Page 46 of Rotten Men

“Him?” Selene stares back at me, pulling my attention away from the retreating man that I vowed to despise.

“Don’t act coy, Selene. Is that the man I helped get out of jail? Is that your husband?” I sneer, the word still tasting like bile around my tongue.

“Yes, it is,” she affirms, crossing her arms over her chest unapologetically. I sneer at that as well.

“Hmm. Scared to meet me, is he? Don’t I deserve a ‘thank you’ for my troubles at least?” I taunt, bridging the gap between us. But Selene takes two steps back away from me, no longer comfortable with the intimacy.

Too bad,I think and remove the space she’s created. Selene places both of her hands on my chest to hold me at bay, and my cold smirk itches to come through.

“He isn’t scared. He just had some place to go.”

“Guess his priorities aren’t what they should be. If I had been locked away without being able to touch you, I doubt I would be interested in visiting neighbors when I could be fucking my wife seven ways till Sunday,” I snipe.

“You’ve never been crude, don’t start now. What do you want, Vincent?” she questions, unimpressed with my crass comment.

“Are you not even going to invite me in for coffee?” I tease.

“Coffee? The only thing I’ve seen you drink is hard liquor,” she criticizes, her censuring brow up in the air to make her point.

“Coffee will do just fine. I haven’t needed to drown myself in alcohol for the past few days. I had an epiphany of sorts,” I tell her, reaching out to grab a lock of her hair, playing with the rich silk of it through my fingers.

“Really? Do I want to know what it is?”

“That one addiction can never truly satisfy another. Alcohol can’t drown the craving of what I really thirst for. So why demean it with a pale substitute?” I watch her swallow dryly, and her eyes shimmer with thoughts of the last time we were together. I lick my lips, and she follows my errant tongue. “So how about that coffee?” I insist mischievously.

“I don’t think I have any. I haven’t been around much to shop,” she says, her cheeks turning to a blushful pink.

I lower just enough for my lips to caress her ear, and her involuntary shiver is too pronounced for her to play off. “Water then,” I hush, turning that gorgeous pink to full blown red.

“Fine!” she concedes, while her eyes scout around to make sure no one saw our private exchange.

“Come in, then,” she says before turning on her heel and climbing the three-step stoop leading to her front door.

“I intend to.”

I walk up the stairs admiring the way her perfect, peach ass fills up the generic jeans she’s wearing. This woman is a mafiaprincipessa, yet here she is acting like anormal—living in an average suburbia home and wearing average clothes instead of the designer labels she grew up with. I should have known as much that those luxuries our life offered didn’t mean anything to her. She could take it or leave it. Just like with everything else in her life, apparently.

We walk into a hallway filled with photographs and adornments, but she speedily ushers me into the kitchen, not allowing me much time to look at her homely decorations. But one thing is clear; even though this house is small, it’s a far cry from the gloomy halls of the Bianchi mansion. There is light, and color covering every inch; even the air seems lively and refreshing, holding a hint of her spring perfume smell. The kitchen is charming enough, forsaking the modern look, which keeps the homely feel even with the outdated appliances and sunshine colors.

I hate it all.

I can’t believe it, but my jealousy toward such a small thing as home décor is enough to strangle the threatening scream I yearn to release. How could she turn her back on us, just to become fucking Betty Crocker instead? I mean, she could have had it all, yet she preferred to marry a mechanic merely months after leaving us.

Did she not love any of us at all?

Last time we were together, I almost let myself believe she genuinely cared for me. That maybe there was an ounce of regret in her decision to abandon us. But as I turn around and look at the life she has built for herself, a life so foreign to the one any one of us would have offered her, I wonder if this was the real reason why she left—to pursue a life we could never give her.

A life of anormal.

“What’s wrong?” she asks nervously, placing a glass of ice water on the countertop beside me.

Everything. That’s what’s wrong.

I came here to throw in her husband’s face how he could never measure up to a woman like mytesoro,yet here I am, forced to face reality.

I’m the one who could never give her the life she dreamed of. I could have given her the world, but never this.

“Vincent?”

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