Thin Lines (Donati Bloodlines Book 2) (12 page)

But when he looked at her …

When no one else was watching …

It was entirely different.

“You should know this one,” Calisto said.

His fingers hit the keys, and it was fucking
beautiful. Emma felt her smile grow as a familiar melody began to flow from the
piano.

“Third movement,” she said. “Moonlight. Sonata.”

Calisto nodded, but his fingers never stopped. He
didn’t miss a single note, and Emma couldn’t stop watching his hands dance over
the keys like it was second nature. She remembered him saying that he didn’t
train often anymore. That he rarely played.

He couldn’t possibly be telling the truth.

He was too good—too practiced.

Emma’s gaze moved from Calisto’s hands to his face.
His strong jaw was dotted with a few days’ worth of stubble, hardening his
already sharp appearance. His lips curved into a wicked smirk as the notes came
faster, harder. He tilted his head to the side, his grin deepened, and his
fingers never missed a key.

Not one.

“As much as I hate it,” he said too low for anyone
else in the room to hear. “I do love it.”

Emma didn’t know what to say to that, so she said
nothing at all.

She let the music sing instead.

It spoke far better than she could.

“My mother loved this one,” Calisto said, still
watching Emma. “She never could get through it all without stumbling near the
middle of the piece, but she said she didn’t have the fingers for it.”

He clearly did.

Emma smiled. “Did you ever play it for her?”

“A few times.”

“She must have loved that, Cal.”

Calisto didn’t answer. He went back to the piano and
finished the piece strong and wonderful. He didn’t even turn to look at Affonso
and Ray who had started clapping the moment the music ended.

Emma was still watching Calisto.

“She did love it,” he said.

“Good.”

“But so did he. And I stopped playing for her because
he was always around those last few months. I couldn’t give her what she wanted
without giving him what he wanted.”

Emma frowned. She didn’t understand what Calisto was
talking about, but she got the gist. It still didn’t explain the whole story,
she knew. He was still hiding something.

“You didn’t have to play.”

Calisto’s hand dropped down from the keys. Being side
by side like they were, no one could see his fingers dance over hers on top of
her lap. It was sweet enough to make her breath catch. Calisto’s gaze never
left hers.

“I did,” he said. “Because you asked me to, Emmy.”

Oh
.

“Thank you for putting up with the noise tonight,
Sherry,” Emma said to the cook.

Sherry smiled her toothy grin. “Ah, it’s no problem.
I’m just happy to see you doing something other than sitting around, Mrs.
Donati.”

Emma made a face. “How long is it going to take before
you just call me Emma?”

“A little while longer.”

“Too bad. Mrs. Donati makes me feel like I’m—”

“Your husband’s age?”

“Yeah,” Emma said, laughing under her breath.

“Maybe I’ll drop it a little sooner then.”

“I’d appreciate it. Affonso wanted me to let you know
that you could clear the library anytime. He moved into his office with Ray, I
think. I don’t know, they’re pretty …” Emma trailed off, tipping her thumb up
to her lips to mimic drinking. “You know.”

“Drunk?” the cook asked.

“Very. I’ll probably grab my book from the library and
head up to bed before he gets anymore livelier.”

Sherry winked. “That’d be a smart thing to do. I’ll go
down and clear out the library in a few minutes.”

“Great, thanks.”

Emma was just outside the library when raucous
laughter echoed out behind the closed oak doors across the hall from Affonso’s
office.

“What did you do with your wife?” she heard Affonso
ask.

“Ah, I sent her home with the driver. He’ll come back
and get me later. The more she drinks, the louder she is. Hopefully, by the
time I get home, she’ll be too drunk to notice that I’m in the next room with
the maid. God, that one … she can suck like a fucking hoover.”

Affonso roared with laughter.

Emma cringed at both men’s crudeness.

“You’re playing with fire, Ray,” Affonso said through
bouts chuckles. “I had that fight with my first wife and a maid she picked. She
won; the maid left.”

Ray burst into laughter, saying, “Was it worth it,
though?”

“More than. She was such a slut under that uniform, I
couldn’t help myself. My wife forgave me after a while. How do you think that
trip to Cancun came about that year?”

“Ah. I thought that was random.”

“It never is,” Affonso muttered.

Ugh.

Emma felt sick.

“Unfortunately, Cancun didn’t take care of the whole
problem. I have another thirteen years before it’ll go away.”

Ray coughed and sputtered like he’d swallowed a drink
wrong. “Really?”

