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Ihaveto leave. If I don’t, I’ll do something foolish. I’ll smack Vito across his mouth, causing problems that will cost me my career. Or I’ll run upstairs and tell Mia I’m here for her, always, no matter what. She doesn’t have to be afraid. She doesn’t have to…
Suddenly, she’s in front of me. She’s just walked down the stairs. I don’t know where Lexi went. It’s just Mia and me in the wide hallway, the sounds of people talking and music coming from the adjacent rooms.
“Oh,” she says, stopping short and looking up at me.
I curl my hands into fists, fighting the desire to run my fingers gently through her hair, to tell her she doesn’t have to face this, whatever the hell it is, alone.
“Mia,” I say, nodding, struggling to keep my voice calm.
“Dante,” she replies.
“Uh, congratulations…”
For a moment, her eyes flare wide. I think she might tell me the truth, how scared she is, but then she plasters a fake smile on her face. “Thank you so much!” she says, seeming bubbly.
“Well, I better make myself disappear.”
The phrasing is probably cruel, but that dark part of me is still ticking away, calculating, wondering.
“Hmm, okay,” she says. “Disappearing has its upsides, I guess.”
“Do you mean that?”
I take a step closer to her, my tone getting too earnest.
Sometimes, something just snaps in me. Sometimes I don’t give a damn. I try to hide it behind the enforcer shield, the bullshit, or maybe that’s who I really am. But around Mia, it’s too easy to let myself slip. She looks up at me, half smiling, half terrified.
“Uh, sure?” she says, making it a question.
“Ah, there she is,” Vito says, walking down the hallway, and my blood runs cold. Every single inch of my skin blazes, and something deep and fucking hungry starts pulsing in me. It’s like my woman and I were in a bubble, and now a predator’s approaching. I almost drive my fist into his face. He grins.
“I was looking for you,” he says, moving his arm as if to touch her.
Mia slides out of the way, a smile fixed on her face, her eyes wide and panicked.
“She gets shy,” Vito tells me with a sick wink. I keep my face calm. I show nothing. I just stare. “Did you hear me… Dante, right? Like the devil. I think there was something like that, right? Huh?”
He’s probably thinking of Dante’sInferno, but I like that. It works. “Like the devil,” I repeat, nodding.
He grins even wider, and I wonder what he’d do if I headbutted him in the mouth as hard as I could. He doesn’t seem to be packing a gun. I’d maul him. I’d tear him to pieces.
“How do you two know each other, then?” Vito goes on. “You must be quite close, having private conversations in hallways.”
“We just met,” I say. “I was just leaving.”
“I thought you were an uncle or somebody I didn’t know about for a second,” the younger man says, tall, lean, and laughing.
“I know. I’m getting old.”
He doesn’t like the way I’m looking at him. It’s the sort of stare that pins a man in his goddamn place, reminds him of who he really is, how small he is. He knows I’m staring him down, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
“Anyway…” Vito nods to Mia. “Shall we?”
“Uh, sure,” Mia says.
I stare at his hand as she walks away, waiting for him to lay it on her back. Suddenly, I’m ready to sacrifice everything to snap him into pieces, but he doesn’t touch her. Maybe he can sense what I’d do. Instead, he puts his hands in his pockets, whistling as he walks away.
I push open the front door and march across the street to my car, eyes blurry, head feeling hazy. I don’t know what this is. It’s like a protective instinct has just been injected into my bloodstream. “Mia. Myfucking Mia,” I almost want to roar. I pull over, park on the sidewalk, and enter the first bar I see.
