Wolfe didn’t react to this disappointing news.
“I just don’t understand why he suggests Alessandro…but not you. You fit everything that he’s looking for. All the qualities he listed, you have them. You literally make the most sense…so why?”
He gave a slight shrug.
“I would say it’s because he doesn’t like you, but he just initiated you into the family. He gave you his father’s blade to carve your initials into our oak tree. So…why not?”
“We won’t know until we ask him.”
“Well, now we can’t ask him.”
Wolfe cocked his head slightly.
“I can tell he’s going to be fucking pissed. Like, Mount Etna erupting pissed. And he’ll never approve of you or accept this relationship and?—”
“Baby.” His fingers gently rubbed over my thigh through the material of the sweatpants. “We’ll figure it out.”
“He’ll kill you, Wolfe.”
“No, he won’t.”
“I know he appears serene and calm all the time, but trust me, when he loses his temper?—”
“He won’t try to kill me because he knows I’ll kill him first.”
My blood turned colder than a frozen river in winter. “You—you don’t mean that.”
“Damn right I fucking mean that,” he said. “Do I ever say anything I don’t mean?”
“He’s…he’s my father.”
“And if I tell him how I feel about you and how serious this relationship is, and all he can think about is himself instead of your well-being and happiness, then I don’t give a damn. If it comes down to me or him, you bet your ass it’s going to be him.”
“Wolfe—”
“But like I said, it won’t come to that because he knows this. He’s worked with me long enough to know what will happen if he marks me as an enemy. I don’t know exactly what will happen, but I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
I looked away, my heart still racing.
“We should have told him sooner,” he said quietly.
“Is that your way of saying I told you so?”
“No,” he said. “My way of saying anything is just saying it.”
I inhaled a slow breath and let it release like volcanic ash. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“I really don’t know which one of us is the better messenger,” I said. “Maybe you could tell him you’d like to ask me out and see what he says…and then go from there.”
“I already said I’m not going to do that.”
“I know, but that might be the right move, considering what just happened with my father.”
“Lying is never,everthe right move.” He gave me that hard stare, leaving no middle ground on the table. “In any situation or with any person. He may hate me and wish I were dead, but at the end of the day, he’ll always respect me.”
I still disagreed, but I respected Wolfe’s principles. “I wonder what he would say if you did ask him.”
