Not Mine to Keep (The Costa Family)

“Friday’s tomorrow, and you’re still not here,” were Braden’s first words when I finally answered his call instead of only swapping texts like we’d been doing. “Also, about damn time you picked up,” he laid into me before I could speak. “I assume it’s your husband’s doing as to why we haven’t talked on the phone before now.”

My husband? The words came out bitter from him. Resentful and maybe jealous, too. He had as much right to be jealous of Alessandro as Alessandro did him.

“Can’t believe you married a stranger. And the fact you haven’t told your aunt is suspect. If I had her number, I’d call her. And believe me, I tried looking her up.”

Thank God she was paranoid enough to keep her digits safely hidden from the world.

“This isn’t like you.” He wasn’t going to let up, was he?

“If you wanted to have a one-way conversation we could’ve stuck to text.” I dropped down at my desk in the music room and flicked one of the balled-up pieces of paper there. Writer’s block be damned. If a view of the Manhattan skyline couldn’t cure me, nothing would.

Well, maybe not until I was freed from the shackles of a marriage my husband didn’t want, and I shouldn’t have wanted. And I don’t. Not now. Maybe one day with a man who didn’t marry me because of a favor and revenge. Also, with someone who saw more than a body to bang and a woman with the potential to be loved.

“Calliope.” His tone softened this time, but my name from his lips felt traitorous. Like I was cheating even talking to him, especially at ten o’clock on a Thursday night while my husband had been mostly MIA every day the past week.

He’d done his best to keep away, aside from two run-ins the last week. Once on Monday while reading the newspaper at the ass crack of dawn and sipping his coffee, dressed like a million bucks (well, billion) in his suit at the kitchen table.

He’d spilled his coffee on the paper. I’d teased him about reading the actual paper like an old man, instead of the news online, then he’d lectured me on walking around in my pajamas with so many other men in the house—including him.

I’d upgraded from the dancing PJs to singing cherries that’d been an impulse buy on Amazon over the weekend. He hadn’t been a fan of those, either, so it seemed. Or my eye roll from his reaction.

“Calliope.” There was my name again, a reminder I was now letting Braden have that one-way conversation because I was jogging through the two encounters with the only man I wanted to actually call me by that.

Yesterday had nearly done me in when seeing him. Also at the ass crack of dawn, but in the gym. I’d been unable to sleep, so I thought I’d run on the treadmill to stop the thoughts running on repeat through my mind. Worries about what to do about my job since I’d yet to resign. Then there were my friends badgering me for answers. Stress about my aunt and what if she found out.

So walking into the gym to see Alessandro sweaty and shirtless and jumping rope had only added to my plate of why I needed to run after that.

Of course, he’d stopped jumping the second he set eyes on me and nodded a curt hello as he studied my gym clothes, as if finding them more problematic than my singing-cherries PJs, then he wordlessly tossed the rope and left. Talk about a cold shoulder.Please check at N/ôvel(D)rama.Org.

“Don’t call me that anymore,” I finally said, remembering Braden was waiting for me to participate in the call and I’d let my mind wander too long into dangerous territory by thinking about my husband, a man I couldn’t help but think about nearly every hour of every day since he’d come into my life.

The fact I’d gotten myself off in the shower, feeling too dirty to do it in his bed, even if it was a new mattress, had me all kinds of messed up. I’d had the weird sensation of being watched all week, and even that and knowing there were cameras in the penthouse didn’t prevent me from touching myself. Not that I’d seen any in the bathroom or bedroom, but still.

What made it worse was who I’d thought about while touching myself. Not a celebrity or favorite fictional character. Nope, a real man. My husband.

I’d been unable to write music, but my creativity had shifted to conjuring up the kind of fantasies that even made me blush. The idea of him spanking me had sent me over the orgasm cliff twice in the last twenty hours alone. (I’d taken more than one shower a day.)

