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“I know women can be proud,” she says. “But my mother lived through the war. And she said to me, ‘Jackie, if you can find a rich man who will love you, never disrespect you, and always support you, then take him. But they do not exist.’”
“And what did you say?” I whisper, my chest aching at the words.
Ryland wouldn’t disrespect me, trick me, would he?
My heart cries, Never, never, never.
But my reason snaps at me that I don’t know him. I only just met him.
“I told her she was talking rubbish,” Mom snaps. “I believed, back then… and I still do now. I still believe. There’s still love out there for me.”
“Of course there is,” I whisper, blinking back a hot tear.
“If you think you can trust this man,” Mom says fiercely. “If you believe, if you know… then don’t look for a reason. Just embrace how you feel. But you have to know, Rosalind.”
“Mom,” I say, rolling my eyes again, feeling like they could roll right out of my head when I hear my full name.
“You have to know,” she says firmly.
Her jaw hardens and she stares meaningfully at me.
I know she’s thinking about my dad, about what happened to her. She doesn’t want the same to happen to me.
It’s like she’s looking through me, at that possible future, thinking about ways she can end it.
“I know, Mom,” I say.
“Do you know or do you know?”
Do I know what she’s saying makes sense, or do I believe I can trust Ryland Radley, this impossible stranger?
“I know,” I say, and even I don’t know which one I mean.
My heart and my soul flare with instant fusing devotion at the thought of him. But I can’t just erase what my dad did, the hate he imprinted on me through mom. Despite my certainty, there is uncertainty, too, and it makes no freaking sense.
It’s not fair.
I love him. I’d never say that aloud.
But if this isn’t love, this burning in my gut, this brightening of my soul every time I so much as think of him…
If my body flooding me with loyalty and devotion and trembling volcanic need…
If none of that means love and everlasting commitment, then what the heck does?
Chapter Fourteen
Ryland
I move my finger around the glass of whisky, and I think about what it’d be like to grab the glass and smash it against Vito’s head.
Violent instincts pulse in me, primal and dangerous, every part of me alight with the need to fight or fuck.
It’s a dangerous cocktail, meeting the woman of my dreams and then having to talk to these mobbed-up lowlifes.
Just a couple of days ago my biggest concern was feeding big old Chopper.
“Well?” Vito says.
He asked why I packed a bag and drove them away from the apartment building before I took them out. It’s a stupid question, but his eyes are hazy with cocaine, his movements are twitchy. The goons at the rear of the bar are the same as if they’re all amped-up on the same stimulants.
Cocaine makes men think they’re tough.
It makes them forget respect.
“It’s not your place to question how I do things, Vito.”
His men stir at the back. Vito flinches, leaning back as if he’s just realized how close he’s sitting to me.
He knows I could dart my hand up quicker than a whip and latch onto his neck. He knows I could squeeze and crush his tendons and his bones and his life out of him.
He knows I’m Ryland fucking Radley, and my old man was Bucky Radley.
“I…” He clears his throat. “I think I have a right to ask.”
He’s whining because he knows the steroid sacs he calls muscles won’t stand up to one of my fingers. He knows I could dismantle him, grab my gun, and drop these men like we’re in a goddamned Western.
If you touch her, I roar at him silently. I am going to fucking end you. She is mine.
“That’s my business. Is there anything else, Vito?”
“Wait a sec,” he snaps. “We ain’t done here.”
I stare at him silently.
He stares back at me, but he sees certainty and I see fear.
His eyes widen and it’s like he’s crying at me to stop doing this, stop challenging him.
There’s nothing more dangerous than a sensitive mob guy.
Except maybe an angry hitman.
“If you’ve got something else to say, say it,” I snarl.
He grips the edge of the table and glares at me as though he’s going to say something, as though he’s going to act tough. But we both know there’s nothing he can say or do to me.
His father and I made a deal.
They can call me any damn thing they want.
But I’ll bring more good to this world than bad, and if that means demolishing their little social club, then so be it.
“Don’t push your luck, Ryland,” Vito snaps.
