Page 8 of Brutal Husband

“I’m very convincing,” I tell them and hang up.

There’s a lot I should be doing right now, but I’m not ready to let Rieta out of my sight. I can spare a few minutes to follow her home and watch her elegant legs as she gets out of her car and goes inside.

Only Rieta doesn’t go home. She drives aimlessly for a few minutes and then heads to the next suburb over, parking in front of an expensive apartment building. She presses the front door buzzer and goes inside.

My heart thumps angrily in my chest.

Who the fuck is she dropping in on when she told me she was going straight home? I scour the windows and glimpse a woman with similarly colored hair as Rieta’s. She opens a door inside an apartment and then hugs Rieta as she enters. A moment later, there are wine glasses in the woman’s hand, and the two of them disappear.

I turn the engine off and sit in the dark, my eyes trained on the window. Does Rieta have a sister? That woman looked like a sister, but I’m no less furious than if she were meeting a man. I don’t care that she’s not with a man. I’m angry about how easily the lie spilled over her red lips.

Are you going straight home?Yes.

I used to put up with a lot of shit in my life, but those days are done. I’m not an unreasonable man, but being lied to? That dangerously pisses me off.

I fucking hate liars.

4

Rieta

If you keep wriggling around like that, I’ll have to do something about it.

I drive around without seeing where I’m going while Nero’s words echo in my ears. My body feels hot and sensitized, and I can’t stop squeezing my thighs together.

Like what?

Like fuck you.

I whimper as I reach down between my legs, one hand on the steering wheel, the other pulling up my dress and pushing into my underwear. My fingers touch slippery, swollen flesh that doesn’t feel like my own. What’s going on down here? What’swrongwith me? I explore my clit, and then slide the tip of my finger into my core and cry out. I’ve touched myself before, but I’ve never felt my body react like this. Nero’s body, his voice, and his deep brown eyes have done something to me. I don’t understand why.

I didn’t evenlikehim.

My breath rushes in and out over my lips as I pant, thinking about his hands on me, even though they never were. What a bastard, managing to upend my evening like this with a few dirty, threatening words and his teeth nipping my lower lip.

Imagine how good it will be when he fucks me.

I moan, and then break off with a strangled sound as I realize I’m sitting at a red light and the stranger in the next car over is staring at me. I yank my hand from inside my underwear, and when the lights change to green, I gun the engine and shoot forward. I promised to go see my sister, Isabel, after meeting Nero. Anything to delay going home to Mom while I’m still in this state.

By the time I arrive at Isabel’s sleek, modern building, I’m so frustrated and annoyed that I slam the door and march up the steps to ring the doorbell. A moment later, Isabel buzzes me inside the building.

“How was the date?” she asks as she opens the door. Isabel is effortlessly elegant with a bobbed haircut and wearing a silk camisole dress.

“Date?Date?” I exclaim, pushing past her and going inside. “I have no idea what that was, but it wasn’t a date. Nero Lombardi is the rudest man I’ve ever met.”

In the kitchen, Isabel takes a bottle with an embossed gold label out of the refrigerator, opens it, and pours white wine into two long-stemmed glasses. I’m not old enough to drink in public, but over the past year, I’ve been known to indulge in the occasional small glass of wine with family. “Did he talk on and on about himself? Did he grope you?”

“No, but the things he said, Isabel. The C-word. He’s so crass.” I accept my glass of wine and my cheeks heat at the memory. Nice husbands-to-be don’t call you a pretty piece of cunt, do they?

Isabel bursts out laughing as we sit down on the sofa together in the living room. “He swore? Men in Nero’s line of work have all kinds of vices. I wouldn’t concern myself over a little swearing.”

“He was being crass about me. Us. Together.”

I look hopefully to Isabel for some understanding. Isabel works in finance for some shady corporation, has had sex, and refuses to get married. When I pointed out to my mother that maybe I’d like to work instead of getting married, she laughed and said,And do what, Rieta? Isabel got all my brains. You need to get married.

Hearing that stung. All right, maybe I’m not Ivy League material, but does that make me stupid and suitable for nothing but marriage and babies? This was a conversation we had three days ago. I could see that Mom was on the verge of losing her temper at the sight of my seventeen-year-old half-sister Mia slouched on the sofa and playing on her phone instead of doing her homework, so I kept my mouth shut. Isabel does what she likes, Mia rebels, and I’m the peacekeeper. The middle child. I was so focused on trying to keep the peace that I ended up on a date with a bewildering man.

There’s a glimmer of amusement around Isabel’s lips. My older sister is what my mother calls, with a pained expression, worldly.

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