“What do you mean?” Either he’d had a delayed reaction, or I was still stuck on thoughts of the sexy man who’d shared a bedroom with me for the last seven-plus days but hadn’t touched me and just now heard Braden talk. “I always call you Calliope.”

“Callie. I prefer that now.”

“This is his doing, isn’t it? He’s controlling you. You’re letting a man you don’t know tell you what to do, and that’s not even remotely like you.”

He wasn’t telling me what to do. Not really. Just to keep his distance so he didn’t bang me and break my heart. I’d yet to broach the subject of Broadway again, even though we needed to leave in the morning, and I had every intention of having a third ass-crack-of-dawn moment with him to let him know I’d be flying there to perform.

“You’re coming, right? Just tell me you’re coming. This is your dream. Do you know how hard it was for me to land this gig for us?”

“Pretty sure you told me a half dozen times over text in the last week. The guilt you laid on was thicker than molasses.”

“You roll your eyes any harder they’ll get stuck.”

“You can’t see me.” But I did roll them. Again for good measure.

“But I know you, Callie. Unlike the playboy you married.”

He probably thought that playboy was having his way with me every day, and yet, nope—zero way to be had. I still couldn’t believe I’d gone from upset about his sweet guitar gesture, insisting it was best to hate him, to nearly falling to my knees before him that very night, asking him to ravage me and screw the consequences.

He’d even had a messenger drop off the official legal marriage documents to sign to avoid any unnecessary contact with me on Tuesday.

So yeah, his willpower was much better than mine. I was all over the place when it came to that man. He was probably right to keep away.

“The silence you’re blessing me with is also a curse. It’s fucking with my head while I try to figure out what’s going on in yours,” Braden told me, and damn, he wasn’t holding back now that he had me on the phone.

At least Imani, and my best friend, Nala, had used kid gloves when they tried to talk sense into me about my “strange behavior” of allowing a man to whisk me away like I was in some Hallmark movie. I was pretty sure Hallmark wasn’t in the business of making movies about the mafia or murder. But I left those comments to myself while denying the rumors about Armani.

“I’ll be there. Tomorrow afternoon,” I finally said, hoping my husband would let that happen when I confronted him.

“Good. We need to rehearse beforehand. We’re on at nine p.m. I’m sure you’ve been too busy to do it up in your mansion.”

“Not in a mansion.” Well, not quite. “And I have had time, actually.” No plan to explain to him why.

“If you don’t come, there’s something you should know,” he said a beat later, his voice inching into you’re-about-to-hate-me territory. “Britt will be standing in for you if you’re a no-show. I need a backup in case you blow me off.”

I stood and pushed the chair back. “Of all the singers we know. Britt, really?”

“Britt’s the only one who knows our stuff and who can pull off a last-minute gig.”

“Of course she knows our stuff. She was part of the band before she slept with my boyfriend.” The year between then and now hadn’t seemed to dull the betrayal from one of my best friends. She’d hurt me far more than my boyfriend had, because she’d been my person. My go-to for everything. And she’d taken our friendship and stomped all over it, breaking my heart.

“I’m sorry.” His apology was flat and only further pissed me off, because was he going to be another friend who hurt me? “This is important, though. And it’s her or no one if you don’t show. Lesser of two evils.”

Oh, for the love of . . . I fell back into my chair at his words, hating them so, so much. “You’re doing this just to make sure I come down there. You’re playing dirty, damn you.”

“This is our dream. We’ve talked about this for so long. Hell, the three of us used to, before she fucked up,” he said, instead of rejecting the notion. “I won’t let some billionaire asshole take this from you. From us.”

“I hate you.” Not the way I hated Alessandro, though. No, that man inspired a sonnet of emotions and a whole notebook of feelings. If only I could turn those feelings into words on paper to sing. “But I’ll be there, and so help Britt if she shows up, too.” I ended the call without a proper goodbye, unable to talk to him any longer after the fresh hell someone I thought I could trust was now putting me through. I could only handle so much before breaking.

