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“I want to keep discovering you inch by inch, kitten,” he says, his playful nickname for me letting me know his mood is slightly lifting.
But I’m still so conflicted.
“What’s wrong?”
I laugh, although it feels like the noise belongs to someone else.
“You mean aside from the obvious?” I look at him and shrug. “My family has ruined your life.” I take his head in my hands the way he does to me, feeling the rough, dark scruff beneath my fingertips and searching his eyes for a sign of anything that makes me believe he could want me after this. “That man created me. His blood runs through my veins,” I emphasize, willing him to understand he’s making a mistake no matter how much I want to discover every inch of him, too.
I just know I’ll be nothing but a broken mess when he leaves—and how could he not?
When he comes to his senses, I’ll be just another piece of collateral damage.
“He may have created you, but I wish you could see you’re nothing like him. I’ll spend every single day making sure you know you and your father are nothing alike.”
A thought sparks to life inside me as deep-seated hatred flows through my veins. I know my father is a terrible person, but it’s only magnified now. He’s deeply scarred the man I care about. He’s hurt me throughout my entire life—and in so many ways.
He’s hurt so many people for far too long.
“I want to fucking destroy him, Dante.” I shake with each word that falls from my lips. Tears stream down my cheeks as my anger continues to boil inside me, my entire body growing warm with a quiet rage. “Your wife and your sister… I want to pay my respects to them, to you, by doing whatever I can to take him down. Let me help you get the closure you need…by any means. I am here,” I tell him. “I am here, and I want to help. One day, my father will pay for what he’s done. And I hope to be standing right there with you, if you’ll let me.”
I know what I just agreed to do.
By any means.
And I mean those words.
A fire stokes in his eyes, almost as bright as the flames alongside us, and he gives me just enough of what I need as he places his hands over where my palms rest against his cheeks.
“I was not supposed to fall for the enemy.” He repeats the words he’s already said, the words that have been cemented into my brain. “But you’ve gotten under my skin, Giana Amato. And if you’ve done this much damage to my self-control in just a couple of weeks, I can’t imagine what you’ll do in a lifetime.”
“Dante DeSantis,do you even know how much trouble you’re in?” A woman bursts through the door, and I move to cover myself with a blanket on the back of the love seat.
She strides over in a beautiful red dress and Louboutin heels. Her hairstyle reminds me of some old-fashioned Hollywood starlet, the long onyx locks wavy and pinned back in perfect place.
“Mother.” Dante stands and meets the woman halfway across the large room, which I’m only just now really taking in.
He never told me where we are. It looks like someone’s study, with ornate wooden bookshelves and a beautiful mahogany desk on one wall, this love seat sitting just in front of a grand fireplace, and dark Victorian wallpapered walls.
“You and your father are going to give me a heart attack. You’re lucky my grandson was preoccupying me, or I would have marched there and stopped your stupidity.” She looks over at me, and a sad expression crosses her face. “I don’t mean to be crass, darling. It isn’t that I don’t think you’re worth getting out of that situation… Marrying a cartel member?Buon Dio.Gabriel Amato truly is a rare breed.” She rolls her eyes and pauses. “I just wish my son and my husband would have gone in with a more rational head about them. Normally, Romeo is good about that, but after I heard the details…”
“We are fine. Believe it or not, we’ve been in much more dangerous situations.”
Dante takes her in his arms while I wish the couch would swallow me whole.
“Don’t tell me anything else. I’ll just keep pretending your jobs are safe.” She smiles at him, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I came in here to tell you that your father wants you. He’s in the front room.” She looks at me. “Go on. I’ll keep this beauty company.”
“Mother.” Dante gives her a stern look, and she bats him away with a flick of her hand. “I like how the two of you just waltz in here like you own the place. Apparently, I need to up my security.”
He gives her a kiss on each cheek before turning around to me, and I motion him to go ahead and see to his father. He walks out the door, and I catch myself admiring his backside before I snap myself out of it and look at Dante’s mother.
She steps closer to me before pulling a chair up from the desk and sitting in front of me. I sit upright, adjusting my posture, feeling like I’m once again in the Twilight Zone.
“I suppose I should have had my son introduce us before leaving,” she says with a small smile, her mauve lipstick in the perfect place on her thin lips. “My name is Vittoria DeSantis. I’m Dante’s mother. My husband is Romeo, Dante’s father, and he’s the head of our family.”
So Dante’s father is the boss of the DeSantis family.
And mine is his rival.
