Page 71 of Captivated

“You’re working for him,” she said. “That’s what you meant when you said I wouldn’t like your answer about if you were following me or not.”

Joe swallowed thickly. “Does it really matter?”

He could tell she was hurt. For what reason, he didn’t quite know yet. It didn’t really matter, either. Her hurt was enough to pain him, too.

“It matters,” Liliana said. “Is that what it is, Daddy? He’s working for you, or Uncle Dante?”

Lucian sighed. “Joe has been hired to … look after you, we’ll say. We didn’t want him letting you know that was the job. You have a lot on your plate, and I didn’t want to worry you with anything that wasn’t important details.”

“Important details?”

Liliana scoffed.

Hard.

Lucian cleared his throat, and glanced at Joe before saying, “No, I didn’t feel it was important. Just like you didn’t know who I had acting as your enforcer before Joe. It’s no different.”

“It is different.” Liliana’s attention cut back to Joe, and her burning gaze felt like a sharp knife slicing through his skin. “And he knows exactly why it’s different.”

Shit, yeah.

He did know.

He knew exactly why she was hurting when she put it like that, and he was more than willing to take the blame for it, too.

Joe had gotten close to Liliana on a personal level, and that left her exposed. Maybe had he been honest with her upfront, she wouldn’t be feeling like she did right now. Betrayed, and so confused.

He got it.

How could he fix it?

“I should have told you,” Joe said.

“You think?” she asked.

“He was ordered not to,” Lucian added.

His words made no difference.

Joe knew it before he even said it.

Interestingly enough, Joe didn’t miss how Lucian offered information about how Liliana was the job, and not the other pieces of information that went along with it. Like how Joe had been first hired to kill two men—one of which was the father to a man Joe suspected she had been involved with in some way.

No, Lucian didn’t mention that at all.

Liliana glanced back at Joe, and he swore he saw a line of water filling her hazel eyes. “So, that’s what it is, then.”

“I don’t follow,” Joe said.

“A job. I was a job.”

Joe blinked. “Liliana—”

“No,” she said, standing from the couch. “I get it, Joe.”

There was a lot of things he wanted to say in that moment. A hell of a lot he thought Liliana needed her eyes opened to.

Like the fact that when something happened she didn’t like, the first thing the girl did was get up, and run. For some, that might be seen as cowardly, but Joe saw it as a way Liliana protected herself from getting hurt.