When we stumbled from one of our beds every morning, Moonshine went to him. He was her daddy and she along with everyone else relied on him. Cade called him. Rome and Katie did too. He handled everyone’s business in the way they trusted him to.
A world full of people depended on him and he didn’t ever stumble. His emotions didn’t seem to even play into what he did, except that I knew his father had wronged his mother and so he did most everything to spite the man.
One day, in the kitchen, I stopped him as he spread sauce over pizza dough. “Did your father like how your mother cooked?”
He curled his lip at the mention of them. If anyone didn’t like talking about their parents like I didn’t like talking about mine, it was Bastian. “My father liked it and took advantage of it. He had her cooking for extended relatives all the time.”
“I see.” I didn’t want him to remember the bad times; I just wanted to understand the dynamic of their family more.
“She taught me the recipes only weeks before she left us. I think she planned it. She wanted Cade and me to remember the food. It was her passion after all. That and us.”
“She sounds wonderful.”
He nodded as he put the handmade pizza in the oven. “She would have liked you. My father would have liked you too.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet them.”
He stared at me for a minute. “When I put out the hit on my father, he stared at me, you know? The man who killed him asked me as he held the gun to his head. I didn’t hesitate.”
I watched Bastian relive the moment, the way he frowned and then rubbed his scruff showed me he battled with his choices even if he hadn’t hesitated.
He continued, “He’d been trafficking women when he’d told me he hadn’t. He’d done it to Katie and she was part of the family by then, probably always had been in a sense. I couldn’t let him live for that. Maybe I’d loved him once or tried to understand him but that drained any respect I might’ve had clean away.”
“Katie,” I whispered her name because she’d been a ferociously beautiful woman to meet in the first place. Knowing her past made her all the more omnipotent to me.
“Katie had been furious. She wanted us to forgive him.” He scoffed and leaned against the counter. “You’ll decide, ragazza, if you can be with someone like me for longer than this arrangement we have. This is the life I live, one where I right the wrongs of the past and try my best to wash the blood off my hands for the future.”
Rounding the counter, I took his mouth with mine. The kiss was slow and deliberate, like we were memorizing each other’s real identities. I wanted him to know that I’d already accepted his. I’d accepted Sebastian Armanelli.
“My parents charmed me and then left me over and over again, Bastian. If you don’t do that, I’ll be here forever waiting for you. It might be the only real vow I make to you.”
We lost ourselves in the pretty words and promises we made to each other. We got mixed up in the fake married life we had and thought it was real. We called Moonshine our baby like we’d had her together.
Mixed up, tumbling around in a world we’d created on our own, too blind with love to realize it was all a lie.
I worked the food truck and came back to screw his brains out.
Sometimes, he’d make me wait first because he had to spray the damn orchids or take out Moonshine. Sometimes, I told him I needed to make him a night smoothie but he never waited.
I told myself he was falling for me and I was falling for him. We’d figure out the rest together.
That was my mantra. I let my horoscope point to anything positive and I blocked out the negative. The salt lamps, my crystals, and my bracelets worked overtime to protect us, and everything was perfect for a month.
37
Morina
“Mario Armanelli screwed your grandmother.” Ronald leaned on the window frame of my food truck one day and shook his head. “Didn’t she tell you any of this?”
As I wiped down the foot truck counter, I felt the bone crushing weight of the city, of the well being of children, of everything I didn’t want bearing down on me. “That’s not true.”
“Look it up. We had a spill five years ago. You remember the one?”
Everyone remembered it. We even had animals brought into Dr. Nathan’s office. We were a humane society but it was all hands on deck. I’d just started volunteering and I didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.
Not until I had to use whatever soap we had in to scrub the oil off the animals. Ducks and baby gulls and turtles all washed up on the shore. I remember my hands, how I couldn’t get rid of the smell and how I washed a turtle for hours and hours only to find out it died overnight from poisoning.
I’d been young but I’d known the toll it took on the Gulf. We couldn’t surf, the shops couldn’t sell because we’d lost tourists and vacationers, and my grandmother had cried.
She’d cried and cried and I thought it was for the city, but maybe it had been something more.
“That was Mario Armanelli and your grandmother’s doing. She was coerced, just like you are being. You want to make her same mistakes? Do you really love that man, Morina? Did he make you fall for him?”
It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about that question but it was the first time someone had asked it out loud.
“He wouldn’t do that to me.” I stood tall but found my black bracelet for strength. This time, I didn’t turn the ring on my finger, didn’t touch it for any sort of energy.
“Sure. Sure. Except he was in Texas a little over a month ago shaking my hand and the same oil refinery’s hand about more oil coming in. Have you asked him about his plan for the illegal imported cargo we still get?”
“You need to leave.” I glanced back at the parking lot where I had told my security guy to stay. He’d finally started to listen to my commands over the past few weeks. He was on the phone, not paying attention to the truck. We both stood in plain view, though. Ronald merely looked like a paying customer from afar.
“Bastian plans to phase oil out for clean energy. That’s what he’s telling everyone, right?” Ronald’s bright white teeth flashed like a shark’s. “Then why make a deal with the oil refinery in Texas, Morina? Ask yourself that question. I’m making no deals except with the government to expand. I’ll pay you fair for those shares and you know it. Add on ten percent.”
He slid the check over the window counter and I stared at all the zeros. So many.
Money I didn’t care about but my eyes still flared.
“Just consider it. Ask some questions. My deal stands for as long as you need it to.” He left me with the check and walked away, his head held high like he was doing the right thing.
I closed the window, the wood slamming shut harder than I intended it to.
Had I been na?ve? I’d read the file. I’d asked questions and listened to the answers.
But it was his packet and what if they were just fluff answers? Was he just charming me and was I as gullible as I had been all those years back when my parents had done the same?
Love made you weak. Relying on others made you vulnerable.