Page 51 of Keeping My Bride

Chapter 34

Luca

WE ARE ALL gathered in the dining room for a family-style dinner…even though I would call us anything but family. Maybe a mixture of misfits — Dante, Benito, Verona and me.

Greta comes bustling through the door, a pleased look on her face when she sees everyone already seated. She had insisted on this type of dinner after “all of her hard work in the kitchen”, as she put it earlier.

And even though I’d rather dine with a live, venomous python than be in the same room as Dante having a family meal, I’m willing to put my hatred for him aside for Greta’s sake. Just this once anyway.

Greta started working for me a few days ago, and I can already tell she’s extremely happy about having to cook for people again. She orders the servers around in Italian, and soon we all have in front of us a heaping serving of lasagna on our plates that just came out of the oven, homemade garlic bread and a caprese salad on the side with fresh mozzarella cheese.

“Everything looks delicious, Greta. Grazie,” I tell her, which earns me a beaming smile that she wears the whole way back to the kitchen.

Verona, who is seated to my right, hums in approval as she takes a bite of her salad.

“Do you like it?” I can’t help but ask.

“Yes, very much,” she says before forking another piece of lettuce into her mouth.

Leave it to Greta to finally get approval from the princess. I don’t think anything has been good enough for her since she arrived here.

Benito speaks up from my left. “So, Verona, what did you do after high school? College?”

I know he’s just making small talk, but it irritates me. I don’t want to hear about her posh lifestyle. I never had a chance to go to college, since running the family business always falls on the eldest son’s shoulders. And with me being the only child, everything was placed on mine.

Verona takes her time wiping her mouth with one of the linen napkins and taking a sip of water before she answers him.

This should be good, I can’t help but think. She probably went to one of the most expensive colleges in the country. The best daddy’s money could buy. I wonder what kind of degree she got. Probably one that she would never use. Or maybe she was undecided the whole time, just riding out the college life for a while and living it up on daddy’s dime.

“After boarding school, I went to live with a great aunt upstate,” she says, completely blowing my theory out of the water.

“Boarding school?” I blurt out without thinking.

She gives me a small nod. “Not long after my mother died, my father sent me away to an all-girls boarding school in Utah.”

“So this private school,” I start, but she doesn’t let me finish.

“Actually it was a boarding school for troubled girls, so it was kind of rough at times.” And then she quietly adds, “I was bullied quite a lot.”

Dante looks over at her with a sad, understanding smile, and I frown. Once again, Dante knows more than me, and it pisses me off to no end.

“And you were there for how long?” I question, curiosity seeping through my pores.

“Until I turned eighteen.” She picks up her fork and tries the lasagna. She chews slowly, closes her eyes and then rolls them to the heavens above. “Greta is an amazing cook. How did she not make you fat when you were a teenager?” she jokes, but I know it’s simply an attempt to change the subject.

I want to laugh, but I’m still in shock at the revelations laid out before me this evening. “I ran five miles every night after dinner,” I tell her in all seriousness. I leave out the part where that was part of my brutal regimen placed upon me by my father. Five miles first thing in the morning, another five miles at night, training in between. It was grueling and never-ending, but my father wanted to make sure I was ready for war.

“Ah,” Verona whispers before returning to her meal.

I glance at Benito, who raises a brow at me. He’s wondering what the fuck I’m getting on about, but I can’t even explain it to myself. All this time I was…wrong about Verona. And I’m never wrong. Right from the start I pegged her as a spoiled, rich, little princess. Nothing was ever good enough for her. When, in fact, she isn’t spoiled at all. Her father sent her away after her mother died. So for years, she suffered in a boarding school states away from the only family she had left. She was all alone. That explains the attachment to her mother’s dress. Hell, it explains a lot actually.

And once again, I feel like we have more in common than I ever thought we could. After my mother died, I felt like I had no one. Hell, Greta was the only one who acted like she gave a shit, and she was hired help. My father definitely wasn’t around to be a parent. He put all of his time and effort into the mob’s dealings and trying to bring down the Morettis.

Verona asks, “Is everything all right?”

I realize I’ve been staring at her and not speaking. “Your great aunt,” I say before clearing my throat. “She was rich?”

Verona narrows her eyes at my question. “Yes, she had money, I suppose. Not that I ever saw a dime of it. She could stretch a dollar farther than anyone with the amount of thrift shopping we did over the years I lived with her. I don’t think she ever stepped foot inside a store that didn’t have dollar or resale in the title.”

---