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She laughed. “I assure you that I’ve heard much worse. Just be truthful with me.”
“Have I lied to you? I told you from the beginning that I wasn’t trying to be a good man. Maybe that’s not possible for me to be. However, whether you choose to believe it or not, I do understand and am capable of love. You might not see it, but I am. I’m not completely inhuman. Sadly, certain decisions I’ve made have placed myself and my family in a precarious position, but what you don’t understand or accept is that I had no choice to enter into this life. Taking over was a requirement.”
“You had a choice to leave, and you took it. That took guts.”
Guts. She had no idea how much leaving had affected me. “But I was forced back.”
“By me.”
“No, Sarah. I was wrong in saying that. You caused nothing. Fate intervened. I was too blind to see it before. I was too enraged to think clearly.”
Sarah looked away briefly. “You asked me if I believed you ever lied to me. The answer is yes, you have. About your fiancée. She was the love of your life. Since then, you shut down completely. You let not only your family win but whoever killed her. Don’t you see that?”
Jesus Christ.
Another knife was jammed into my gut.
“You’re right, Sarah. I did shut down. You have no idea what it’s like to believe someone died because of you.” The words hit us both with the full understanding of what we’d shared and everything we needed.
Each other.
Grimacing, I took several deep breaths. “I’m fucking sorry, Sarah. That was cruel.”
She shook her head several times. “Yes, it was, but you didn’t intend it to be.”
What the fuck was wrong with me?
“By the way, did you ever stop to think that maybe I wanted to learn more about you? This might be a game to you, Gabriel, but for me this is unimaginable, especially how strongly I feel about you.” She laughed bitterly, a single tear slipping past her lashes. When I tried to rub it away, she took a step back, refusing to allow me to touch her.
Goddamn it, I hated the tension between us.
“You know enough to hate me and maybe that’s the way it should be.” The hollowness of my voice was the true measure of the intense ache in my heart.
“The trouble is I can’t hate you.” She took a deep breath and looked away. “She asked you to distance yourself from your family. Didn’t she?”
Reflecting on the past would do no good at this point, but it was difficult not to take a few seconds and remember. “Yes. Mary was insistent. I told her no at first because I enjoyed being the kid of a powerful mafia Don in college. What I told you before was true. I simply left out the final reason we broke up.”
“Later you asked if she’d take you back after you’d denounced your family.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who killed her?”
She wasn’t going to let this alone. “I thought I did.”
“Nico’s family.”
I brushed a strand of hair from her face, taking a few seconds to caress her skin. Just touching her calmed me, creating a bubble around us with impenetrable material. Who was I kidding? The bubble could be burst at any moment. “Yes.”
“That’s why you hate them so much.”
“It’s not the only reason. However, I’m beginning to wonder if any of my accusations are correct.”
“Then don’t continue with the violence.”
Huffing, I shook my head. “If only it were that easy.”
“Just for the record, I would never ask you to forfeit major aspects of your life.” She blew the same piece of hair from her face, which caused me to smile. I took her into my arms and breathed in her perfume, longing to devour every inch of her body.
