Page 23 of Satin Empire

“Uh-huh. And where are you sleeping?” She turns to glare, arms crossed over her chest.

I speak real slow in case she’s not getting it. “I’m sleeping in here. You’re also sleeping in here. Because there’s only one bed.”

She looks up at the ceiling as if God in heaven might come down and smite me for her. “Carlo, this isn’t some fucking stupid situation where couches haven’t been invented yet.”

“I’m not sleeping on a couch.” I groan and knuckle my lower back. “I’m old, remember?”

“Great, so your new wife has to sleep in the living room?”

“No, baby. Two people, one big bed, plenty of space for both of us. Why are you fixated on the sleeping situation?”

“It’s not just that,” she says and starts to pace. I sit down and watch her, curious about this little breakdown. It’s almost sort of cute, and god, she’s so damn sexy, but we need to hammer out this situation before things slide toward untenable. “I don’t live here, okay? None of my stuff is here. And this place is a freaking mancave. It’s so… gray. It’s like a freaking dungeon.”

My eyebrows raise. “Huh. I hadn’t noticed that.” She has a good point. My idea of decorating involved a lot of black and white pictures and not much else. I also left most of the walls white, and a lot of my fixtures are the color of wrought-iron. The place does have a sort of dungeony look.

“But also, what the hell am I supposed to do here?” She stops pacing and I can see the desperation in her face. She’s nervous—no, she’s fucking scared, and I can’t blame her.

“What do you do at home?” I ask, genuinely curious, because most people have a pretty good idea how to answer that question, and yet she seems at a total loss right now. It occurs to me that she’s never lived anywhere but in her family’s house, which means she doesn’t know a damn thing about living on her own. Or in this case, with a stranger for a husband.

“I help with Niccolo, my little brother, and I work.” She chews on her thumbnail. “I’m not allowed to do much else.”

My god. She isn’t allowed, like that asshole Orsino used to control her every move.

“You can still work,” I tell her, but I don’t touch the whole little brother thing, because screw having kids here. No way that’s happening, at least until they’re my kids. I love my nieces and nephews, but I also love that my house is a refuge from their boundless energy.

My response makes her pause. “Really?”

“Sure, what the fuck do I care? We’ll get you a car if you need one.”

“A car.” She stares at me like I’ve gone insane. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, Alana, you can have a car.” I lean back on my hands, trying not to smile at her. What the hell did Orsino do to this poor girl? I can probably guess—the fucking old-school mafia pricks have a seriously regressive idea about what’s appropriate for the various genders—but that shit stops now.

“Okay. A car.” She laughs to herself, and it’s a little more hysterical than I’d like. “Can I visit my little brother?”

“Whenever you want.”

“That’s… okay, that’s good, he’ll like that. I can pick him up from school.”

“And you can drop him off. Alana, I don’t give a shit what you do with your life, so long as you’re not out showing your tits to strangers.”

Her expression hardens again. “I don’t do that. Normally, I mean. Are you going to bring that up forever?”

“Pretty much.” I laugh at how pissed she gets and walk over to her, but she skitters away out of reach. So much for trying to calm her down, and it’s not like I can blame her for freaking out. This morning she had a routine, she had a structure, she had a little world, and now she’s living in a stranger’s apartment and sleeping in a stranger’s bed. Now she’s a wife, and that’s fucked up. I’m a husband, and that’s equally fucked up.

“We need rules,” she says, rubbing her face with both hands. “We need a schedule. Maybe a chart?—”

“I am not doing a chart,” I say, pointing at her. “Don’t you dare try to make me do a chart.”

“I can put little gold stars every time you refrain from being a prick for six hours.”

I touch my chin with one finger. “I do like gold stars, but six hours is asking a bit much. Let’s start at twenty minutes and go from there.”

She groans and sits down in the chair I have in the corner. I don’t think anyone’s ever sat there before—it’s mostly where I toss old suits before taking them to the dry cleaners.

Which makes me realize that my space is no longer my space, it’s our space, and I’m definitely conflicted about that.

I sit down on the bed. She’s halfway across the room from me, and we’re glaring at each other like combatants. I keep slipping between wanting to drag her into my lap and wanting to throw her out on her ass. Except I can’t do the latter, and I suspect she’ll try to throat-punch me if I go for the former.

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