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Tony
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When the call comes, it’s barely five in the morning. I’m already in a bad mood from being woken up. Christy grumbles as I answer. Joseph tells me why he’s waking me up, and violence surges up inside me.
“I need to get to the office, now. Go back to sleep. Vito is on his way. He’s going to stay with you.” I take a quick shower and come out of the bathroom to find her dressed in those damn leggings she loves that cling to her and make my dick hard. She’s also wearing one of my shirts that swallows her.
“Who is Sara? Why am I staying here? Why are you keeping me away from her?” She demands, as she follows me into the closet.
Fucking hell, she’s jealous and hurt. I’m strapping on my gun as I get the text from Vito that he’s here. I call him as I go down the stairs. “Hey, I need you to stay here with Christy. I’ll drive myself to the office.”
“No, I’m coming with you.” Christy is right behind me.
I shake my head. “No, you aren’t.”
“Why don’t you want me with you? Who is Sara?”
Vito walks into the house, he looks from me to Christy. She’s still wary of him and takes a step right into me. Fuck. Fine. “Never mind. Christy is coming.”
Once we’re in the Escalade, I ask him. “How is she?”
“Not good, I called the doctor. I woke him up to. He said to give him a half-hour.”
“Someone needs a doctor? I can take care of her. I worked the emergency room for two years before I moved to pediatrics. I’ve given stitches and handled rape cases. She might prefer a woman. Damn, I don’t have my bag. I didn’t pack it.”
“We always have a bag, at home and at all of our offices,” I tell her. “Can Christy handle her?” I meet Vito’s eyes in the rearview.
“Yeah.” He pulls out his phone and cancels the doctor.
At the bookstore, Christy is out before I can get to her door. Downstairs is empty except for Joseph pacing the room as he works his phone. I look to him, “You’re finding him.”
“I’m on it, Boss.”
I go into my office. Sara Perri is lying on the long leather couch I have in the room. She's a beautiful woman, small and delicate. It’s obscene her porcelain skin is covered in bruises. Her right eye is swollen shut. There’s an inch-long cut on her forehead weeping blood. The Chanel dress she is wearing is pink, the blood drying on it glares at me. I should have killed him. Fuck the money.
The moment she sees me, she jumps up and throws her arms around me. “Jesus, Sara, I'm sorry.”
Pulling back, she shakes her head. “This isn't your fault. I got exactly what I wanted. I wanted him to know I cheated on him. I wanted him to know if he was going to cheat on me, then I was going to do it right back. His parents are willing to pay me off in the divorce I’ve wanted for the last year. But he says he won't divorce me. When I told him I would file whether he wanted it or not, he did this. I don't know what to do, Tony.”
Carefully, I brush the hair back from her face. “There's nothing more for you to do, sweetheart.” I look to Christy then to Sara. “This is Christy. She’s a nurse. She’s going to look you over. Once she makes sure you’re good, Joseph will take you home and put you to bed. I'll take care of your husband.”
She goes still. “Tony, when you say take care of...”
Like so many people, she does and doesn’t want to know. “All you need to know is I’m handling it.”
Cold hits me without even trying to call it up at the way tears trail out of her swollen shut eye. A man does not hit a woman, not a real man. I’m going to let myself enjoy killing him.
A sigh comes out of her sad and small. “I never thought it would be this way. When I met him, it was love at first sight. I thought I found everything I'd ever wanted. I never thought it would end up this way.”
“There's lust at first sight, and there's love at first sight. It's not always easy to tell which is which. I'm sorry. You deserve better. Eventually, you will get it.”
She presses a kiss to my cheek. “Thank you.”
Vito hands the medical bag to Christy. “We got everything for stitches, antibiotics, the whole shebang.”
“We’ll be outside,” I assure Sara.
Outside the room, Joseph is waiting. “I’ve got people looking for him, but it’s early. I’m waking people up. No one has seen him yet.”
“When Christy is done with Sara, I want you to take her home and watch over until I take care of the fucker.” To Vito. “You’re going to take Christy home and stay with her and make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.”
Shaking his head. “I don’t have to watch over Christy. She isn’t going anywhere. Okay, I’ve fucking held my tongue. What the hell is going on with you and her?”