“Mmhmm,” Affonso hummed. “She named her Trista. She’s
got the Donati eyes. I swear to God, every kid that I had, came into the world
with those black-brown eyes. I can’t get out of it when they come out looking
like that.”

“Shit. I didn’t know about that one.”

“Calisto takes the money to the mother every month.
Keeps her away.”

Emma shuddered, both angry with her husband and sad
for Calisto. It shouldn’t be his responsibility to do those things for Affonso.
Those children weren’t Calisto’s burdens to bear.

“Speaking of Cal,” Ray said. “Where did he go?”

“He said he had something to attend to. I let him go.”

Emma’s brow furrowed. She had seen Calisto’s car still
parked out front when she had went to the kitchen to talk to the cook.

“Aren’t you a little bit concerned about him?” Ray
asked.

“I don’t know what you mean, old friend.”

“Him and your wife, Affonso. They seemed … close …
tonight. Didn’t you think so?”

Oh, God.

Emma clenched her fists into tight little balls,
letting the pain of her fingernails cutting into her palms keep her quiet.

“He cares for her,” Affonso said after a long moment.

“Obviously. I think anyone could see that with how he
was acting tonight.”

“I was hoping he would care for her. You see, he’s
been putting a hell of a lot more distance between him and me lately. I can’t
stand it, watching him from afar. I don’t have any say that way.”

Ray chuckled. “You mean to say he can be a grade-A
asshole when he wants to be.”

“Mmm. Stubborn, difficult, arrogant, and troubled in
his soul. What else?”

“I wonder who he gets that from, Affonso.”

Affonso scoffed. “His father, of course. Who else?”

“Exactly. Don’t act so surprise. But you deflected my
point. Doesn’t it concern you at all to think that maybe he’s a little too
close to your wife?”

“No,” Affonso said. “I know Calisto. He feels a sense
of duty toward Emma, nothing more. He’ll want to make sure I’m treating her
right, and that she’s happy. He can’t stand to see his family suffer at my
hand. He figures I did that enough. It’s not a romantic thing, Ray. Calisto
wouldn’t betray me like that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. My boy wouldn’t do that to me, no matter
how he feels or what happened in the past. I know it. He hates me, sure, but he
loves Cosa Nostra too much to fail it. I raised him that way, remember.”

“Sure,” Ray said, but he didn’t sound like he believed
it.

“What is it, Ray? Speak up or don’t.”

“Didn’t they remind you of anyone in particular
tonight?” the underboss asked.

“Like who?”

Ray cleared his throat before saying, “Camilla and
Richard.”

Calisto’s mother and father?

Emma didn’t understand what Ray was getting at.

“I’m only a couple of years younger than you,” Ray
continued. “I was around with my father back then. Richard used to play for
Camilla like that, didn’t he? She enjoyed it.”

Affonso was quiet for a long while.

Too long.

“Yes,” her husband eventually said. “My brother and
his wife used to do that a lot. I believe that was how they … connected. When
they were first engaged, I mean. Richard needed something to make Camilla trust
him. She was enamored with his piano playing.”

Ray made a curious noise under his breath. “And you
were enamored with her.”

“Watch it, now.”

“Well, you were.”

“A little,” Affonso admitted. “But what good did it do
me, huh?”

“Point taken. It did remind me of them, though. Emma
and Calisto, I mean.”

“Not me.”

“Why is that?”

Affonso chuckled. “Because Calisto isn’t Richard. He’s
too much like—”

Emma didn’t get the chance to hear the rest of
Affonso’s statement. A hand landed on her shoulder, and another covered her
mouth. She shrieked, but it was muffled into the familiar palm keeping her
quiet.

She playfully glared at Calisto as he turned her in
his embrace to stare at her. Without a word, he pushed her into the library and
shut the door so it was only open a tiny crack.

“What are you doing?” Emma asked.

“Unlike you,” Calisto drawled, smirking wickedly, “I’m
not
eavesdropping.”

“Hey, you learn a lot that way.”

“It can be bad for your health,
bella
.”

Maybe so.

It was only then that she realized he had gotten her
alone.

Affonso thought Calisto was gone.

It was dark all around them.

And then Calisto was kissing her.

Hard
.

Emma

Calisto’s kiss was enough to send a raging torrent of
heat shooting straight down between Emma’s legs. His stubble scraped her
sensitive skin and his teeth nipped on her bottom lip. She didn’t want to stop
kissing him and feeling his tongue battle with hers while his palms skidded up
her thighs, but she had to.

