Smoke (The Carelli Family Saga #1) - Eden Butler Page 0,61

front room and the images on them—Vi in our apartment with Mr. Kempt and one of his daughters, then Mr. and Mrs. C. with Dante and Toni at the bar in the restaurant, drinking small cups of espresso, their expressions worried.

Dimitri glanced toward them, and he flexed his jaw and pressed his lips together like it took effort not to charge at Alejandro and beat him senseless for invading his family’s life the way he had.

“Slow,” my ex said when we came to the center of the room. He walked forward, coming into the light from the darkness that surrounded us.

My breath caught in my chest at how gaunt, how unhealthy he looked. My ex-husband had been so beautiful when we met. All the girls in our Freshman Econ class fought over who got to sit next to him that first week. He hadn’t been interested in any of them. He’d moved each class, avoiding them, sitting in the back, then the front, then, by the third week, in the middle, for each lecture, right next to me. It took Alejandro a solid month to ask me out and me, two more weeks to realize that was what he was doing.

He’d been so smart and stunning, really. His light brown skin clear. His black eyes round, deep set and haunting. His full, lush lips pink, delectable. I couldn’t resist him. I’d been helpless.

But the man who stood in front of us was not the boy I’d fallen in love with ten years ago. This man was rail thin and ghostly. His skin was pockmarked and scarred. There were blemishes and sores on the sides of his face and along his forehead. He’d grown so thin that the high set cheekbones that had always made him look like he should be walking runways, now made him appear sick. His collarbone protruded and his once thick, curly hair had become thin and matted.

“I thought you said he was motivated,” Dimitri said, staring at Alejandro with his face twisted in disgust. I could see the pity beneath all the rage that cornered in his eyes.

“I…don’t know…” Despite Dimitri’s warning, I moved forward, taken over by dread and fear. This is what had become of the man I’d once loved so fiercely. Mi corazón, I’d called him. But he wasn’t my heart anymore. He’d been replaced. “Where?” I said, not hiding the anger in my voice. When he only stared at me, that anger intensified. “Where is my son?”

He didn’t speak. His gaze locked on me, moving over my face as his hands shook, his mouth wide, opening and closing like there was so much he wanted to say and couldn’t. He licked his lips, swallowing so thickly I could hear his throat working before he took a breath, like he geared up to speak but couldn’t decide what to say first.

“She asked you a question!” Dimitri’s loud voice jerked Alejandro’s attention away from me.

“My… my son is fine. Sleeping.” The glare he gave Dimitri was fierce, but there wasn’t enough of him to back up the challenge in his eyes.

This didn’t make sense to me. None of it. His behavior, his anger. The tech I understood. That had Alejandro’s name all over it. But how thin and sick he looked, how caught he seemed by watching me, how jealous he was, didn’t make any sense to me.

He’d been confident on the phone, teasing us. Now he jerked when Dimitri called him out. Now he looked as though he could barely hold up his gun.

“What is this mierda?” I asked, walking closer. Dimitri touched my arm but didn’t pull me back. I was betting on that response and the one I got from my ex-husband.

Alejandro had always been possessive, aside from that time he offered me up to Reynolds, so I knew he’d hate seeing Dimitri touch me. And when he did, the thin man in front of me moved his top lip up, a wide bend curling it. He narrowed his eyes and the irises seemed to darken as he moved his gaze to the spot where Dimitri held my arm, then to his face like he dared the bigger man to challenge him. But Alejandro wasn’t stupid. He was weaker, smaller than Dimitri. I think he knew that and resented the idea that I did too.

“There’s no mierda.” Alejandro scrubbed his fingers over his face with his free hand and gestured with his gun as he spoke with the other. “I wanted