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He puts the vest on me, fastening it around my body before picking another one and slipping it over himself. The vest feels heavy and stiff against my chest, pressing awkwardly against my clothes. When I look at Davide properly, his shirt sits differently across his chest, making it obvious that he’s wearing one too.
Either something happened tonight or they’re anticipating something will happen, and neither option is comforting, especially when Antonio refuses to tell me anything about it. If he’s making me wear a bulletproof vest, then whatever threat he’s worried about extends to me.
I climb into the car without saying another word and silently fume the entire drive home, staring out the window. It occurs to me a few seconds later that I now think of Antonio’s penthouse as home and it makes me panic just a little bit.
“Where do you want to go for summer break?” Antonio asks me on the ride up.
“I’m always in New York,” I tell him.
“I’ll think of somewhere we can go after my graduation,” he says.
When we get to the living room, I’m still very annoyed and about to stomp off to my room, but I barely make it a few steps before Antonio stops me and steers me toward his room instead. I’ve known the man for three months now, and this is the first time I’m entering his bedroom.
The room is larger than I expected, though at this point I really should stop being surprised by the obscene amount of space in this penthouse.
The room is big and everything inside it is polished and expensive without looking overly decorated, with dark wood, soft lighting, and floor-to-ceiling windows stretching across one wall, giving him a view of the city below where the buildings glow against the night. For all the luxury, though, the room still feels more personal than the rest of the penthouse, because there are small signs of him everywhere. There’s a watch on the nightstand, a book left nearby, cufflinks resting on the dresser, little things that make the space feel lived.
“Your PJs are already in the closet,” he tells me as he unbuttons his pants and starts walking toward the bathroom,
I cross my arms over my chest. “Antonio, we need to talk,” I say. “If something is wrong, you have to tell me.”
He stops walking but doesn’t turn around. “I don’t have to tell you anything, Alexander,” he says calmly. “I won’t let anyone touch you. That’s all you have to know.”
“I know I don’t belong in your world, but I’ve been thrown inside it anyway. And I appreciate that you want to protect me, but I want to know what I need protecting from.”
His shoulders stiffen. “Drop it,” he says, and there’s an edge to his voice now.
It’s a warning.
“No,” I huff, standing my ground even though my heart has started beating harder. “And what if something happens to you? Don’t I deserve to know what’s happening in the life of the man I love?”
The words leave my mouth before I understand what I’ve said. I slap a hand over my mouth as if there’s any chance of shoving them back inside. I’ve spent weeks fighting with this feeling, picking at it, arguing with it, calling it attraction and obsession and bad judgment and every other name I could think of except the one that frightened me most.
Love.
I told myself I didn’t love him because loving Antonio made no sense. He’s controlling and secretive and impossible. He is the exact opposite of the kind of man I should have fallen for.
But I fell anyway.
Antonio turns to me slowly. There’s no trace of the calm detachment he was wearing seconds ago. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
His eyes narrow as he walks back toward me. His face is hard, his shoulders tight, and there is something in his expression I can’t quite read, something too intense for anger but far too serious to be anything comforting. “I won’t repeat the question.”
“I love you, okay?” I huff out, my face burning as the words finally come out. “You are a damaged, deranged, clinically unwell, and god-awful man, but I’m in love with you.”
There. I said it.
Antonio lifts his hand and places it beneath my chin, his fingers firm as he tilts my face to his, and whatever I was preparing myself to see in his expression disappears the moment our eyes meet.
Antonio has looked at me in countless ways over the last three months, with heat, hunger, anger, and that possessiveness he never bothers trying to hide, but I’ve never seen him look at me like this.
Like the words matter. Like they’ve reached somewhere inside him I wasn’t supposed to be able to touch. I quickly avert my eyes.
“Do you know what you’re saying, little stripper?”
Maybe I don’t.
