“That’s not true.” She forces a smile on her lips and turns in my direction, but her eyes don’t meet mine. “Everything’s fine.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Casso—”
“Stop it,” I say and I sound harsher than I mean to. I’m just exhausted and finding it hard to control myself right now. The day’s getting to me, and I don’t want to take it out on Olivia. She doesn’t deserve my impatience. “You’re acting off right now and I want to know why. Don’t make me drag it out of you but I will.”
She goes quiet and stops moving, but she’s still facing away. Still not looking at me, and a strange chill runs down my spine.
“I probably shouldn’t say anything, but last night Gavino and I were talking.” She closes her eyes and she’s shaking. She’s trembling. “He told me what happened to Manuel.”
I sit back against the couch and watch her. A clock ticks, the wind whistles past the window. Long shadows stretch across the floor. I’m trying to make sense of what she said, but struggling. “What did he tell you?”
She gives me the short version: meeting, Russian, car bomb, dead brother. “Your father survived it. He walked away.”
I try to process all this. Nico mentioned something about having figured out what happened, but I didn’t realize it was this. I got sidetracked by dealing with Danil and all that bullshit.
“Let me understand. My brother’s lying in the hospital nearly dead, and I’m at his bedside—”
“Casso, it’s not like that—”
“And you’re here, talking to Gavino about something that happened ten years ago, about your own fucking brother, because it’s about you and what you need, right?” My anger’s painful, mostly because I don’t want it, but the rage is hard to fight. Rage is so much a part of me now, it’s hard to get away from old, bad habits, and Olivia’s only triggering my ancient anger toward her.
“Casso,” she says, sounding desperate, and she finally looks at me with those big, beautiful, sad eyes. “It just happened, okay? We sat down to have a drink and it came up and I asked and he told me. I wasn’t trying to do anything.” She steps closer, pleading, and I stand. My hands ball into fists. I clench my jaw, grinding my teeth.
“You couldn’t just wait, could you?” I speak quietly. Her lips part and she shakes her head.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. If your brother died in some mysterious accident ten years ago, wouldn’t you want to find out exactly how?”
“Yes, I would.” I step around the coffee table and move toward her. “I’d want to know everything, every little detail, but right now, right here in in this present moment, my brother’s fighting for his life while you’re rehashing the dead. It’s not always about what you want.”
She backs away as I approach. I’m shaking with anger, so much fucking anger I could explode. She bumps against the wall and stays there, mouth open and afraid, I can see the fear in her eyes, and that stops me. I see myself from her perspective: big, half-starved, crazed, filled with rage, borderline unstable from a night of no sleep and huge amounts of stress. I see myself but I can’t quite stop as I reach up and twine my fingers into her hair and grab it tight.
“You’re my family now,” I say quietly, staring into her face. “You are my wife. Fynn is your brother. What’s happening now needs to be your priority, Olivia, otherwise how can I trust that you’ll step up when something bad happens in the future? This is the life we lead, the life we chose. And you’re a part of it.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” she says quietly, staring into my eyes. “I can’t give up on my brother.”
“I won’t ask you to. Only I’ll ask you to wait until the crisis passes. But what’s done is done, and there’s only one more thing I need from you.”
“What’s that?” she asks, whispering.
“Punishment.”
I pull her against me and drag her to the couch. She gasps in shock as I push her down, dragging her into my lap. She moans in surprise when I roughly yank down her shorts, exposing her ass, barely covered by a pair of green panties which I peel off nice and slow.
“Casso?” she asks, looking back at me in shock and pure, dripping excitement.
I don’t warn her about the first one. I bring my palm down flat against her smooth skin and spank her hard. She gasps in shock and I tighten my grip on her hair to keep her from trying to escape, because I’m sure she’s never been taken by a man like this before and put in her place.
“Punishment,” I repeat firmly, spanking her again, softly this time. “No more selfishness. No more delving into the past. I need you here, right now, with me, until this business with Fynn is over, one way or the other. And I’ll show you what it feels like when you do that. Prepare yourself.”