“What is it?” he begs. “Tell me.”
A sob escapes me. I whirl around and face up to him. “You really don’t know?”
He blinks but then understanding falls over his expression like a soft mist. He knows.
“I thought you actually cared about me, but it’s okay. Irealize now how naïve I’ve been. I won’t draw such a ridiculous conclusion again.”
He runs both hands through his hair, agitated. “What are you talking about? I do care about you. You know I do.”
“No, I don’t!” My voice has climbed in pitch. “There are never any witnesses when we’re together. You only show me attention when we’re behind closed doors. I question whether I’ve imagined it.”
“No,” he barks. “You haven’t imagined it. I care about you a lot…Toomuch, for God’s sake. I always have and it’s always ended badly.”
A spark of recollection burrows beneath my skin.
Always.
This isn’t the first time he’s made a reference to the past that doesn’t make sense.
He rakes another hand through his hair and turns his back to me, leaving me reeling with confusion.
I can’t help the spite in my tone. “Why wouldn’t you take me as your date to the wedding if you care about meso much?”
He turns back to me, but this time he seems a little more distant.
“For me to take a true date to a wedding, I would have to be engaged to the woman or as good as. Me taking a date to a mob wedding says something about my intentions.”
Fury climbs up my throat and I suddenly don’t care if the security guards on the door can hear me.
“So, your brothers taking women they don’t evenknow. What does that say about their intentions?”
His expression turns to stone. “It’s different for them.”
A cold shiver coils around my spine. I’m only now seeing the full extent of my naïveté.
“Why? Explain it to me.”
I take a step toward him even though I’m afraid of what he’s going to say.
“Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like youdidn’t take me because you don’t think I matter enough to be seen with you.”
His chin drops like he wasn’t expecting me to be so astute. “It’s not like that.”
“Then come on,” I goad. “Tell me.”
We stare at each other in silence.
I wait for him to explain exactly whyIdidn’t qualify to be his date, having spent the last month getting more deeply entwined with him, having been the only woman he’s ever taken into his penthouse—a woman he killed three men for in as many weeks—but Vivienne did.
He looks away first, and that’s when certainty settles in my veins.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
His hand drags slowly over his mouth, and for a moment, he seems… tired.
“They don’t like you,” he says finally.
My heart clatters to the floor of my abdomen.
