NO DOUBT [bwwm]

• 28 • The Home Sweet Home

I had a bad feeling about that evening on the whole drive back. And it's not even as if the day had started on a bad note, something was simply telling me things were about to take a very wrong turn.

I was afraid to tell Orlando. He seemed on some kind of cloud for the past month, it was as if making me taste the small and much bigger and expensive pleasures of life made him all the more joyous. I didn't want to ruin it over some vague intuition. Of course, when he asked I answered honestly, just not openly. But it was somewhere close to 5PM, the sun was setting, the mansion was about ten miles away, and soon enough we would sneak into our respective rooms and act as if today never happened in front of Giulia.

Or so I thought.

"After you," Orlando held the front door open as I walked in, making sure to be as quiet as possible. I was about to walk away towards the staircase leading to our bedrooms when Orlando pulled me by the hand into a warm hug.

"I had a great time today, dolcezza. Baby, there's something I need to tell you,-" I promptly interrupted him by taking his lips into a wild kiss. He reciprocated and held onto my ass, a nasty habit he had developed.

"Am I interrupting something?"

You know that moment in your life where you know you've fucked up and there's no going back, but only, if only, you hadn't made that one decision or that one action you would've been in a way better situation then your current one?

Yeah, this moment was it for me.

"What the hell is going on?" Giulia's voice surprised us both, making me jump out of Orlando's strong arms.

"Eh...We've been meaning to tell you for a long time now, Ma," Orlando declared, as I was too stunned and embarrassed to speak.

"Oh, is that so?" She sounded pissed, no, beyond pissed, furious. If it weren't for the fact that my head was lowered I'd be able to see her expression and better interpret her emotions, but shame was stronger than curiosity. "It seems I've missed a chapter or two, so enlighten me, what exactly would you have to tell me? That I was much too blinded by appearance and pretty words that I found myself hiring a shameless seductress? That I let my son fall into the trap of some cheap Californian slut under my very nose?"

"Ma, can we please just talk about this,-"

She boomed in a sarcastic laugh, "There is nothing to be told, figlio. You've been hypnotized by this gold-digging tramp, and she is no longer welcomed anywhere near this family."

"Then I'm out," Orlando announced. "If she's gone, I'm gone. I will not stand by and let you disrespect Josie like that, she's my woman."

"Orlando, no-"

"So you're leaving me, your mother, for some woman you barely met? You know, I've been told that you wouldn't be able to handle the position of successor to your father, that you are much too emotional and weak for that. I lived in denial for too long, but they're right, you're nowhere near the man I thought you were and you haven't changed at all since your teenage years. You're still a coward, a weakling," the older woman bitterly spat.