Page 111 of Unraveled

“Are you angry that I’m sending you away, or because of where I’m sending you, Cara?” he asked.

She refused to give him an answer. Instead, she headed out of the office, going back the way she had come from the kitchen. Gian’s footsteps echoed behind hers, albeit slower than her anger induced speed.

“Don’t run away from me,” Gian called out from behind her.

“Go to hell, Gian.”

“Stop swearing at me, Cara.”

“Not likely.”

She held back from calling him an asshole, but barely.

“Is this what you’re going to do, then?” Gian asked, as Cara strolled into the kitchen. “Fucking run because I did something you don’t like?”

“I’m not—”

“You always run when shit goes south, Cara.”

Fuck him again.

She made her way to the plate she had made for herself, and sat down at the table to eat. Gian stood at the other end, in front of his own plate, with his arms crossed as he stared her down.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Not running, clearly. I made food. I want to fucking eat it, if you don’t mind.”

Gian’s jaw clenched. “And then what? Because Chicago is non-negotiable, Cara.”

She ignored him, grabbing a steak knife to cut into the slab of meat on her plate.

“You’re going to be on that flight tomorrow,” he said when she stayed quiet.

“Will you shut the fuck up and eat?”

Gian yanked the chair out from the table with more force than was necessary. The two of them ate like that, both irritated and angry with the other, silent and stewing in their frustrations. Cara barely looked at Gian, and she could feel his damn eyes burning into her.

She hated that he had been right. She understood shit was bad in Toronto right now for him and the Guzzi family as a whole. He had been going non-stop for days, on the phone, out of the penthouse, and then back at odd hours. She overheard some of his phone calls, though she knew better than to eavesdrop.

Shit was going down.

Or it was about to be going that way fast.

Gian was trying to prepare as best he could for it.

Cara was likely one of those things, but he was so fucking right. It was not that he was sending her away, but where he was sending her away to. It was Chicago, and all the hell and pain that was about to accompany her on a long trip down a memory lane she didn’t want to walk through.

Certainly not alone, anyhow.

And fuck him for knowing it would hurt her, and doing it anyway.

Fuck him for that.

It was only after they had finished the food, after she had cleared the table, that the yelling really got started between them. She had never fought with Gian, certainly not with raised voices and something to actually shout about. Not for something she was truly angry with him over.

This was not the same.

It was the first time Cara yelled in a long fucking time.