Anyone else, any other time, and I’d knock him the fuck out for talking to me like he did. I’m not even sure why I laugh. Both men are surprised. “I found my woman. And she’s a flight risk. Until there is no doubt in my mind she’s not going anywhere, someone is always with her.”
Joseph frowns. “Really? Because she looks at you like she’s in love with you.”
“I’m pretty sure she is. But she’s had a hard time and is slow to trust in it.”
The door to my office opens. Christy walks out wiping her eyes. “I’m pretty sure she has a concussion. She shouldn’t be left alone.”
“Joseph is going home with her. He knows how to handle a concussion. Vito is going to take you home. I’m going to handle her husband.”
Tears start flowing faster, I pull her to me. “What’s the matter?” She shakes her head, “What, damn it?”
“You were so nice and sweet with her.” She wipes her tears away. “You aren’t like that with me.”
Sending my hand into her hair, I pull her back to look up at me. She is saying exactly what has fucked with me since I laid eyes on her. “That’s because none of them affect me the way you do. I was a civilized motherfucker until the moment I met you. You twist me up and shred my fucking guts with the need to touch you, to have your body against me, for me to be inside you. No one has ever done this to me, made me feel this way but you. I don’t like it, and it pisses me off. I’m still not sure if I’m pissed at you or myself.”
Her hazel eyes go to glowing emerald, the way they do when I’m deep inside her. Damn, she is so fucking beautiful and she’s all mine. I will never let her go. “Vito, I’m going to need you to take me home. You want to handle shit? You can handle Thomas Perri. I’m going back to bed for a bit.”
Vito laughs. “I’ll handle Thomas Perri, Boss.”
***
Christy
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Over the next week, pretty much every moment is spent at Tony’s side. Every once in a while he needs privacy but I’m never far from him. Dominic still studies me as if he’s trying to figure me out, however, he never says a word or treats me with anything but respect.
It isn’t until almost an entire week has passed that we have our first argument. We’re at his bookstore, I’m reading an Italian dictionary, trying to become comfortable with the language. Once again, I feel useless as Tony and Charlie argue over a shipment that was supposed to have arrived and hasn’t. After Charlie slams out of his office, I give it a minute before I bring up what I had been thinking.
“Maybe I can help around the bookstore or something? For a little while, before I go back to nursing. To you know, keep busy.”
The lines appear on his forehead for the first time in almost a week. “You aren’t going back to nursing.”
“What?” I cannot believe how flatly he says it. As if he was daring me to argue with him.
“You aren’t going back to nursing,” he says it slowly. I’m not really surprised other women have tried to kill him. “You are going to focus on our children and home. You haven’t even done anything around the house to make it yours.”
Oh my god, I’m back in the fifties. “I love being a nurse. I didn’t work so hard for my degree to become a stay-at-home mom.”
“You will love being a mother. How does it make sense to long for so many years to become a mother, then let someone else raise your children? No. If we need a nanny to help, fine, but no one else will raise our children but us.”
His question stings. When I was with Eddie, I told him that I wanted to stay home with our child for at least the first year. He had refused. Three months was fine, any longer and I would be spoiling our child. Also, where was the money going to come from while I was home? Yet the way Tony says it, like a decree, annoys the fuck out of me.
“I loved being a nurse. It takes a lot out of you, but it was a part of who I was.” I need him to understand that I do want to go back to nursing. “Not immediately, but eventually.”
Leaning back, he studies me. “You let the job consume you. You loved being a nurse because it gave you an outlet to help people the way you weren’t helped as a child. Eventually, is when the kids are in high school, and they don’t want anything to do with us anymore.”
I roll my eyes. “Did I slip and fall into the fifties? What about when you aren’t here, and I’m raising a half dozen kids all by myself? How will I take care of us?”
He laughs, and oh lord, the sound skims up my tummy and fills me with liquid heat. “There’s over sixty million spread out over a half dozen accounts to take care of you and our kids when I’m gone. And Dominic would always make sure you are taken care of.”
Holy shit, sixty million dollars?
