“To everyone in this room, Francesca, I’m your older brother. The crime boss who everyone fears. She will never accept us.”
“Well, she wanted her own sons to lead Ferrara, and you did kick her out of her house when you took over and you made it very clear how much you hated her. Do you really think she’s going to welcome you with open arms?”
He winces. “In hindsight, not my smartest move.”
I smile up at my handsome man. “I really want to kiss you right now.”
He chuckles. “I dare you to.”
“Can you try to be nice to her tonight…for me?” I smile sweetly up at him.
He rolls his eyes.
“I’m not cutting my mother out of my life, Giuliano, you and she have to find a way to get along. She is my mother, I only have one.”
He exhales heavily.
“Please?”
“Fine.”
The song finishes. “Let’s get back to the table.”
“Let’s not,” he mutters dryly.
I widen my eyes. “You promised to try.”
“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters under his breath. “Fine.”
We make our way back to the table and find nobody sitting down, hmm where are they? Giuliano and I take a seat and Matteo comes back and sits down.
“Where’s Mom and Lorenzo?” I ask him.
“They left,” he replies as he takes a sip of his drink.
“What?” I snap. She fucking left?
“Said she’s not lowering herself to sit here with you two.” He shrugs. “I have to agree with her that it is kind of weird that you arrived together. Since when are you two friends?”
I begin to perspire.
“We’ve always been friends.” I fake a smile and look over at Giuliano, “Haven’t we?” I let out an awkward laugh.
“It’s weird that you two are friends, seeing how he’s treated your mother,” Matteo replies dryly.
I swallow the lump in my throat.
Oh, fucking hell…this is spiraling.
Straight down.
Giuliano drains his glass of scotch and crunches on the ice, his cold eyes hold Matteo’s.
My eyes flick between them, shit. I have to defuse the situation. “Can you get me a drink, please, Giuliano.”
He keeps glaring at my brother, animosity swirls in the air and it feels like they are seconds off having a full-on world war.
“Jules.” I tap him on the leg to try to snap him out of it. “Please?”
He lifts his chin in defiance as he stares at Matteo, and I know that if I wasn’t here he would have knocked him clean out by now.
“Giuliano,” I snap. “Go to the bar.” I hit his leg once more. “Now.”
Giuliano’s cold eyes hold Matteo’s. “Stay out of my way,” he sneers.
“Or what?” Matteo replies.
Giuliano smiles darkly. “You’ll see.”
“Is that a threat?” Matteo spits.
“That’s a fucking promise.” He stands and walks to the bar.
My heart hammers in my chest, fuck.
I admit it, he can be scary when he wants to be.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Matteo whispers. “He’s fucked up. Did you hear that? Stay out of his way or he’s going to kill me.”
“He never said he was going to kill you,” I snap. “I might. If you don’t be nice to him.”
“You know, I tolerated him for a long time. But if he thinks you and he are going to be besties, I’m drawing the line. Do you really expect Mother to sit here and play happy families after the way he’s treated her? No way in hell are you hanging around with him, he’s fucking bad news, Francesca. Why the fuck would you even think that bringing him here was a good idea?”
Oh God, this is a disaster.
“She has treated him just as bad,” I fire back.
“How? For not accepting her husband’s affair and his love child with a mistress?”
I blink, surprised.
“When you get married, Francesca, tell me how you’ll feel when your husband gets another woman pregnant, and then that child grows up and throws you out of your own house after he steals the company from your own two sons after your eldest son dies.”
“He stole nothing, the company was left to him, Dad wanted him in charge,” I snap. “I’m not even….” I cut myself off. I can’t tell him about my paternity, this isn’t the time or place. “You know what.” I hold my hands up. “This was a bad idea.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“If you just got to know him.”
“I don’t want to fucking know him.”
“He’s a good guy.”
“For a drug dealer,” he huffs.
“Oh please, where do you think all your money comes from. Don’t sit there and pretend to be all high and mighty, he has signed millions of dollars of property over to you. How dare you treat him with such disrespect.”
“I don’t want you hanging around with him.”
Something snaps deep inside. Something wrong and sinister and spiteful.
“I’m doing more than hanging around with him, Matteo, I’m sleeping with him.”
“What?” he explodes.
“We’re not even genetically related,” I whisper angrily. “So next time you defend your angelic mother, ask her who fathered her daughter, because it wasn’t her fucking husband.” I grab my purse, stand and march over to Giuliano at the bar. “We’re leaving.”