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“Nicolette, I need you to look at me.” A sigh comes from deep in his chest. “Please.”
I try, but I can’t hold those clear blue, endless eyes. Keeping my eyes on the button of his shirt in the middle of his broad chest is the best I can do.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I am aware if you’ve heard of me, none of it is good. It’s why I wanted to speak with you without others able to hear what I have to say. Am I a bad man? Do I kill people? Am I a psychopath? Yes, to all the questions. Except that last one isn’t as bad as it sounds, sweetheart. I promise. Your father is a far scarier psychopath than I am.” The words are soft, attempting to soothe. They almost do until he mentions my father.
“My father hitting me could be because it’s noon on a Tuesday. But it’s usually after a night of too much coke, alcohol, and me being in his vicinity. He’s forcing me to marry you. If I don’t, he’ll stop giving my mother money. My mother…”
No one but our men and servants are aware of the years my mother spent in and out of mental hospitals. To everyone who asked, she was with her family in California. Weakness is shunned in the Outfit, and my parents didn’t want anyone to know.
“I will never lie to you. Anything you want to know the answer to, I’ll tell you. I need to trust you’ll do the same. Hiding something I need to know is the same thing as lying.” The words are quiet, stark, unequivocal.
My hands blur as I stare down at them. I haven’t spoken of that night since it happened—not even to my mother. “She killed his son, Richie Junior. My half-brother…”
I shiver in remembered distaste of the things he said, the way his sweaty hands roamed over me. “He touched me. She found him doing it. My mother took me and left my father. She said she wouldn’t go home with me until Junior left. We were gone a week before he gave in. But it was a lie. Junior was back the next day. My mother put a lock on my door. He broke in only two nights later. She found him touching me again and shot him.”
He offers me a tissue I use to wipe my tears. “My dad knew people wouldn’t talk about it if it was suicide. He had the Outfit doctor sign off on it. The Outfit doctor didn’t argue. He also didn’t question why Junior, a twenty-five-year-old man, had his pants around his ankles in the pink and purple room of his ten-year-old sister.”
“He holds it over her?” An eyebrow goes up.
“Yes. She had two miscarriages before she had me. They got married because they found out she was pregnant. Even though it didn’t happen until she was more than four months along, and he was right there to see her go through it. He started in on how men were talking, maybe she lied to trap him with a kid. He wanted more than his son his wife only managed to give him before she died. After I was born, my mom told him she couldn’t do it again because she had horrible postpartum depression. He let it go until she killed his son. He told her she owed him another son.” It still blows my mind how cruel he was to her.
Seeing my parents together, I thought they were so in love. “She had three more miscarriages. The last one was really bad and happened when I was fourteen. For the next three years, she was in and out of mental hospitals. My mother has fallen out of love with my father. Finding out he cheated on her within weeks of her being admitted to the hospital after the last miscarriage killed all her feeling for him. She’s no longer sad without him. But she can’t live without his money.”
His frown has my stomach twisting. I can’t tell him about Eddie. He doesn’t have to know. No one has to know. “I will take care of your mother. She doesn’t need to rely on your father. I’ll settle money on her. She won’t have to rely on another person for the rest of her life. If you like, she can live with us. You will likely need help. The children are not to be left in the care of a nanny or anyone else completely alone. However, you need not worry you will be run ragged caring for them. There is staff, a housekeeper, two maids, as well as a cook. They are your whole focus. If there comes a time when your mother needs care, it will not fall on you.”
I admire the way he’s intent on ensuring his children are taken care of. I didn’t think he would, considering how scary he is and with the way he admitted it. I remember Dominic Sabatini saying he wasn’t scary to women and young children. “You care about your kids.”
His wide shoulders lift. “I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t genuinely care about them.”
He sees my shock.
“They are my responsibility. Honor demands I see to it they are not harmed and their needs are met. While I can provide the physiological and safety of their needs, it will be up to you to see to their needs of love and esteem. Self-actualization is on them.”
As he lists them, it pops out of my mouth without thought. “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.”
A nod. “I’m not a monster. It’s a simple issue of lacking empathy. I get the word psychopath gets a bad rap. And yes, it helps to do the shit I have to do for my family. There are countless men and women like me, but no one notices until they do something deemed cruel. Not snapping and ending their family. It’s when CEOs of companies cut hundreds of jobs to save a dollar that in the endless bucket of money doesn’t truly help the bottom line for the company, but earns them a bonus they don’t need. People ask how can the CEO do it? Don’t they care about all the people it’s going to hurt? The answer is no. Because a person who lacks empathy doesn’t care about anything but themselves. If it doesn’t directly affect them, it doesn’t factor into their thought in any way, shape, or form.”
And he wants me to tie myself to a person like him for the rest of my life?
CHAPTER5
Manuel
Her big eyes are melting pools of bittersweet chocolate. The fear in her is warring with desire. It’s fascinating to watch. I could stare at her for hours. My fingertips are tingling with anticipation to touch her again.
Almost two months later and my body remembers every second of what it was like to touch her, to fuck into her wet mouth. My cock is hard for her. She is the only woman to make me hard—usually my cock got hardthenI make a call for pussy. It’s why I had so many mistresses, if I wanted to fuck, I wanted it immediately.
I clench my jaw tight as I fight my body’s reaction to her. She’s already afraid of me. The last thing I want is to frighten her with how badly I want her. Focus.
Exhale. Soften the jaw, offer a small smile while meeting her eyes. Loose. Casual. Not a threat—no matter how badly I want to climb between her thighs and ravage her sexy, luscious body like the animal clawing within me to get out.
Unease is buzzing over the back of my neck at my reaction to this barely woman. She’s only twenty-two to my thirty-seven. I haven’t fucked a woman as young as her in more than a decade, they wanted romance when I wanted to fuck. I don’t want to fuck Nicolette—I want todevourevery inch of her soft, olive skin.
Business, this is business. This is to her benefit as well as my own, convince her. “It’s why I’m going against my initial belief of taking a wife who is reluctant to marry as not worth the aggravation. If it isn’t me, he’s going to call the next person he knows who has the money to bail him out of the mess he’s into up to his neck and sell you to them. He likely will not even care if the man he will sell you to is going to marry you or not.”
Her eyes go wide as it clicks for her what I mean. She isn’t surprised by my words. Which means she is aware her father is in a sea of shit.
“I need a mother for my children. I want to fuck you, and if you’re going to be married off to someone against your will, it might as well be me.” I share my thought process. If she understands the why, it might help her come to terms with the situation.
