Raised by the Mafia

26. The Tesserae (Ryan)

"So, no, Ryan, I'm not spontaneous," Naz says, referring to my earlier remark. Her gaze is distant, still browsing her memories. "Or Luca wouldn't have built this elaborate scheme. He meant to satisfy my innermost secret desires."

"So innermost that you didn't know you had them?"

The ring she's just described weighs her finger. I didn't put it there, only restored the borrowed chip of wealth to its place. Should I have insisted on her wearing the wedding band? It sounded stupid back then. Back then? How droll for me to feel that way about our wedding day, given it's only been a few weeks since then.

A flash of resentment descends on the heels of regret. Did she tell this yarn in excruciating details to humiliate me for fucking her on the public beach? Why? She was there too, groping me on the sand, clawing my pants off. If anything, it was me who tried to stop her, though not wholeheartedly.

I should snap out of it. This isn't a great moment to bellyache over a friendly roll between the sheets, much less to erect a cloud castle. She came to me for help. That's what I should give, without letting the juvenile dick measuring contest impair my judgment.

"Did he..." I stop and grit my teeth. I won't avoid the bastard's name. It would only make his ghost in this bed more corporeal. "Did Luca tell you that you wanted this complex seduction routine?"

"He didn't have to. I figured it all by myself," she snaps.

I wave invitingly. "Go on."

"That's the way he loves, by collecting those tiny mosaic pieces..." She scrunches her face funnily. "What do you call them?"

"The tesserae, I think?" I honestly have no idea where I've heard the word, but Naz' brows lift approvingly. Immediately, I'm keen to spend the rest of the night researching the Byzantine mosaics, so I could casually impress her again. This's a terrible, terrible time to lose my marbles and turn into a simp.

"Okay, the tesserae." The expression of pleasant surprise melts away, replaced by its exact opposite: disappointment. It's not my erudition, though, that causes it. It's the old splinter under the nail. "Luca falls in love with the smile or the shape of the earlobe on one woman, the roundness of the heel on another, and so on. Together, those tiny bits complete a perfect woman, his ideal. He's not satisfied until he has it all together."

I don't like the sound of silence that falls between us. It lets her slip away into her toxic dream-world. "He assembles a perfect woman in his mind by keeping different lovers to suit his perverted needs."

She chews her lip. "The way you put it is crass, but it's how it is. He loves them all for what they give him."

Pillow talk is the time-honored spying method. It's been around well before Mata Hari made it cool in popular imagination. So salacious, plenty of ink is wasted on the don't fall in love trope. It's one of those rules created to be broken.

The warmth of her skin and the scent of her body remind me how easy it is. It's not even a fucking speedbump. Never fall in love with your enemy, blah, blah, blah... What could possibly go wrong?

But I must keep the business in the mix, no matter how much I like her hair spilled on my pillow. "You're romanticizing what he does, Naz. He's a pro in grooming women."

Her eyes narrow, steel glinting between the eyelids. This is why, it's so hard to imagine her in Luca's web.

"Please, Ryan, go on. Mansplain what happened! Because I only gave it four years of my life to understand it, but obviously, I'm not seeing my ex clearly."

Her tone is dangerous, so I chose my words carefully. I dig being allies with benefits far more than being enemies with benefits. Or just enemies. "I don't know exactly."