Coming Home (Morelli Family 6)

“Um… you live here?”

He gets out of the car and walks around to my side, easing open the door. I lean forward and he bends down, unlocking my cuffs. They’ve irritated my wrists and now they’re sore. My legs are stiff and everything is vaguely achy as I climb out of the car. Vince closes the car door behind me and turns to glance back at the house as I look around.

“Why is it so big?” I ask, thoroughly confused. “How did this happen? Did you hit the lottery?”

He smirks, taking my hand and leading me around the huge edifice. There are two enormous palm trees flanking a big, gold, naked woman fountain in front. Is this a house or a resort? And where the fuck are we that there are palm trees?

“Where are we, Vince?”

“Vegas,” he says, simply.

“Why?” I ask, frowning in confusion as he hauls me inside. He’s not planning some kind of insane quickie Vegas wedding, is he? What the hell else is in Vegas?

Then my heart sinks, a long-buried nugget of knowledge floating to the surface.

Vince’s dad lives in Las Vegas.

I slow down, and he’s forced to slow down accordingly. “Oh, my god, no. Vince, you didn’t.”

He looks annoyed at me again, but he doesn’t bother answering. If the fucking oversized Morelli palace wasn’t answer enough, that is.

“You hate your father,” I remind him.

“Turns out, not as much as I hate Mateo,” he says, simply.

“Your father’s a rapist!” I declare, eyes wide.

Flashing me a feigned look of surprise, he says, “Don’t tell me you have a problem with rapists now. You’ve been fucking yours for four years.”

My stomach drops like a rock and I glare at him. I despise when he uses that against me. It’s so unfair.

As soon as he gets the large double door unlocked, he slips inside and pushes in an alarm code. It’s weird that I can still be blown away by big fancy houses after living in Mateo’s for four years, but this one is so much different. I don’t like it. It feels like the house is trying too hard, like it thinks an awful lot of itself. It expects me to be impressed, so I’m not.

Mostly because most houses don’t have front doors that lead to pools. This one does. Instead of a traditional enclosed foyer, there’s a stretch of marble floor that leads to a completely open arch instead of a wall. There’s a long rectangular pool with three raised fire pits on either side, fountain sprays criss-crossing as they spray into the gleaming turquoise water. There’s house on each side, a U shape built around this impractical pool. At the top of the U, where the house stops pretending to be a home, it opens up into a big pool that curves around the right side. There are more palm trees and the pool is lit on that side. There are lounge chairs and tables, an open sitting area with furniture and an actual television under cover of a roof, but open, with huge, thick columns. There’s a bar and an outdoor workout area.

This isn’t a home; it’s a bachelor pad on steroids.

“Pool’s heated,” Vince tells me, like that might be a primary concern. “Even when it’s windy you can swim, ‘cause there’s a grotto over here.” He walks my around to the right side, indicating a lit cave with a waterfall tumbling down the center of the entrance.

“This is obscene,” I inform him.

He rolls his eyes. “Please. I know where you live.”

I turn back around, my eyes drifting across the literally thousands of square footage that serves no real purpose—it’s just for show. “Everything is open. Is there no air? I’m going to melt.”

Vince snorts. “Don’t worry, princess; there’s air. It’s not all open. The upstairs is enclosed living space—downstairs is just fun.”

I hate this house. It’s big and beautiful, but it’s arrogant and impractical and I hate it. Mateo’s house is so much smarter than this stupid, classless house.

I point to a room on the right. “That is an outdoor living room. There’s furniture. There’s a television. What happens if it rains?”

He rolls his eyes at me again before he starts walking back toward the house. “You’re not in Chicago anymore.”

That is glaringly apparent.

I follow him inside and up the white marble staircase. I’m relieved to see that upstairs it’s more of a house. Downstairs is a mega bachelor pad—seriously, there’s a motorcycle inside the house downstairs, on an altar with a blue lit wall behind it. The upstairs has indoor living rooms and bedrooms and presumably a kitchen. We haven’t made it there yet.

“This is our bedroom,” he tells me, opening a heavy, gleaming cherry wood door and gesturing for me to go in and have a look.

More white marble floors and ostentatiously boxy ceilings, but it’s more inviting than the play area downstairs. A huge bed is neatly made up with a pillow for each of us and a long decorative pillow. The decorative pillow makes me think of Mateo and makes me really sad. The usual trappings dot the rest of the room—a fireplace, a sitting area, a couple of chairs, a closet beyond the bed. It’s walk-in, but not like Mateo’s closets.