Every warning bell in her head was going off like
crazy.

Crazy like they were.

“Wait,” Emma gasped, turning her head away from the
next bruising kiss. “God, Cal, just
wait
.”

“What?” Calisto asked, a little too harshly.

Emma shot him a curious look, but the darkness of the
room shrouded his features too much for her to see his reaction. “This is
stupid.”

Calisto’s hand left her dress. He rested it over her
heart gently. “Your heart is racing. I can feel it.”

“I wonder why.”

“I didn’t say goodbye to you,” he murmured.

Emma’s breath caught. “And that’s why you dragged me
in here?”

“You liked it.”

“Still stupid, Cal.”

“You made me stupid quite a while ago.”

Emma chewed on her bottom lip, wishing she could get
her thoughts and heart on the same damn page for a second. “We shouldn’t be
doing this.”

Calisto sighed heavily. “I get it. It’s perfectly fine
for you to approach and back me into a corner, but when I do it, suddenly it
isn’t okay.”

“I didn’t say—”

“You did,” he interjected coldly.

“Don’t do that,” Emma said.

She reached out to grab his hand in hers, but Calisto
pulled it away just as fast. The rejection stung like a million little bee stings
to her heart.

“Calisto, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

“Then how did you mean it? Why do this again, huh?” he
asked sharply, but quietly. “We were doing just fine the way we were, Emmy. I
was starting to fucking think we could stand to be around one another—friends,
even. I was breathing again, for Christ’s sake.”

Emma’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean—breathing
again?”

“Never mind. It’s not important.”

“It is,” she insisted strongly. “Tell me.”

“I felt like I couldn’t breathe around you, Emmy.
Every single time. Something else hurt. Something else irritated me. It was a
constant this or that. And then I was doing okay. But you fucked that up big
time. You know what, I didn’t even mind. I was just handling myself, and not
much else.
I didn’t mind
.”

Emma was unsure and warier than ever.

“I don’t want this whiplash,” Calisto continued,
unaware of Emma’s internal war. “Not with you, Emmy. It’s bad enough without
it. It’s crazy enough. Don’t do one thing and tell me another.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she repeated weakly.

“Then how did you mean it?”

Emma, exasperated, waved at the door. “Look at where
we are!”

Calisto took a step forward, pressing Emma’s back into
the wall. She was so stunned by his fast movement that she flung her hand out
to grab something and grasped a hold of the bookcase. The small crack in the
opening of the doorway sent a stream of light from the hallway cascading in. It
streaked across Calisto’s dark features, letting her see the blackness in his
gaze and the hard set of his mouth.

It turned her on like nothing else.

His anger made her hot.

“Where we are,” Calisto drawled, “will never matter.
It’s always going to be stupid and dangerous, Emmy. It’ll always be bad and
wrong. The only thing that I care about is making sure you get out pleased and alive
each and every time.”

Emma swallowed hard, taking in his words.

Calisto was planning to continue whatever this was
with her, regardless of how crazy it was. He
wanted
to.

“I want to see you smile,” Calisto said, stroking her
cheek with the pad of his thumb. “You don’t do that anymore, and it bothers
me.”

Emma shivered at his touch. “Play fair.”

“I wasn’t taught to play fair for things I wanted.”

“Play fair with me,” she insisted.

“I know it’s stupid,” he said instead. “I know this
wasn’t the right spot or time. I knew all of that.”

“And?”

“And it didn’t matter, Emmy. I wanted to tell you
goodnight. I had to say goodbye before I left.”

Emma’s heart beat harder, screaming for a simpler time
when things weren’t so fucked up and she wasn’t so messed up.

“Why bother, Calisto?” she asked.

“With you?”

“Yes. You said it yourself. I make you hurt, confused.
You can’t breathe. We’re just dancing on coals around one another. Why bother
with something like that, huh? You can’t have me.”

Right?

“Having and keeping are two entirely different things,
Emmy.”

“Are they?” she asked.

“I can have you however I want you, as long as you let
me. I simply can’t keep you.”

A blunt pain stabbed at her heart.

“Is that enough for you?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “But it’s enough for now.”

But what about when he wanted more?

Emma didn’t bother to ask.

Calisto was right, after all.

This was enough.

“Tell me something,” Calisto said, drawing a pathway
over her cheekbone with his thumb again.

“Anything.”

“Why did you really come find me yesterday?”

Emma stilled on the spot, confused. “I told you. I
woke up and I wasn’t angry.”

