Page 19 of The Broker
“Four. Five, if you count the rooftop garden.”
“Ouch. I’m going to be forced to get in shape, I see.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your shape,” I reply on autopilot, only realizing what I said when Valentina stops and gives me the strangest look. “What?”
“You paid me a compliment. It’s weird. Did the real Dante get abducted by aliens, and are you a body double? Quick, say something mean to me. Tell me my hair is too bright or that my glasses make me look like an owl.”
An owl. Where does she come up with these things? “Your glasses are adorable, and your hair makes me smile.” She looks taken aback as I continue. “If it wasn’t for your stubborn insistence to do the most dangerous things imaginable—”
A relieved smile flashes across her face. “Ah, there he is, the Dante I know and love. For a second there, you had me worried. What’s on the next level?”
The Dante she knows andloves?
It’s just a figure of speech, asshole. Nothing else.
“Bedrooms,” I respond. Once again, I lead the way up the stairs, pushing open the door to the right of the landing. “This will be yours.” It’s not much. There’s a queen-sized bed in the room, and the mattress is comfortable, but the walls are empty, and the room lacks color. “Sorry about the sparseness.”
She gives me a puzzled look. “What are you talking about? I like it. I have room to breathe.” She enters the room and bounces experimentally on the bed. “This is great. Is this where Angelica sleeps when she’s here?”
She’s bouncing on the bed. I should have torn my eyes away from her naked body on Thursday, but I didn’t, and now my imagination has even more material to work with. Before I can corral my thoughts, my mind has constructed a fantasy that involves Valentina on top of me, those gorgeous tits bouncing as she rides my cock.
She asked me a question. “No, she has her own room.” I open the door that connects the rooms. “Voila.”
Unlike the rest of the house, Angelica’s room is a riot of color. There’s a canopy bed with purple drapes because purple is Angelica’s favorite color. Fairy lights twinkle from the ceiling, and the blackboard-painted walls are covered with my niece’s chalk drawings. Disney princesses pose on the window ledge, fighting with Lego pirate ships. A dinosaur model is in the corner, and large fabric butterflies are perched on the walls.
Valentina blinks. “Oh wow.” She stares at me. “Two years ago, all she wanted more than anything in the world was a princess bed. And then she stopped asking for one. I now realize why.”
“Angelica didn’t tell you about her bed?” She’s perceptive—perhaps too perceptive. Even as a seven-year-old, she realized her mother didn’t want to know anything about me. “I wanted her to feel at home here.”
“You spoil her.” She crosses the room and bends down to examine the Lego boat. I avert my eyes so I can’t see how her jeans stretch across her perfect butt. “Did she do this herself?”
“We did it together.”
Valentina looks up at me, her eyes starting to soften. “Thank you, Dante.”
I can’t take it. Not the tone of her voice, not the look in her eyes. Seeing her in my house makes me want things I can’t have. Things like Valentina and Angelica living here with me. Being a proper family. Shared dinners around a dining table and nightly walks around the neighborhood with the puppy Angelica wants so badly.
When I walked into her hospital room, she cringed when she opened her eyes and saw me there. Flinched away from me. I introduced myself and told her I was sorry. That I’d never let it happen again.
And I’ve never forgotten what she said to me.
“I don’t want your promises. Go away. Leave me alone. I want nothing to do with your brother, and I want nothing to do with you.”
Valentina hates me. She always has. I can’t allow myself to be swayed by the softness in her expression because hope is a fool’s game.
The ghost of my dead brother will always come between us.
The tour is not done. I haven’t shown her my bedroom or the rooftop garden. But everything suddenly feels suffocating, and I can’t breathe. “Leo can bring Angelica here,” I say abruptly. “I have to go.”
Giorgio called just after the meeting with Antonio. He sounded on edge and insisted he needed to see me. “Meet me in Mantua,” he said, naming a city halfway between Bergamo and Venice. “I’ll be at Il Mulino.”
Il Mulino is a bar downtown on the edge of the Piazza Virgiliana. Giorgio is already there when I arrive, a negroni on the table. “You’re late.”
“I spent fifteen minutes looking for parking. You couldn’t have picked a place on the outskirts of the city?”
“I trust the people here. You want a drink?”
He lifts his hand, and a dark-haired waitress in her forties winds her way over to the table. “Another negroni already?” she asks Giorgio in a scolding tone. “What is that, your third?” She turns to me. “What would you like?”