Page 76 of Something New

Instead of going home I head to a bar near my penthouse. I am too agitated to sleep. I need to bring my agitation down a few levels before I go home.

I order a whiskey, neat, on ice. Then I sit by the window overlooking the city and I sip it. Letting time drift forward,towards a future where her and I will be together without any of this annoyance. Without interruption.

It grows later and darker and finally, just past one in the morning, I am ready to go home.

Sleep doesn’t come easily and when I wake up, my body is heavy and I’m angry the moment I open my eyes.

I thought, with how things were going between us, that I wouldn’t have to use her pregnancy as a trap anymore. But thank fuck I had that back-up plan in place before any of this started. I thought things were going so well between us that if I asked her to marry me again, she would have said yes.

My brothers fucked it up by rushing into her apartment. Those assholes interfered where they shouldn’t have.

But when I speak to my father in a few weeks with evidence that she is pregnant - he might hate her - but blood is blood, and he will never turn a Vece child away. He will have no choice but to accept her into our family.

What I need to do over the next week or two is focus on my work and try to ease the tension between my family and myself so that when the time comes to tell my father about the baby, he isn’t full of hatred over what happened.

And I still want to watch her.

I have to.

It’s in my blood and bones to be near her.

I will focus on my work. I will do my duties and every free moment I have I will be with her, near her and out of sight.

When I show up at the warehouse later that day to run through the shipment schedule and check up on stock levels my brothers eye me but say nothing other than hello.

It is awkward at first but when they see I am there to work and not cause any shit, they start to relax and get into the swing of things like old times.

My father doesn’t show up that day, but I know Masaccio will report back to him. He always reports back to him. Like his little servant. His future heir. It makes me sick - the level of loyalty they have for that man.

After work I drive to her apartment and watch her from a distance. I have to make sure she can’t stop me, I can’t risk upsetting the appearance that I am giving her space as I promised.

She needs to think she is free of me for the time being.

Nerissa spends a lot of time on her laptop, job hunting, and she doesn’t go out at all. I can already see the signs. I can already see the changes in her.

I wonder how long it will take her to notice what is happening to her body?

I watch and I wait and when I think about our future I smile.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Nerissa

Iknow he’s there. Even when I can’t see him, I can feel him.

Whatever connection we have is strong enough that it allows me to sense when he is watching.

I don’t understand it, but I can’t deny it.

It’s been over a week since I asked him for time and it sounds crazy, but I’m finding his presence reassuring. I hate the fact that I want him close to me. I hate the fact that I’m relieved he didn’t give up. He is being respectful in his own way by staying a distance away, but I’m glad he’s still there.

I’ve been spending every waking moment looking for a job. I have been talking to the HR teams at the law firms I already applied to and trying to figure out why they keep turning me down. I even resent my application to a few of them to see if they would have the same response. It was the same. The same nonsense replies that make little sense.

At this point I am ready to march into one of their offices and demand to see a manager just because I need answers. How can I keep trying if I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong? I need proper constructive criticism.

Places that turned me down have even hired a few of my friends from university, including Hayley, I did so much better at university than they did. It justdoes notmake sense,and it’s driving me crazy.

So, I can’t get a job, and I can’t stop thinking about Tuomo.

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