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How imposing he was. How large.
How utterly, devastatingly handsome.
Which was ridiculous, because she had seen him only a month earlier.
She could still remember the awkward, horrible dance at one of her father’s parties. Her biggest crush ever had only agreed to be her date for a dare. To see the inside of the infamous King mansion and to report back to friends at school.
Dante had taken hold of her after Bradley had embarrassed her, and held her close, shielding her from curious eyes. He’d been so strong and solid, and all the anguish and shame inside her had caught fire and burned hot. It had been so embarrassing but she’d also been unable to pull away from him.
But he’d been pity dancing with her. He’d added to the confusion of...everything.
And compared to Bradley’s bony shoulders, Dante’s had felt so broad and solid.
It had all been weird.
Even with that she could forget.
But she didn’t think that the impact of a man like Dante Fiori could live in its genuine state inside a woman, or anyone. You would die of it.
It became clear only in person.
He had always made her feel small. Rattled.
She had the tendency to run at the mouth whenever he was around. He made her stomach feel like it was quivering.
She disliked it intensely. And yet, she had always felt drawn to him like he was a magnet. She had always felt compelled to get a response out of him. To go to him. And she could no more understand any of those tendencies then she could understand quantum physics.
Which was to say: not at all.
“He is unhappy,” Violet said softly.
“Well... He’ll just have to deal with it.”
Minerva lifted her chin, affecting a posture of determination she did not feel. Her brother appeared behind Dante, and behind him was her father.
Everybody did look remarkably unhappy.
Min was not accustomed to being the source of people’s unhappiness. She was used to being ignored, and when she’d shown up with her parents’ first grandchild, they’d been happy.
No one looked happy now.
The car stopped, and Dante didn’t wait. He marched over to the car and jerked the door open.
And she found herself face-to-face with his stormy black gaze.
It was fathomless. As if she could look all the way down into the depths of his soul. Into the depths of hell itself.
She knew the things they said about him. That when her father had encountered him in Rome when he was a boy, Dante had been attempting to rob Robert King at gunpoint. That something about the boy had made Robert pause. That he had given him his watch, but also his card, and told him that if he wanted to change his life, rather than just live to commit another robbery, he should contact him.
And that shockingly, Dante had.
But that he had been a man who had committed a great many atrocities prior to his salvation and education that had been financed by Robert King.
She had never believed the stories.
Mostly because her father loved a story, and it was one he did not tell. Which forced her to believe that the truth of it must be less dramatic, and far less interesting.
Now she wondered, though.
