Page 91 of The Butcher's Wife
At the edge of consciousness, I don’t make a sound. He can think I’m asleep.
Whether he believes that or not, he continues talking. “When I saw you with… when I saw you in the bedroom,crying, I was scared. I don’t ever want to lose you, Annetta.”
My heart fills with misery as he squeezes me gently to his chest.
21
DOM
“You ready for a break?”
Annetta’s face is flushed, and her newly developed muscles glisten with a thin sheen of sweat. She drinks from her squirt bottle, the elegant line of her throat working to suck down the water. My arousal stirs.
She braces her elbows on her knees and stares up at me. “No.”
I had to catch her last curl attempt, and that’s the third save this session. She’s exhausted.
I’ve already pushed her further than I would anyone else—not that I needed to. She’s a fucking machine all by herself. She pushes herself like Matteo used to.
Thoughts of Turi’s little brother always catch me at the strangest times, like when I’m at the deli and I can practically hear him complaining about how disgusting cut meats are, or the few occasions when I drive with the windows down and laugh to myself, thinking about how I used to be the one who always told him to roll the windows up so he wouldn’t get a sore throat.
Then the Colombians cut him up into a hundred pieces,and Turi lost it. The shit he did on that rampage earned him the fear of every man in the city. His little brother, who had somehow become my little brother over the years, fueled us both to do unspeakable shit.
Violence and revenge were our way to grieve for Matteo’s death.
I cup Annetta’s cheek, and she closes her eyes and leans into my palm, her breathing slowing.
After that dinner at her parents’ house, she’s become relentless. She pushes herself in our workouts until she can’t lift her arms anymore, and Eduardo tells me that when she’s not helping Valeria, she stands in the living room and shoots at targets all day long. There’s only one thing on her mind when I come home—in the bed, along the stairs, against the kitchen counter.
A part of me knows I should be thrilled. She wants distraction, and I’m the perfect man to give it to her.
I’ve always been good at stealing attention. When Dad would get that look in his eye—like factory work with five kids and a sullen wife at home wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be—that’s when I’d step in, bringing him beers and joking around louder than anyone else in the house. Sometimes, that was enough for him to settle down for a few days, but usually it was a straight shot to getting the shit beat out of me, and Mom coming by to my room an hour later to silently offer me a plate of food for my troubles.
I tried following in his footsteps when I got older. I fought anyone who looked at me wrong and spent more than one night getting plastered at a bar with a stranger. That shit gets old as soon as you wake up and realize the road you’re headed down is a dead end.
Annetta isn’t me. She’s a hell of a lot smarter than I wasat her age, and I know she’ll figure it out. The real her is still there, buried deep under all the hurt she’s carrying around. Sometimes, I’ll manage to fuck her so thoroughly that she’s too exhausted to hide herself, and I’ll catch a glimpse of that connection we were building before—the one that felt like our fucking souls were touching—until she shuts down again and the only thing she lets me do for her is hold her.
“Well, you need it,” I say, pushing myself to standing.
She captures my wrist with her hand, opening her eyes and zeroing in on me. “Do you want to know what I really need right now?” she asks in a suggestive tone.
“Oh, I already know.” I grin despite the cold, unsettling look in her eyes. “Coffee.”
When she comesdownstairs after her shower—a quick, efficient rinse—I have her cup ready.
She won’t let herself cry anymore, either, and that’s the shit that worries me more than anything else.
She tips forward on her toes to kiss my cheek and takes her mug. “Did Don Salvatore say if I could leave yet?”
“Getting bored, angel?”
She looks into her cup. “A little.”
“He said they’re making progress. We just have to hang tight.”
The Chiarelliconsiglierehas been making regular trips to New York, painting a tragic picture of a family grieving the loss of Frederico to the rest of the Mob families, especially those who are part of the Commission. Apparently, they’re all falling for it. Despite Turi’s spying, he can’t dig up anything damning enough to take the Chiarellis down, though I suspect getting Annetta out of my penthouse isn’tall that high on Turi’s list of priorities. He practically sealed his wife in his home, and because she’s such a little freak, she likes it.
The problem is that my wife is nothing like his. Annetta is grasping for a purpose—something outside of making me dinner every night. If she doesn’t find it soon, she’s gonna turn reckless.
