“Did you say all this to him?”
“No, but I wish I had.” My relationship with Leo was complicated in some ways, but in a lot of ways, it wasn’t complicated at all.
“I expected him to confront me, but he hasn’t.”
“Probably because he knows I’m an adult who doesn’t need his input.”
“Based on the look he gave me, he seems to be on your father’s side.” He gave a shrug. “Not that I care.”
I was a bit disappointed that Leo agreed with my father after everything that happened. I knew he had liked Wolfe at one point. Guess that feeling was fickle.
“Baby.”
My eyes had wandered with my thoughts, replaying the way Leo had hugged me with tears in his eyes. I looked at Wolfe once more.
“You should take it.”
My eyebrows immediately furrowed when I heard what he said.
“It’s your blood. It’s your inheritance. It’s your legacy.”
I had not expected Wolfe to have that opinion on the matter.
“I know it’s important to you.”
“Itwasimportant to me. But now, you’re what’s important to me.”
A slight smile moved on to his lips. “No reason you can’t have both.”
“My father said he doesn’t want you there as long as he’s living.”
“That’s fine,” he said simply. “I’m always down the street if you need me. And if you’re out and about getting shit done, your father can’t stop me from being there to protect you. I’ll be your personal bodyguard.”
“But we agreed to live here in Palermo together.”
The smile stayed on his lips. “It’s okay, baby.”
“I don’t see how I can work for my father when he detests you so much. It wouldn’t be right. And he’s so young, it’s not like he’s going to retire or die any time soon.”
He pulled his arms back from the surface until they dropped to his sides. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I already see how this will go down. You’ve got a traitor in your midst, and at some point, he’s going to get close to his goal and make bigger moves. So, either his identity will be revealed and your father will realize he fucked up and try to make peace with me. Or this traitor is successful…and I have to clean up the mess. In either scenario, I’ll be back and say I told you so. So I’m not worried about it.”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. It made me question whether I was right for this job. I definitely wasn’t right for it without Wolfe at my side.
“And then I’ll be the muscle your father always wanted. No one will ever cross you. And we’ll live happily ever after.”
“But…is that what you want?” Now, we made our decisions together. Our lives weren’t separate entities anymore. We’d met just a few months ago, but we’d somehow jumped from strangers to life partners in the blink of an eye.
“I want you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where we live or what we do. The details aren’t important.”
“But I know you love Palermo.” And he had to give it all up so I could work at my family business…where he was rejected and falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit.
“And I love you more,” he said simply.
“This just doesn’t feel fair to me.”
“I came into your life,” he said. “You didn’t come into mine. And the reason all of this is happening is because I didn’t handle the situation with your father the way I should have.”
“But that was my fault?—”
