Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 79336 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79336 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
One of the guys put the drink on the coaster in front of me before he retreated to the edge of the room.
I didn’t touch it.
Silence passed for a while as he continued to stare me down. “You say you don’t care about money, but you’re in the presence of the wealthiest men in Sicily. You say you want your brother to come home, but instead, you’ve ended up here with me. So, what do you really want, Constantine?”
I didn’t have a clue. For the last six months, I’d nursed my broken heart. Spent my nights alone in my apartment. Stopped going out with my friends because all I wanted to do was be alone. When I didn’t think about how much Isabella had hurt me, I thought about how much my brother had killed me. Now I didn’t know what direction to take in life . . . if I belonged in Taormina anymore. “Honestly, I don’t know. I planned to settle down with a woman, until she broke my heart.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But sometimes the worst things that happen to us end up also being the best things that ever happen to us.” He finished off his glass, then lifted it in the air until one of his men retrieved it and made another. “You’re far too young to be married. You aren’t old enough to know what life really is. Haven’t had enough pussy to know which pussy you really want for the rest of your life. So may I suggest you take the time to figure that out . . . and make some money along the way.”
It was the quickest job offer I’d ever received. “You’re offering me a job when you don’t know me?”
“I’m offering you an opportunity. What you do with that opportunity determines where you end up. I am a great judge of character, and I can tell you’re as smart as your brother but not as impulsive. Keep making your little rice balls at home if you want to live in a cramped apartment for the rest of your life—or expand your horizons and explore something greater. The choice is yours. But don’t wait too long . . . because my generosity has always been fickle.”
I worked in the kitchen at Rosticceria Da Cristina in the morning, preparing the restaurant for the morning crew. It was the same thing every day since we were open every single day of the week. I never had a day off because I just had to be there a couple hours every morning. We could hire people to come in and do the morning stuff, but my mom didn’t trust anyone alone in the restaurant except for family.
Something caught my eye in the window, so I looked up—and saw Isabella walk to the front door.
The front door that I left unlocked. “Fuck.” I should have listened to my ma.
She burst in the door with a wild look in her eyes.
I already knew what this was about. I took off my gloves before she even came behind the counter.
“You’re moving to Palermo?” She yelled when she didn’t need to, not where there was no music or other conversation to talk over. “What the hell is this, Constantine?”
I’d expected a conversation to happen at some point, but I didn’t expect it like this.
“Your restaurant is here. Your family is here. Why do you need to move three hours away?”
“Because there’s more to life than this little town.”
“This little town?” She stepped back. “Or you’re too good for us now?”
“That’s not what I said, and you know it.”
“This is your home. This is where we decided to settle down—”
“I had other plans before that. I wanted to move to Rome or Florence, see some of this big, beautiful world. But I stayed here because I fell in love with you, and I wasn’t going to leave you. I gave it all up to settle down and be a husband and a father. But then we know what happened after that . . .”
She flinched like I’d struck her with the back of my hand. Cut her deep with my words.
“So there’s nothing keeping me here anymore.”
“Nothing?” Her voice cracked from the tears. “I’ve given you space like you asked, even though it nearly killed me—”
“I didn’t ask for space. I asked you to let me go.” Big difference.
“I hoped something would change in the last few months. That you would forgive me and we would find our way back to each other, but now you’re leaving—”
“I do forgive you, Isabella. I don’t hold any ill will toward you.”
“Then stay. Give us another chance.”
“No.”
“Con, please—”
“I’m leaving because it’s time to move on. And I can’t do that in this little town where I have to see you all the time. It’s been a really shitty six months, and I need to be away from here.” I needed to live in a city where everything wouldn’t remind me of her. Where I could eat at a restaurant and not think about our first date. Where I could go to the beach and not remember how pink her nose was after she got sunburned. I needed to be free of her, and this was the only way I could accomplish that.