Page 11 of Bite Marks

“No.” Vanessa snapped. “I want to go home. Now,sweetheart.”

Shit. That can’t be good.“Yeah. No problem, sweetheart.” Nunzio turned back to Mikey and gave him a wink. “Catch you around, Mikey.”

“Oh, Mr. Sarducci.” Mikey stepped closer. “I hope my men didn’t stop you from getting your payment.”

Nunzio chuckled. Those goons couldn’t stop him from fucking their wives. They weren’t about to stop him from getting the family’s cut. “I got it, just fine.” He patted his breast pocket, thick with the envelope full of cash. “Might want to fire them for letting me get into your office more so than not recognizing me.” He shook hands with the manager and headed out with Vanessa, who hit him with an icy stare.

“Is everything all right?” He put his arm around her shoulders, but she shrugged him off.

“No. It’s not.” Her grimace kept him from attempting it again.

He handed his ticket to the valet. The young man ran off to get his car, and they waited in silence for about a minute before the quiet weighed down on him too much. “I don’t understand. We were having a good time. You … You wanted to dance and … Is it just because of that little scuffle? That wasn’t even my fault.”

Vanessa glared off to the side with her arms crossed, leaving the conversation hanging off the edge of a cliff.

The Roma rolled up, and Nunzio held her door open for her before walking around to slide into the driver's seat. “Come on, Vanessa. Talk to me here.”Maybe a little Italian will warm her up.“Non lasciarmi fuori al freddo.”

“Don’t leave you out in the cold?” She huffed and shook her head, staring out the window as Nunzio pulled away from the club. “You’re not the one in the cold.”

He switched back to English since she wasn’t having it. “I am. You’re not talking. I, honest to God, don’t know what I did wrong back there.”

She slid around in her seat to look out the door even more, showing him some of her back. “Why? What does it matter? Anyway, this is all fake. You don’t need to know.”

“That’s not true. I need to know so that no one figures out it’s fake. I need to know you.” He reached over, placing a hand on her thigh, conscious not to place it too high up. She was retreating from him, and a woman on the backfoot was the hardest creature to grab hold of. “And I want to know you.”

She pulled her leg away. “It doesn’t fucking matter.”

The resignation in her voice stabbed harder than her words. “It matters to me. I want to know what I did. Those guys mistook me for someone else while I was in the manager’s office. They saw me come out and jumped me. What was I supposed to do? Would you rather I have a fat lip and a busted nose? Is that it? I’ll turn us around and go back if that’s what you want. I’ll have those guys beat me black and blue. I can be your hurt little puppy dog if that’s what you want. I can’t help it, Vanessa. I’m a man. If I get jumped, I’m going to fight.”

“It’s not the fight!” Vanessa shouted in Italian, turning to face him. The fire in her eyes burned the emerald forests. “You went and did business, Nunzio! Business that I’ve been trying to keep myself clear of for nearly a decade now. And here you come waltzing into my life, strike a deal with me, and just shove me into the trunk of your stupid fancy car.”

What? The fucking trunk?Nunzio couldn’t believe what she was saying. She wasn’t making any sense at all. “What are you talking about?” he asked, matching her Italian. “You said you liked the car before. You’re in the passenger seat, for Christ’s sake.”

“The car is a metaphor for your life, you idiot!” she roared. If he thought she was fierce earlier, she showed him just how fierce she could actually be. Planets cracked in half from less ferociousness. “You offered to cheer me up with a dance and a drink, but you were really just dragging me along to a business deal. You lied to me.”

“I never lied to you,” he shot back. “We went to XO so you could blow off some of the stress from dinner. I had every intention of dancing with you all night if that’s what you wanted. I just figured, since you were going to the ladies’ room, and those lines are always so long, I might as well just go grab the cut the club owed us. If the dumbass security hadn’t jumped me, or you came out of the restroom a couple minutes later, you would have never known the difference.”

“Exactly. You wouldn’t have been caught. You would have gotten away with lying. You took me there under false pretenses.”

False pretenses? It was her idea to go dancing. Just because he saw the opportunity to get a little business out of the way wasn’t a bad thing. “It was not a false pretense, woman. You’re blowing this up way more than you should. The club owed us money. You were gone for a minute. It would have only taken me a minute to get the cut, and we would have met back at the table at the same time and danced the fucking night away.”

“Oh, yeah, I bet they owed you money.” Her nose flared as her jaw clenched. “Girls were powdering their noses with more than makeup in the bathroom. Is that what the club owes you for? You’re not providing their security, obviously.”

“Every good club around the world has booze and drugs. Just because there’s no equivalent to a liquor license for coke doesn’t mean guys like Mikey don't need it. I saw how you lit up when we went in. You don’t get that electric vibe without some party favors.”

“What you saw was a way to get two birds with one stone. ‘She wants to go dancing? Oh, well, I need to pick up the money from XO. I’ll just take her there and steal away when she’s not looking.’ I hate men who lie like that and who do that to their women. Always putting business first.”

“A man can do two things at once, all right? I wouldn't have gotten the money if I’d known you’d get so upset. I thought you would understand, given that your father was doing the exact same things I’m doing.”

Her face slackened, and the heat left her eyes. “Yeah,” she said in English. “And he killed a lot of birds with one stone with me in the trunk.” She turned back to her window, clearly done with the conversation.

Jesus! I fucking fucked it! Why did I have to bring her father into this?Thoughts of what might happen if she dropped him after one date ran through his mind. Ed was a nice man, a second father to him even, but he wasn’t a capo for no reason. If he said he’d kill Nunzio for hurting Vanessa, he’d do it. And even if Vanessa covered for him and said she wasn’t hurt, the fact that she wouldn’t be coming back to any of the family get-togethers would be enough reason to think she was.

I can’t let her break the deal off so soon. But I also can’t let her walk all over me. I was doing everything she wanted, and just because I picked up a payment, she’s going to throw a damn fit?

There were plenty of eyes at XO that had blabbering mouths attached to them. People were going to hear about this. If he couldn’t smooth things over and she dropped out, he’d be dead, but if he couldn’t smooth them over the right way and not look like a little bitch, he’d have the whole family laughing at him. It would be better than being dead, but then again, a rising star that wasn’t rising anymore was a stepping stone for the next guy to come along.

He pulled up to her apartment and got out. When he opened her door and offered his hand, she didn’t take it.

---