Emilia (Part 1)(39)

Glass shattered outside the door, and he broke the kiss, chuckling. “Well someone has piss poor timing.” He pulled me off the counter and handed me the broom from the closet. “Take this in there, and I’ll slip out the garage service door, smoke a cigar before coming back inside.”

My throat dry, and my hands still unsteady, I nodded as he opened the door.

“Em,” he said, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear, “I’ll come find you in an hour at the next meeting spot. The sunroom right?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, watching the garage door close behind him, my heart drunk on love and his skillful kisses.

With a broom clutched in my hand, I rolled open the door. Only Alessandro and Lettie were nearby. Lettie was leaning against the refrigerator with her arms folded across her chest, glaring. Alessandro stood directly across from her, his shoulder braced against the wall with a smirk on his face. Remnants of a broken champagne glass and bubbly liquid coated the floor between them.





CHAPTER





TWENTY-THREE





“What happened?” I asked, my gaze ping-ponging between the two of them.

“Yeah, Lettie.” Alessandro kicked a sliver of glass away from his boot-clad feet. “Why don’t you explain how your drink ended up in my face?”

Lettie straightened her shoulders and flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder. “Fuck you.”

“Nah,” he chuckled. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m not a big fan of sloppy seconds, or in your case sloppy hundreds. Too bad my dad doesn’t have the same standards.”

Red streaks shot up Lettie’s face and she balled her hands into fists next to her thighs. “I hate you.”

He pressed a hand to his chest. “Say it isn’t so. What will I do without your love?”

“I’m done with this conversation.” Not meeting my eyes, she stormed out of the kitchen, her four-inch heels exploding like bombs against the hardwood floor, and the fabric of her body-hugging emerald green velvet dress pulling taut with every step.

“Of course you are!” he yelled after her.

I dragged the broom over the floor, waiting for Alessandro to explain. When he didn’t say anything, I asked, “So are you going to tell me what that was about?”

He got the dustpan from the mudroom, snatched the broom from my hand, and finished cleaning the mess without answering.

“I guess not,” I said, frustrated with him and Lettie. “So much for us being friends.”

“Jesus, Emilia.” He ran his fingers through his sandy brown hair. “Do you really want to talk about this here?”

“Talk about what?”

He pointed a finger at me, his lips thin and his color high. “I don’t know what you were thinking, but you need to be more discreet.”

“I think you got the two of us confused. I’m not the one who had a full glass of champagne tossed in my face.”

He stalked across the kitchen and tilted up my chin with the tip of his finger, his soft brown eyes full of fire. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on between you and Sal.” I opened my mouth to fire off a sarcastic retort, and he glared in warning. “No, I don’t want to know. The less I know the better, because whatever shit happened in the mudroom needs to end.”

I slapped his hand away from my face, anger and humiliation curling inside my gut. “It’s none of your business. Stay out of it.”

“Emilia, I’m only saying this to you because I like you, and you don’t deserve half the shit your dad does to you, but you and Sal cannot happen. Period. End of story. Your father would kill you if he found out, especially now that he has set up some arrangement with the Masciantonios. And fuck, Sal is already treading on thin ice. My dad only partially trusts him, and if he found you two have been doing whatever, he’d be in your dad’s office arguing to do the honors of fitting Sal for a pair of cement boots and sending him on a long swim in the Hudson.”

My heart skipped a beat, and I blurted out the first lie that popped into my brain. “Sal and I were talking. That’s it. I promise. We should have left the door open. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“Bullshit.” He slanted into me, eliminating any suggestion of space. “I saw you. So did Lettie. She was spying on you, and that bitch is not right in the head. I’d watch your back from now on. I know you’ve got it in your head that she’s your friend, but let me clue you in—Lettie is no one’s friend except her own. She is a sociopath.”

My stomach flipped, and bile inched its way up my throat. My mind scrambled to wrap itself around his words. “What do you mean she was spying on us?”