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Not like her.
I wanted to rip that portrait off the wall. I hated the way she stared at me. I fucking hated her.
“Not this time.” Cristian’s voice brought my attention back to him. He was not looking at the painting. The handful of times I’d been in here, he’d never once looked at it.
I wanted the history of it all. I ached for it. To know how much he’d loved her. What happened to her. How it was connected with Lorenzo. What he became. Cristian’s path to becoming the Don when it wasn’t his birthright. What was his birthright? What was his childhood like?
I shook myself out of all of those questions. That was not something I needed to be thinking about right now. I did not need to learn about Cristian’s childhood. That would not get me out of here.
There was a renewed need to find the evidence that I hadn’t been motivated enough to go searching for this past week. I’d told myself it was because I hadn’t had an opportunity to go searching safely. Never was alone in the house for long enough. Now it was clear I had to create an opportunity. Force one. My life and my sanity depended on it.
“What is going to happen to him then?” I demanded, folding my arms over my chest. “A slap on the wrists? Or better yet, the back? For putting the woman in her place?” My words were coated in acid, and now my voice shook a little as the gravity of my situation weighed heavily on me.
I felt incredibly, painfully alone.
My eyes found a golden letter opener on Cristian’s desk and I toyed with the idea of running to grab it, sinking it into his neck. I imagined it so vividly I could feel his blood pouring over me.
“No, Sienna.” Cristian’s words sounded like they’d been yanked out from a primal part of him. “Whatever this life is, we do not violate women.” His eyes burned into me.
“So you’re saints,” I derided.
Cristian’s forehead wrinkled ever so slightly. “No, Sienna. From the first time you met me, you knew I was anything but a saint.” Cristian looked out the window, as if he were searching for the right words, as if he were trying to calm himself down. It was a crack in his exterior. A considerable one. It made him seem all the more human. After a few moments, his eyes returned to mine. “That’s what drew you to me. Because you’re no saint either.”
Something inside of me fluttered. Something that I thought had been damaged, if not dulled significantly, from the events of this morning.
Apparently not.
“He’s going to lose his hand,” Cristian said, still staring into me. “For what he did to you. For laying a hand on you.”
I furrowed my brow. Though such a sentence was ridiculous, I believed him. Cristian was not one for hyperbole. Nor would he joke or lie about something like this. He was invariably serious.
“This afternoon,” he continued. “In this room.”
I digested this news. This man, one with Catalano blood, one who was supposed to become the leader of the family, was going to lose his hand for laying a hand on me. He’d be forever disfigured, unable to escape the memory of what he’d done.
I liked that. If more men got appendages cut off for touching women against their will, maybe less women would be touched against their will. Those women never got to escape the memory of what happened to them.
“You think that I’m going to refuse to witness it?” I asked. “Think I’m going to talk about how barbaric it is?”
Cristian didn’t answer, but his eyes flickered in a way that told me that was exactly what he’d thought.
I adjusted my skirt, my cheek was still throbbing and the pain was getting distracting. “You’re not going to hear shit from me,” I chuckled. “I think a man forcing himself on a woman like some kind of Neanderthal without a frontal lobe is the barbaric portion of this situation.” I reached up to yank my hair from its bun, hoping to relieve some pressure in my head. Cristian watched as it tumbled onto my shoulders, his gaze hungry.
I ignored that. “Therefore, I think that the punishment should fit the crime,” I said. “I’d be cutting off something altogether different, but I guess a hand will suffice.”
Cristian stared at me for a long time. I was uncomfortable under such scrutiny, feeling much more shaken than I sounded. I didn’t want him to see that. Think that I was going to be broken by this afternoon. Not when I had the feeling this life had a lot more to throw at me.
Cristian advanced quickly, not giving me time to retreat, not thinking about what my reaction would be to dangerous males rushing at me. His mouth was on mine, and our bodies crashed together in an instant. There was no control. No tenderness. No thoughts about handling me with care. The pain in my face was nothing now.
