Page 78 of Scorned Beauty
“Piss off.” I stood, teetering on my feet before stumbling off the porch in the direction of the beach.
Sandro cocked his head at my shrieking house alarm. “I must say, if an assassin was after you, you’d be dead.”
“You think I care?” I drunkenly trudged in the sand to search for my phone.
I saw the screen flashing a few feet away, probably warning me of an intruder. I scooped it up and my finger kept missing the mark to turn it off. I was more hammered than I thought.
Sandro snatched it out of my hand and turned the annoying thing off, then picked up the whiskey bottle and nudged me back to the house.
“You’re pathetic,” he muttered.
“Says the man who stalked Bianca for years,” I shot back.
He chuckled. “Touché. But you’ve witnessed all our moronic actions, and this takes the cake.”
I laughed mockingly. “Oh really? How about the times you smashed your fists through the drywall and redecorated your office because you were too chickenshit to make a move on Bianca?”
“She was too young, dammit.”
I paused. Yeah, I actually admired Sandro for holding back. “You have a point.”
“And you’re one to talk since your mother has you practically betrothed to a twenty-one-year-old.”
I groaned. “Shit. I already told her it ain’t happening.”
“Have you convinced her, though?”
Admittedly, I had not. I said no, and I expected her to accept it. Knowing my mother, she’d hold on to the idea and try to find a way to guilt me into going along with it. Though I hadn’t been ignoring her in the past two weeks, I kept my answers vague about where I was. My phone was untraceable.
We were back at the house and I was about to sit on the porch chair again to stare at Sloane’s house, but Sandro gripped my arm. “Oh no, you don’t. I think you’ve drunk enough.”
“Listen, you’re not my keeper.” My tongue slurred over the words as he dragged me into the house.
“Someone needs to look after you.”
“Yeah, and she’s in the house across from me, but I need to take care of her first.”
Sandro lowered the whiskey bottle and my phone on the kitchen table and crossed his arms. “Now, how are you going to accomplish that?”
“Dunno.”
I honestly didn’t. I was at a loss. Stuck in my compulsion to take over and knowing I needed to give her space.
“Sit.” Sandro said it in a way that irritated me, but knowing I was swaying on my feet, it would save me the indignity of falling on my face.
I sat on the dining chair.
I broodily watched him head to my kitchen. He peeked at my box of whiskeys and checked one out.
“I thought you said I had enough.”
“This is for me,” he muttered. “I think I’ll be earning it after I talk some sense into you.”
“You’re not my shrink,” I said. “I don’t need a shrink. My shrinks have given up on me.”
He raised a brow and set a bottled water in front of me. “Really? You’ve been to one?”
The Morettis had one on payroll. I didn’t sit on a couch to be psychoanalyzed by the hour. It was usually over a game of pool or darts or foosball. “According to her, I have mommy issues.”
