With This Ring (To Have And To Hold Duet 1)

That’ll all change tomorrow night though, I tell myself.

Come tomorrow night I can have her till my heart’s content. I’ll go slow. Build it up. Teach her to take what I give the way I give it. Teach her to come when it hurts.

I close my eyes, but sleep doesn’t follow. Only the photo Charlie sent. Marcus Rinaldi sitting on a rickety wooden chair in the De La Cruz house drinking from a bottle of tequila. A woman on her knees sucking him off while Felix and a crew of Cartel men stand around probably plotting how they’ll off him when he’s no longer useful. When they can take over.

Marcus the idiot getting his fucking dick sucked at the exact time that we were attacked here. He’s no mastermind behind any plot. He’s just not that smart. That attack wasn’t him.

I don’t sleep much. Haven’t in years. But after lying in a coma for six long years, there’s time I need to make up for. I wonder if I’ll always feel this way.

I roll onto my side and reach to open the nightstand drawer, taking out the stack of photos there. Old photographs of my family. Us when we were little. All of us. My brothers, my parents so young, then a few with my baby sister.

And even as I see myself in those pictures, even as the proof that I was there is right in front of me, is in my fucking hands, I don’t feel a thing. Not a mother fucking god damned thing. I can’t. Because I can’t remember any of it. Not the vacations. Not me on my father’s shoulders in the pool. Not my mom hugging me when I fell and scraped my knee.

I don’t remember the events and I don’t remember my family. My only memory is the night they were killed.

What a cruel thing that that’s the one thing that sticks in my stupid brain.

26

Cristiano

My head throbs in the too-bright sun as I stand on the beach drinking coffee while Cerberus plays in the waves. I need to make some calls today. Organize our impromptu wedding.

Cerberus runs back to me as wind whips my face. It’s a brisk morning. He drops the ball I’ve been tossing for him at my feet and lays down, ready for more.

“You’re quite the guard dog, you know,” I tell him, picking up the ball and throwing it into the waves.

He charges after it and I watch. I love that dog. I love his innocence. The honesty of his existence.

My arm aches. It’s the same one the doctor reset yesterday. I peel back my shirt to glance at the tattoo. Why I thought I could write a name in script no less at that angle while drunk is honestly beyond me. I shake my head at myself and finish my coffee, unable to resist looking up at her window again.

It’s been empty every time, but she’s there now, her face turned up to the sun. She has her eyes closed as I watch her.

That tattoo wasn’t the only idiotic thing I did last night. I kissed Scarlett. That’s twice now I’ve done it. The rest of it, tasting her, wanting my dick inside her, that I can classify as sex. I don’t have to overthink it. But kissing her is so fucking personal. And looking in her eyes when I do it is just fucking stupid.

Cerberus barks.

Her eyes snap open and they lock on mine. She’s surprised to see me here, and a moment later, she’s gone from sight.

I rub my face, push my fingers into my hair. I’ve got to get my head on straight. Keep my eye on the goal. On why I’m doing any of this.

Punish those who had a hand in the murders of my family.

Period.

Destroy Marcus Rinaldi.

Period.

Put him in an early grave.

Period.

The end.

If I let myself get caught up in Scarlett De La Cruz and how good she tastes when I kiss her, how she feels and sounds when she comes, it will weaken me. Her uncle saw it last night. Just read it right on my face when I saw her standing there in that dress, looking like she didn’t belong here on earth.

The chopper’s blades cut into the morning.

I look up at it, see my uncle in profile. I feel nothing at the sight of him. Should I feel something?

Without looking away I whistle for Cerberus who comes running out of the water, standing a little too close to shake off the excess.

“Come on,” I tell him as we head to the kitchen door.

“She refused breakfast,” Lenore says from the sink, giving me a sideways glance.

“Hunger strike. It’s what she does.”

She turns off the tap, picks up a towel and turns to me as I lift the espresso pot to pour myself another cup of coffee.