Douglas shook his head vigorously. “I don’t know.”
Leonardo sneered. Had Douglas not mingled with Summer, he may have lauded him for his guts. “What’s going between you and Summer?” No wonder Summer had been behaving weirdly for the past few days; she had discovered his true identity. The thought did cross his mind before, but he never expected her to meet Douglas.
“Is-Is she really your wife?” Douglas asked, stammering a little.
“If not?” Leonardo cocked an eyebrow, looking at him with a half-smile.
“I thought your wife was ugly?”
“What did you just say?”
Leonardo’s tone of voice did not change, but it reeked of reproval, enough to send Douglas a message that told him to watch his mouth. He had no choice but to tell Leonardo everything that had happened in the past few days. He was even full of praises for Summer’s cooking.
“Summer’s cooking is fantastic.”
“What did you call her?” Leonardo stared him down.
“Mrs. Emerson…”
Summer hid behind the handrail on the second-floor landing, watching. Douglas’s timidity looked familiar. She would behave the same way in front of Leonardo.
…
Leonardo instructed Tim to arrange a bedroom for Douglas. When he looked up, he saw Summer coming down the stairs with luggage in her hands. His eyes were fixated on the luggage for a few seconds before he asked in a cold voice, “What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” She could no longer stay under one roof with Leonardo without it making her hackles rise.
“Help Mrs. Emerson take her luggage back to the master room.” He talked to one of the bodyguards, but his eyes were on Summer.
Before Summer could stop him, the bodyguard hurried up and carried her luggage up the stairs into Leonardo’s bedroom. She bit her lip and shouted at him, “Leonardo, you’d better not go too far!”
“What’s wrong with the husband and wife living in one room?”
Leonardo was just as shameless as, if not more than, the Jarretts. She knew there was no way she could reason with him and decided not to argue anymore. She lifted her legs and headed toward the door, only to get stopped by a bodyguard. She turned to look at Leonardo.
“What do you mean by this?”
Leonardo did not immediately answer her. He got to his feet, sorting the cuff of his sleeves with a distant expression. “Who do you think the Emerson family is that you can come and go on a whim?”
Summer’s expression changed. The rumor on the streets was that Leonardo was a disfigured and impotent man. Yet, in reality, he was as fit as a fiddle. Those in the know had to be people very close to him. With her knowing the truth now, he would not let her go just like that.
Judging by her changed expression, Leonardo knew that his message had been well received. Slowly walking up to her, the corners of his lips curled up, but his smile looked grim.
“No person turns his or her back on me, especially when that person’s my wife. Stop thinking of the unnecessary and don’t try to do anything funny, because even if you die, you’ll still be buried next to me.”
Summer had seen an arrogant “Douglas” for the past three months since her marriage. That was the first time she had seen Leonardo’s aggressive and dangerous side, which was like that of a vicious beast. It was not something that a typical rich kid possessed. He was more like a demon crawling out of the darkness. It reminded her of what Douglas said about him: he was a great demon.
Pleased with her reaction, Leonardo spoke in his low but intimidatingly gentle voice, “Don’t be frightened. I will treat you very nicely if you listen to me.”
Was she frightened? Summer clenched her fists, finding that they were drenched in sweat. She remembered the times in her rented house. She was removing the round from his body with no anesthetic, yet he did not make a grunt or pass out because of the pain. She should have known earlier. A man with such mental and physical toughness was not the presumptuous and overbearing rich kid that she had known. He must have something in him that made him different from the rest. Most likely a demon from some abyss.
She opened her mouth, trying to say something, but she could not. Leonardo reached out to pet her on the head, and he was so gentle that it was nearly creepy. “You must not have seen our room clearly. Let me take you for a tour.” Summer tried to resist, but he ignored her, holding her by her hand as he brought her to the master bedroom upstairs.
They came before the wardrobe. The minute Summer walked in, she was rooted to the spot. The walk-in wardrobe was half-filled with women’s clothes, the latest fashion for the season, handbags, shoes and stuff. If she were to wear all of them at least once, it would take her months.
Leonardo stood by, observing her changing expression. Carl had once said, no woman does not like those things. Seeing her surprised look, he said, “They are all made to order for you.”
Summer turned to look at him with her cold, beautiful cat eyes. “It seems, Mr. Emerson, you are a dab hand at the slap-in-the-face-and-a-pat-on-the-back tactic.”
People like Leonardo had probably never admitted to his mistakes and apologized to them. He wanted to be in control. It was she who had first found out his real identity. But before she could make good use of the discovery, Leonardo had smelled it out and found her and Douglas.
“It’d be more apt to see it as the little thing that spices up things between a husband and a wife,” Leonardo said with a smile.
Spice up my foot! Summer secretly hissed. She came back out, not wanting to talk to him. She was afraid that she would tear his face out if she took one more glance at him. But she knew she could not, so the best next thing was to not look at him.
She went back to her room only to find her bed missing. She turned and ran down the hallway. Looking down the stairs through the handrail, she saw the bodyguards carrying her bed on the way out past the living room. Something must have gone wrong with Leonardo’s head. He was throwing away her bed just so she would sleep in his room.
Just then, Douglas came up beside her out of nowhere, leaning down on the handrail, his eyes following hers. “My cousin treats you really well.”
“Fluff!” Summer rolled her eyes.
“If it were me, he would have thrown me out instead of the bed,” Douglas said matter-of-factly.
Unmoved, Summer looked at him, face stolid. “Are you really his cousin?”
“Yeah, my mom and his dad are siblings.” Douglas spread out his hands, telling her it was something he had to make do with it, whether he liked it or not.