“Tell me
more
.”

“I decided to get out of bed and do something,” Emma
said softly. “I told Affonso I was going to go visit the baby’s grave after
breakfast. He didn’t say a thing, just grunted at me like it didn’t matter. It
should have pissed me off, Cal. He was ignoring the baby again. He was
pretending like he hadn’t existed. It always made me angry.”

“But it didn’t this time.”

“I was going either way,” Emma replied. “So no, it
didn’t piss me off again. He is who he is, and I am who I am. I went to visit
the baby, to see him. And you know what I found?”

Calisto stiffened. “I might.”

“Little white roses all over his tiny little spot.”

Tears escaped the corners of Emma’s eyes, betraying
her. She didn’t want to keep hurting, but her grief was never-ending. She knew
it would take time; that things would get better, but she would always be a
little raw on the inside for her failure.

“And then what?” Calisto pressed.

“You did that for him, and I knew it. His own father
won’t even talk about him. Who else would have done it?”

“I replace them every so often.”

His admittance came softer than Emma had ever heard
him speak.

“Why, though? He’s not your child. You don’t have to
do those things, Cal.”

“I want to,” he said frankly.

Nothing else.

It was enough.

“I came to see you after,” Emma said. “I was hurting
and confused. It’d taken me months to wake up and realize that you care, but
sometimes you had to do it from afar. You care about
me
.”

“Sometimes I think it would be better if I didn’t.”

“I know.”

Calisto leaned down and brushed his lips against
Emma’s quickly. She took his kiss without question, and didn’t push him away.

“We’re so foul,” she mumbled. “Bad, Cal.”

“But doesn’t it feel good, too? Doesn’t that make it
right?”

Emma shuddered.

It did.

And it didn’t.

“Don’t feel guilty when you climb into bed tonight,”
he told her.

“How am I supposed to manage that?”

She was stepping out on her husband. She might not have
crossed the line entirely, but she was dancing on it with her middle finger up.

Didn’t that make her wrong?

A whore, even?

Shouldn’t she feel
something
?

“Why shouldn’t I feel guilty after this, Calisto?”

“Because,
bella donna
, I feel enough guilt for
the both of us.”

Emma jerked awake at a loud thump just a few feet away
from her bed. She rubbed at her eyes, willing the sleepiness to go away so she
could focus. The mumbling in the background only woke her up further.

“Jesus Christ,” Affonso slurred. “Who put that there?”

Emma stiffened, trying to stay as still as possible in
the bed. She didn’t even know why Affonso was in the bedroom. Ever since she
had come home from the hospital well over a month and a half ago, Emma slept in
the bedroom across the hall from her husband’s master bedroom.

Affonso claimed it was easier.

He didn’t have to wake up fighting.

Emma sure as hell did mind.

Thankfully, being in a different bed and room from her
husband meant she didn’t have to sleep with him, or even touch him for that
matter. It had been months since they last had any kind of intimacy.

She didn’t understand why he was in her room.

Two softer thumps landed to the floor before the
rattle of a belt buckle echoed in the room. Emma’s throat constricted around
the bile starting to rise.

She didn’t want to have Affonso in her bed.

She couldn’t be with him.

Not after everything.

The heady scent of bourbon floated through the dark
space as Affonso shrugged off the rest of his clothes and grumbled to himself
all the while. Emma closed her eyes, gripped the bedsheets, and pretended to be
asleep as her husband climbed in the bed and under the covers.

“Emma,” Affonso said.

His hand landed on her side and gripped tight. He
pulled, trying to turn her over. She refused to move.

“
Donna
, come here.”

“Go to sleep, Affonso. You’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk enough yet. My cock is still hard. Come
here, woman.”

Emma yelped when the blankets were pulled away and she
found herself under Affonso. He tugged at her chemise, determined to get it
high enough. She could feel the length of his erection digging into her thigh.

It made her fucking sick.

“Stop,” Emma said, her tone weaker than she intended.

Her husband didn’t listen. He continued pulling at her
chemise and working her thighs open. Emma wouldn’t relent. She twisted under
him, pushing to get away. Fear saturated her heart, almost enough to freeze her
solid.

He’d never taken from her what she didn’t give.

Never once had he forced her.

Her fighting didn’t seem to slow Affonso in the least.
His fingers dug deep into the muscles of her thighs, hurting her and making her
cry. She clawed at him when he finally got her legs opened. When she could feel
the head of his erection pushing against the panties she wore, Emma couldn’t
breathe.