“You okay?” At Leo’s voice, I swiveled in the desk chair to see him in the doorway.

I peered at the camera on the ceiling, then pointed to it. “Red light means it’s not active, right? You weren’t watching me, were you?” How’d he know I was the opposite of okay to come in and check?

He looked at the camera, then back at me. “It’s off, and only your husband’s security team here has access to the exterior camera feeds.”

“So no one’s been watching me?”

His lips twitched into a smile. “There’s only one person who can view the interior cameras, and he hasn’t been around so much, so you’ll have to ask him when you see him next.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of that, or the fact I had felt like I’d been watched from time to time in the last week, which meant I was either losing it, or my husband had his eye on me more than I realized.

“Are you okay, Mrs. Costa?” he asked again, still hanging back in the doorway.

“Armani send you here to ask?” I didn’t yell or shout on the phone, did I?

Another quick smile came and went. “He’s not a fan of the game of dodgeball you’ve been playing when it comes to his calls. But no, I was walking by, and from the sounds of it, you were upset.”

“I’m . . . fine.” Hardly.

His brows scrunched, then he straightened his posture and caught me off guard by sharing, “You look like her; you know that, right?”

There was only one “her” he had to have been talking about, and the only motherly figure in my life I cared to think about right now was on a cruise ship and still blissfully ignorant of my situation.

“I worked your mother’s security detail for ten years. Whenever she was in Sicily, he had me keep an eye on her.”

“So she didn’t cheat on him while he cheated on his wife?” I couldn’t help but blurt.

“I know you must think she chose him over you, but she was clearly trying to save you from being raised as a DiMaggio.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Aren’t you supposed to be on his side, not mine?” Of course, Leo had been nothing but nice to me since day one, but like Gabriel, he worked for Armani, so I couldn’t fully give him my trust.

“I can see why Gabriel chose Alessandro for you.” That wasn’t an answer to my question. Well, not exactly. It did feel like a cryptic message, though.

“What do you mean?”

“You think I’m an idiota?” The third smile was the charm. The most genuine from him that time. “I know a sexually frustrated man when I see one. You two haven’t consummated the marriage.” Before I could protest and lie, he lifted a hand. “I won’t tell anyone. I’m loyal to the code of the DiMaggio family, and that means not hurting a woman. It’s obvious Gabriel chose Alessandro because he knew he’d never touch you against your wishes. And you must not want him to, because he’s walking around like a ticking time bomb.”

I stared at him, tongue-tied and shocked. “What are you . . . What do you want?” Everyone wanted something in this game we were playing, which was starting to feel more like Russian roulette with every day that passed.

“I think we want the same thing,” is all he said before winking, then he left me alone, and I had to assume—to hope—that meant he was somehow on my side in all this. An unlikely ally when the time came.

I grabbed my phone from the desk at the memory I promised Braden I was coming to Nashville, and maybe waiting until tomorrow to confront Alessandro was a bad idea. I needed to do it now while I had the nerve.

No clue where he was so late at night, I called him up to track him down, but I didn’t expect a breathless, “Are you okay?” from him when he picked up.

“What are you doing?” Oh God . . . or who are you doing?

“I’m in the middle of something,” he said in a clipped tone. “What do you need?”

“To talk,” I rushed out, hating the snap of jealousy popping through me, visions of some woman naked beneath him in my mind now.

“I can’t. Not now. I’m busy.”

Oh, I bet. “Where are you?”

“At work.”

Liar.

“I’m going to ask again, are you okay?” he asked steadily.

“Yes.”

“Then I have to go.” The call ended, and I lowered the phone, anger lighting a hot path through my body, feeling like I was being cheated on all over again, which was absurd. The marriage was . . . still technically real, dammit. And so was the pain in my stomach at thinking about him with another woman.

“Leo,” I called out, already on my way to the door. “I need you to take me to my husband. Now.”