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I ate my salad without exchanging another word with Dante. He went back to reading the newspaper until his cell phone rang. Annoyed, he rolled his eyes as he read the Caller ID.
“What do you want, Nicodemus?” His nostrils flared as he glanced down at the paper, holding the phone to his ear. “I’m eating lunch. You know better than to disturb me.”
I couldn’t hear what Nico said on the other end of the line. But I assumed it couldn’t have been good for me. Because once something got Dante’s attention, his head lifted. He glared at me with pure hatred, his mouth twisted in disgust.
“Yes, send it to me,” he shot back. “I will deal with it.”
A second later, he hung up and stuffed the cell phone into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. His eyes still burned a hole through me. And with the deafening silence hanging between us, I couldn’t sit still.
My lunch threatened to make an appearance, the salad churning in my stomach. I couldn’t stand the silence anymore, so I said something I was sure to regret.
“I can help ease your stress.” I forced a smile. “Whatever you need, I will do it for you.”
I wasn’t talking about sex.
But I would have done anything to get Dante on my side, to make him like me. That annoying people-pleasing side of me was rearing its ugly head again.
“Why do you keep offering yourself to me?” Dante shook his head. “It’s not the least bit attractive.”
Despite his nasty comment, I held my tongue and answered honestly. “Because I like you.”
He snickered. “No one likes me. They fear me. You would be wise to do the same.”
“Well, I like you,” I shot back. “I think you’re used to pushing people away. It’s a defense mechanism to isolate yourself from the world. You’re not as bad as you want people to believe.”
Dante blew out a deep breath. “What makes you think that?”
“Because I see the way you care for your brothers. You’re also very good to your employees. They are paid well above the current rate for their positions.”
“At the Portofino Hotel and Casino, we treat everyone like family.”
That was the slogan for their business.
They treated guests like celebrities, with high-end everything at their disposal. This wasn’t some shitty hotel you could book for a hundred bucks. The cheapest room at the Portofino was well over four hundred dollars per night. And that was the standard guest room.
It was a five-star hotel with Michelin-star restaurants. The Lucianos did nothing half-assed.
“Even me,” I tossed back at my handsome captor. “You might not like me. But you gave me an apartment on the same floor as your family.”
“The apartment was not my idea.”
“Whose was it?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “My father.”
“Because he thinks of me like family,” I pointed out. “And in some way, you must, too. Or I wouldn’t be sitting here, eating lunch with you.”
Dante grimaced at my last statement. “You can go now. Return to your office and work on the new dummy accounts for this week’s transfers.”
“So that’s it? I’m relieved of my slave duties for the day?”
He nodded.
I rose from the bench, and he didn’t dare a second glance at me. So I left the restaurant and took my sweet ass time walking through the casino.
I rode the elevator to the executive suites on the third floor. Fear crept down my spine, crawling over my skin like tiny spiders as I pushed open the door. My dad’s monitor usually had the screen saver flashing.
But it wasn’t even turned on.
