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“I thought I asked you to leave me alone, Aldo,” I say, doing my best to pay him no mind.
“What?” he laughs. “I can’t stop and catch up with an old girlfriend?
Aldo leans down and puts his face eye-level with mine and it takes all my self-control not to roll my eyes.
“Word on the street is that you’ve gotten yourself knocked up and kicked out of the house, so what’s the scoop then? Is it true?” he asks.
I don’t know how he’s heard about it, but at the moment, it feels as if I am the smallest person in the room. I don’t even know what to say. I want to be sick and cry all at the same time. The humiliation feels as if it might eat me up inside.
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” Edoardo says sternly, rising from his seat.
It’s sweet of him to stand up for me. But I know that Aldo’s temper is short enough to match my father’s and a confrontation is sure to set him off.
“Why don’t you just leave us alone, Aldo?” I ask kindly.
Aldo flashes me a cruel smile. “Does your daddy know that you’re having dinner with the enemy?” he says with a too-bright smile. “Come on then, Don Lorenzo. Fight me and wind your sorry ass back in jail, why don’t you?”
“Careful,” Edoardo threatens him.
“Just make sure that whatever you do, they get it on the security cameras,” he says with a wink, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt cockily.
“Don’t worry,” Edoardo says with a cunning grin. “I’ve made sure only to install the very best in each of my businesses.”
I watch the color drain from Aldo’s face as he realizes that Edoardo is the owner of the restaurant. He knows better than anyone that it means Edoardo can get away with pretty much anything he wants when he’s within these walls.
He doesn’t even have the time to reply before Edoardo clenches his fist and strikes Aldo hard against his jaw. Aldo stumbles back and collapses onto a nearby table, breaking all the glassware before rolling onto the floor.
“Oh, come on,” Edoardo laughs as the man pitifully gets to his feet with a grimace. “Don’t be so shy. Didn’t you have something to say to the girl? An apology perhaps?”
Aldo looks at me angrily, but as he opens his mouth to say something, Edoardo hits him again. This time in the diaphragm. It’s enough to completely knock the breath out of Aldo, and he crumples to the ground at my feet, gasping.
“Actually, she doesn’t need an apology from a roach like you,” Edoardo growls at him, before looking up and away and nodding. Men appear out of nowhere, ready to drag Aldo from the establishment. “I think we’re done here.”
Edoardo offers me his hand, and I take it. In order to go with him, I need to step right over Aldo’s wheezing body. As we walk away, I hear him squawking as security manhandles him. I’ve never known what it’s like to feel this powerful, this untouchable. It sets off a chain reaction of emotions inside me.
I no longer care how dangerous Edoardo might be. Nobody has ever spoken so highly of me or shown me such respect. Suddenly, I feel a shift in the way I feel about him. It’s a mixture of feelings that I don’t know what to do with. All he’s done is proven to me how dangerous he can be, and yet I don’t want to stay away from him.
When we get home, he makes me a cup of tea. Usually, I would return to my room, and make it seem like I don’t exist. But I don’t feel like I’m entirely done enjoying his presence yet.
“So, how often do you have to fight the ex-boyfriends of the women you’re out to dinner with?” I ask with a chuckle.
“I’m sorry about that,” he says, checking the slight cuts on his knuckles. “But he was asking for it. You deserve respect.”
“Thank you,” I say. “It felt good to step over him like that. He never treated me well.”
“That seems to be a common trend with the men in your life,” he says with a smile.
It’s a sad truth, and I cast my eyes downwards. I had never expected the truth to make me feel this sad, but he’s right. I don’t know what a good man is. All I’ve seen is how my father treats people, and it is mostly unkind.
When I look up again, Edoardo is standing before me. He cups my chin with his hand and tilts my face up toward him. I still feel afraid of him. I know that he is dangerous. But this time, the fear is more exciting than it’s ever been.
“No man will ever treat you like that again,” he says. “You have my word.”
Our eyes linger just a little too long. I don’t know what I want anymore, but when he leans in to kiss me I don’t stop him or pull away. Instead, I let his lips press against mine, and inhale his now familiar scent of pine and leather.
My body is wedged between him and the kitchen counter, and he makes sure he’s got me there. Not that I want to move anyway. The kiss is soft enough, and given with so much confidence that my knees threaten to buckle. And he seems to notice.
Edoardo wraps one of his muscular arms around me and lifts me up onto the counter, and when my legs part to allow him closer, my dress automatically rides up. He presses his body against mine and I can feel the bulge in his pants.
