“Bastian, Morina.” He stood over us, then grabbed a chair from behind him and pulled it up to our table. Security that I had in the corner moved, but I held up my hand. Let him make his bed. I wanted him to sleep in it. Permanently.
My body vibrated with an emotion I knew I wouldn’t be able to contain. Keep it all together, Morina had said but Sebastian Armanelli, head of the mob, knew that this man was going against me, was talking to my wife behind my back, and was ruining the one thing I loved.
“Ronald,” I said without looking at him. I was looking down at that gold ring on my hand, the weight of a family symbolized in it. “I’m having a meal with my wife. I don’t want to talk with you right now.”
“She talked to me earlier, though. You must know. I hope it didn’t cause any harm.”
I tapped the ring on the table two times, trying to pull my anger back before I lashed out. I was a man of the family, a man who had done so well to create alliances everywhere.
“No harm.” The words came out so quiet, I wasn’t sure anyone heard. They were the last words of Bastian, he was suffocating under the rage of the other man I tried to keep hidden from everyone.
“Oh, good. Good. Morina,” Ronald turned to her. “Once this whole arrangement you and Bastian have is over, remember I’ll pay you twice as much. You’re for sale it seems.”
Her fork clattered down onto her plate. It was the only sound before a voice that sounded foreign even to me rumbled from my mouth. “What did you just say”–I rubbed my jaw, trying to calm down–“to my wife?”
He glared at us and didn’t repeat himself.
“Apologize.” It came out louder than it should have. Someone moved behind Ronald but my security took care of it. No one was coming to our table now. Ronald had to rescue himself.
He sat there with his hands fisted like he was struggling with his own pride.
Patience wasn’t Sebastian Armanelli’s virtue. Certainly not with an idiot. I was tired of being accommodating and working the system. So damn tired. And there was one place I wouldn’t do it anymore.
And that place was with her.
The gun tucked in my back belt loop was the easiest weapon to access. In a second it was in my hand, and I spun the glock so I held the barrel. I swung it at Ronald’s face like a makeshift hammer as I grabbed the back of his head and brought it down on the metal swiftly.
He screamed as it connected with his face.
I let him have a moment as I heard commotion in the restaurant. My security was probably filing people out to leave. I didn’t care. I leaned in and said to Ronald, “Next time it will be the other side of my gun in your face. And I’ll pull the trigger, Ronald. Don’t disrespect her again, you understand?”
Blood started to pour from his nose and he whispered something but it wasn’t loud enough for me to make out.
“Bastian…” Morina said softly, like she was trying to call that gentleman mobster back. He was gone, ragazza.
And Ronald, he wasn’t begging for his life yet. Did he want me to kill him? He deserved it at this point. I spun the gun again and grabbed his gray hair as I pushed the barrel into his temple. “I should kill you.” I stood and shoved it against his head.
His eyes bulged in fear.
“No one would miss you. And after that disrespect for my marriage, it’s what you deserve.”
He was pleading now, saying sorry over and over and over.
“Bastian!” Morina screamed, and when I looked at her, the whites of her eyes were showing, her face scared as she stared at the devil that was me. “You can’t, Bastian, you can’t.”
I growled and drew my hand back before whipping it across Ronald’s face. He cried in pain and I glared at Morina. “We’re leaving now.”
She nodded fast and followed me out of the restaurant with stares following us the whole way.
Silence again on the way home. She said my name softly once but I cut her off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
When we got back to the penthouse, I stared at the shattered crystal on the ground, our marriage as broken as the rock, vows and promises and deals were all destroyed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as we both stood there staring at it all.
“For what?”
“I don’t think I understand your way of life the way I thought. I think… you have more responsibility than I ever had.” I tried to cut her off but she held up her hand. “You’re a mafia king, Bastian, but you can’t control everything by weaving in and out of partnerships. Your aura is all fucked up from it. I felt your anger back there and it’s catastrophic and brilliant at the same time. You have to be the bad guy somewhere sometimes or it will tear down not just a city, Bastian. You’ll tear down much more than that.” It sounded like disgust or defeat in her soft voice and I wouldn’t correct her because she was right.
Was that what she thought? “I’ve made sacrifices over and over again, Morina. I’ve trained myself to contain my emotions for everyone’s protection. This is about my family, my legacy. It’s about you needing protection too. I can’t risk all that because I have feelings for you.”
She winced at my words. “I don’t want to just be a concern for you. Your feelings shouldn’t be a risk, Bastian. They should be the things you listen to because you need to be happy too.”
“I’ll take unhappiness if it means you’re protected from all this.” I confessed and meant it even as the pain in my chest suddenly felt catastrophic.
“I don’t want your protection.” She shook her head.
“You’re an Untouchable, Morina. You can go anywhere in the world and I’ll be protecting you. I’ll have eyes on you forever. That’s the price I paid when I married you.”
“The price you paid?” She stormed up to me. “I don’t want your security on me. I didn’t ask for any of this and I don’t want it. You need to focus on yourself. Feel something, Bastian. Feel us.” She took a shaky breath. “You almost killed a man, Bastian! That wasn’t for nothing.”
“And if you hadn’t been there, I would have. Don’t you think that’s a problem, Morina?” The words bellowed out of me and Moonshine trotted to Morina. The dog might have acted like it had allegiance to me but in the end, a pup knew its mother.
I stared at her petting Moonshine almost subconsciously, and like a mom soothing her child, the innocent gesture stirred a protectiveness in me that I’d only experienced one other time in my life. “I won’t keep you here like my father did with my mother. I won’t ruin you because I love you too much to do so. Staying with me would expose you to all the filth you don’t deserve.”
“Shouldn’t I get to decide that?” Her eyes filled with tears.
“We need time away from each other, ragazza.” I wanted to reach for her, to tell her it was all going to be okay but I didn’t trust myself enough to do so.
“You want that time to turn back to Bastian when all I really wanted was Sebastian. I can’t love you if I can’t have all of you, you know?” She clutched at her heart.