Page 42 of A Love Most Fatal
She doesn’t like this either but knows even more than me that we are nearly powerless to stop it. These women are determined, which I love about them until their determination is aimed at changing something aboutme.
“She’s right,” Mary says. “It would take very little prodding for their crusty-ass husbands to try to revolt against you. Until now, they haven’t wanted to cross you out of respect for Dad. Your position too, sure, but their fear of you has only rivaled the fear of their wives.”
“This is so twisted.” They are two of the few people who I’d let see me like this, griping about the inherent unfairness of everything slouched over the counter with my head in my hands. Mom rubs a circle on my back.
“It’s not that they don’t want you in charge, they do, but they want you to uphold tradition too. Family is very important to them.”
“Family is important to me. The most important thing,” I say. Both my immediate family and the larger family as a whole. It’s why I do everything that I do, I’m not just building a fortune for myself, there’s a whole network of people I am looking after.
“Ultimately, no husband means no baby,” Mary says. I hate when she’s practical. “And no baby means no heir.”
“I don’t have time to try to find a husband.”
“I know, baby.” Mom pushes my overgrown bangs behind my ear. It makes me feel like a kid again. “There’s never enough time for matters of the heart.”
I set my shoulders and take one last big breath, holding it for four seconds before letting it out.
“Will you make me a list?” I ask my mother. “If you can get the names of everyone interested, I can start looking through it this week.”
“I think that would do it,” Mom says. “You show them you’re seriously considering their options, they’ll back off. At least for a while.”
The egg timer that’s lived in the kitchen for as many years as I’ve been alive dings, though I barely have an appetite for the frittata at this point.
When I look out the kitchen window to the backyard, Nate is standing on the grass with his eyes closed and head tilted back, like he’s getting in his morning photosynthesis. The dog rolls on the lawn like it’s the most spectacular grass he’s seen in his life. It’s surreal to see him there. Neither of them belongs.
“So he’ll stay?” Mary asks at my side, also peering out the window.
“He’s staying,” I agree.
Mom wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me towards her. “This is going to be fun.”
15
NATE
I usedto daydream about vacations like this. When I was in my second year of teaching and doing grad school in the evenings, I would get home from work and my classes, and then I had to work on my lesson plans, or my grading, or myownassignments. Then, as I collapsed into my mattress that was just on the floor (no headboard, no box spring), I would close my eyes and fall asleep imagining days where I had no responsibilities and no obligations.
In my fantasies, my perfect day looked like this: I had no alarm set on my phone—it was charging in the kitchen, not even on my nightstand—and I would wake slowly, after fourteen hours of sleep. I would make something simple but delicious for breakfast. I could try a new recipe; I had all the time in the world after all. I would eat and maybe shower and get into fresh sweatpants, and then I would plant myself on the couch for approximately eight hours to read or watch movies or catch up on the seasons of TV I’d missed with my busy schedule. Then maybe I would go on a walk if I felt so inclined. Pick up a chocolate croissant down the street, and maybe a pizza for dinner. (At this point of the fantasy, I would usually meet a beautiful woman at the pizza shop, our orders getting mixed up,and we would laugh about the coincidence of both of us asking for extra banana peppers and olives and that woman would eventually become my wife and Ranger would love her as much as me and our three children.) I could stay up as late as I wanted and could do it all again the next day because it was my vacation and I had nowhere to be.
This sounded like true bliss.
Now, I’ve been on a nothing-to-do staycation for nine days and I am beginning to feel like I was a fool to think I would love doing nothing for this long. Day one was nice. Vanessa’s mother Claire showed me around the garden and greenhouse and together we toiled at it for a few hours, a companionable work that reminded me of my dad. Delightful.
I met the house staff; a private chef who comes a few days a week as well as the weekly housekeepers. They came before lunch and stayed until dinner, which was as delicious as you’d expect a homemade meal by a private chef to taste. Then, I wrote in my journal, took a long shower, and climbed into the pillow-top bed with the 400 thread count sheets—it felt a bit like a night in a hotel.
Really, I’ve been relatively relaxed, despite the fact that I’m sheltering for my life in a mafia household with a family of well-dressed criminals.
But now a week has passed, and increasingly, I feel like my brain might explode out of my eyes from quietly relaxing in this massive house. The gardening has been great, but it’s my one activity. Vanessa is mostly gone, though she shows up for dinner, not a hair out of place, and we politely ignore each other. Claire and Leo talk to me, while Mary either pretends I do not exist or stares at me like she’s casting some sort of incineration spell on me from her mind. Leo is actually very cool, not at all as terrifying as his build and demeanor would give off.
The only time I’ve left the Morelli estate was on Monday when I was escorted by both Leo and Vanessa’s freaky sister Mary to clean out my classroom—it turned into a whole thing. Jenna was there and she ribbed me with questions about the house, Vanessa’s family, etc. She asked if I saw them doing crimes, like if they were dragging bodies into the living room every other night, and she seemed a little let down when the answer was no. She also couldn’t resist trying to flirt with Mary, whoactuallycracked a small smile at Jenna’s attempts. I didn’t know Mary’s mouth moved that way, it was a shock.
In true Jenna fashion, she’d only been answering about a third of my calls and texts, and now, she’s about to pack up for a two-month trip journeying alone around Spain and then Italy and Croatia, staying in hostels and working random jobs along the way. She’s been planning this for a year, and I am certain this means she’ll be even less accessible. And I will be here, in Vanessa Morelli’s house, cooped up and going absolutely out of my mind.
Ranger is having the time of his life, though. He gets to run outside as much as he wants and is completely tuckered out by day’s end. The cook loves dogs and has been meal prepping and feeding him these raw dinners that are absolutely ruining him for dry food for the rest of his life, so that’s great for me.
I’m especially angsty about it all tonight, tossing and turning in the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in on freshly laundered sheets. After a few hours of this, I push out of bed to investigate the leftovers situation in the fridge, which is when I find Vanessa lounging on the couch watching what I immediately recognize as the secondFast and Furiousmovie.
I love this movie, and I won’t pretend that I don’t, so I scrounge in the fridge for a leftover piece of homemade pizza and settle on the far end of the couch, as far away from her as I can be. She closes a folder full of papers she was lookingat before turning to assess me with her face neutral. She’s not wearing any makeup and she has a light smattering of freckles on the tops of her cheeks and across her nose. Also, these freaking glasses I’ve never seen. Clear rounded frames that she takes off and sets on top of the file folder she was looking at.