped barb buried in my skin. I take my bag and haul it to the opposite side of the house. He gets in front to lead me up the stairs, to a set of double doors and swings them open.
The room is like a spa—carefully luxurious, piled high with books and vibrant green houseplants, the sun pours in and the Mediterranean is just past a line of trees.
I turn to him. He puts the bag down and places his hands in his pockets. He looks pretty pleased with himself.
“Thank you,” I say.
“InItaliano, per favore.”
He’s not really saying please.
“Grat-zee,” I say with a red-blooded, stars-and-stripes American accent that only sounds rude because I know better. “Grazie,” I say properly before he reacts, then add, “ti apprezzo che tu…I think.”
I think I’m saying it right. His laugh tells me I’m not, but he lets it slide.
“I’ll see you downstairs,” he says slowly in Italian, and I nod my understanding.
When he leaves, he closes the double doors behind him, and I’m alone.
Stripping off my travel clothes, I put on a silky soft robe left hanging in the closet and recline on the patio outside my room—one of many patios that stretch across the back of the house. Between the house and the beach sits a yard dotted with white marble statues, a rose garden, and a pool that’s even bigger than the one at home.
