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Who’d I piss off now? The way he said it, as if I’d pissed someone off before—I hadn’t. I didn’t piss people off. I didn’t stick my nose into places where it didn’t belong. I didn’t, so I took insult at that, and I let him know it: “I didn’t piss anyone off. I don’t know what you think of me, but I don’t mess around in other people’s business.”
“Don’t lie to me.” A blunt response to what I’d said, and it caught me off-guard.
I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn’t lying to him, but I didn’t get the chance. He got up, wandering to the flowers that had been left in my room, checking the tags. I didn’t see any gun hidden on his form, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have something somewhere. Or knives. Damian didn’t strike me as a knife kind of guy, though. If I had to guess, I’d say guns.
“Looks like you got some sympathy from the Jameson family,” Damian said, putting one card down and moving to the other flower arrangement. “And this one doesn’t say anything.” He flipped the card around, eyebrows creasing. “Oh, hold up. It’s on the back. Get better soon, A.” Those brown eyes stared at me from across the room. “Who the hell’s this A guy?”
“A? I don’t know any…” I stopped, and then I looked at Zander. “Did you see who delivered these?”
“Yeah, a delivery guy, why?” Zander clearly didn’t understand, and I didn’t feel like explaining it to him, not with Damian right here.
There was only one A. One person, one man with a mysterious face, a man even my father couldn’t catch and get rid of. The man who sent guys to Cypress, looking for me, because I’d killed some of his men. That priest, Father Ezekiel, or Zek, whatever the fuck his name was, had told me I didn’t need to worry about those guys anymore—whatever that meant—but clearly, Atlas still knew where I was.
Not only that, he knew who I was.
“Give me the card,” I said, lifting a hand to Damian.
He slowly walked over to me, doing as I asked. His lips parted, and it looked like he was going to say something else, but with a glance to the hall, he saw someone else was here to see me. “Looks like you got a crowd coming. I better go.” He didn’t go right away; instead he bent over my body and placed a kiss on my forehead.
It happened so quickly, I couldn’t respond, nor could I push him away. I’d been studying the small card with a handwritten message, too lost in it to pay attention to what Damian was doing. When I felt his lips touch my skin, I tensed all over.
“Get the fuck off her,” Zander growled out, rushing into the room. But by the time he had his hands on Damian, his lips had already left my forehead, the kiss done. Damian was busy chuckling at his reaction, and he pushed Zander off.
“I’ll see you later.” Damian smiled at me, and then he was gone.
I was too engrossed in the message to pay much attention to the men posturing, or even the forehead kiss. I stared at the card, ran my thumb over the smooth paper. I was going to say something about it to Zander, but I heard the familiar footsteps of my father’s shoes on tile, so I hurried to slide it underneath the blanket currently covering my body.
My father walked in the room, followed by two others. He was busy watching Damian as he left, and then he looked at Zander and wordlessly asked what that was about. Something passed between my father and Zander, but I couldn’t pay attention to any of it—mostly because I stared at the two other men who’d walked in behind my father.
One of them was younger and carried a bouquet of roses and a teddy bear. He had warm, kind eyes the color of milk chocolate, and a soft smile that told me he was unsure of how he’d be received. Handsome in the way most guys were when they kept their hair trimmed short, their jaw clean-shaven, and their clothes clean and fresh.
Luca Moretti was a mafia boss’s son, after all, and he looked like one.
It wasn’t Luca that drew my eyes, though. It was the other man, the older one: his father. Rocco Moretti stood near my father, wearing a dark blue suit. One hand hung at his side, the other unbuttoning his suit jacket, allowing me to see the metal band on his left ring finger, something that had most definitely not been on him that night three years ago.
And, unfortunately, both Luca’s and Rocco’s eyes were on me.
I did my best not to react to being stuck in a room with Rocco, choosing to put my focus on Luca instead of his disgusting father. I managed a smile, even though all the memories and emotions I’d worked so hard to bury down sought to surface.
My father had to have known how seeing Rocco would make me feel. He knew, and he didn’t give a shit—which was precisely why I was done being his precious, meek daughter.
“We brought you these,” Luca said. He showed me the flowers, and then he went to put them with the others, though he kept the teddy bear and brought it to me. I took it, muttering a quiet thanks.
“I was so sorry to hear about what happened,” Rocco said, dividing his attention between my father and me. “I’m glad to see you’re on the mend, Giselle.” The way he talked, how he acted, you’d never know he bargained his services to my father three years ago for a night with me, a fifteen-year-old girl.
People were good at hiding their sins, their sicknesses. Rocco? He was as sick as they came, and I could not wait for the day when he got his comeuppance. Who knew? After I fucked things up for my father, maybe I’d do the same for Rocco, because he definitely didn’t deserve a spot on the Black Hand, either.
“Thank you,” I whispered, running my fingers over the teddy bear. It was a small bear, but softer than it looked. I didn’t look Rocco in the eyes, nor did I glance up at my father. I was well aware Luca stood beside me.
Rocco and my father exchanged a look, and my father gripped Zander’s shoulder, saying, “Walk with us.”
“But—” Zander so clearly didn’t want to go.
“Luca’s with her. She’ll be fine.” My father sent a tight smile Luca’s way. “You’ll make sure my daughter is safe while we have a little chat about some business ventures, right?” The question came off loaded, as if there was more to it than he was saying.
Luca nodded. “Yeah, yeah, of course.”
My father, Rocco, and Zander left—though Zander kept throwing glances at me all the while, even as they walked down the hall, past the window to my room. A part of me didn’t want him to go either; being alone with Luca wasn’t on my list of things to do, ever. He was… nice enough, I guess, but every time I looked at him, I couldn’t help but think of that awful night three years ago.