“Don’t look so excited. We Sabatinis live long lives. My great-grandfather was ninety-seven, in great health and had all his wits about him when he passed. The only reason he died was because his wife died first. After she died, it wasn’t a year before he followed her. My grandfather was the same at ninety-five. His wife died, and it was only a few months before he passed on too. As much as I hate my parents went so young, I think it’s how they would have wanted—together.”
I’m drawn to him, and he pulls me into his lap. I love being in his lap, with him all around me. I feel so safe in his arms. “It was a car accident, wasn’t it?”
Nodding, he runs a hand down my back. “They died on impact, thank god. My wife was in the back seat. It’s how she got hooked on painkillers. Then she couldn’t even keep her shit together and overdosed on them a few years later.”
“I’m sorry you lost all three of them so close together.” I look at the picture of his parents on his desk. His father was as handsome as he is, and his mother was beautiful. Reaching for the picture, I run a finger over his father.
“I didn’t miss my wife but with her death, Anthony found out I supplied her with pain pills when she ran out of the ones the doctor gave her. He blamed me and went out on his own. She was a shitty mother in life and in death.” His bitterness causes an ache deep down. He’s had children, raised them and then lost them. Nodding at the picture. “My mother was the only real mother my sons had.”
I spot something in the picture. “Rosie? I thought your mother’s name was Sophia?”
He smiles as he nods. “It was. My parents didn’t have a conventional beginning either. Her family and mine had bad blood. My mother hated my father. He didn’t understand why. He fell for her, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Remember I told you about her love of Shakespeare? My father called her Rose from those lines in Romeo and Juliet. Eventually, it became Rosie. It was just between them. She didn’t answer to Rosie to anyone but him.”
“So you get it from your father? The not taking no for an answer.” I trail a hand over his cheek.
“Hm, yes. I’m a Sabatini through and through. We go after what we want and we keep it once we have it.” He purrs as he grabs my ass and squeezes.
Laughing, I catch his hand. “What is this on your ring?”
Bringing up his hand, he shows me. “It’s a lynx. This was my great-grandfather’s. He had it made in honor of a lynx saving his life and it becoming the family pet.”
“A lynx as a family pet? How did a lynx save his life and not eat him or something?” I run a finger over the ring.
“Hm, the mother was killed. The lynx was a small one, no more than a few months old. My great-grandfather was on the beach bringing in cargo he was smuggling. Soldiers were close by and almost caught him. When they heard the lynx, they took off, saving him from being found and killed. He took the lynx home when he realized it was starving and close to death. They repaid each other for the rest of their lives. No one messed with him, as the lynx was extremely protective over the one who fed him.”
“Hm...” I trail my hand over his chest. “I often think of you as one of those big cats, all muscle and sinew then you get all growly. What did they name the lynx?”
He laughs. “Meatball.”
God, I love it when he laughs. I wish he did it more often. The sound sends heat from my chest to the apex of my thighs. And I can’t resist squirming in his lap.
His hands come up and cup my face, pulling me down to his mouth. Sweet and gentle, it’s so different from the way he usually kisses me it ravages me in a completely different way. I moan at the loss of his mouth. “Lisa is back in town. She called for you. I okayed her coming to the house today. We’ll see her together first, then I’ll let you spend some time with her alone.”
“Okay, I’m going to tell her I met you and changed my mind. She was right. When it came down to it, I couldn’t do it. I don’t want to do it.”
“Good girl.”
***
Christy
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I was afraid of how seeing Lisa with Tony right there would go. But it went smoothly, and Lisa wasn’t surprised in the least. In the end, she couldn’t stay long though. Being away for a week her regulars were getting cranky. As Tony walks her out to the door, I look around the living room we’re rarely in. We usually spend our time in the kitchen or the library in the evening.
Tony walks back to me, “What?”
“You really want me to change things?” I motion to the room.
The dimple flashes at me. I melt at how happy he looks. “Yes, I want you to make this your home too.”
“Okay, I’ll start in here. I won’t touch the kitchen or your library because I love both.” I promise.
Walking toward me, he pulls me to him. “Next, you do our bedroom.”
“Or I could start in there.” I wrap my arms around his neck and bring him down to me.