AllFreeNovel
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"Why not?"
"She was too busy trying to give me her phone number."
Unreasonable anger surges through me.
It's not as if Atlas and I are athing. But I am hoping we might become one.
"That's very unprofessional." But then, so is a nightclub owner having sex all night with one of the patrons.
"I told her I am seeing someone."
"You did? You are?" I stop before getting into his SUV. "You'd better mean me."
If he's in a committed relationship with someone else and I spent all night and morning naked with him, I'm going to feel like crap. I didn't even think to ask.
The look he gives me could sear concrete. "Who else but you,ílios mou?"
"Okay, good. Just so we are clear, I'm not seeing anyone either."
"If you were, you wouldn't be any longer."
"Sure, caveman." I roll my eyes and climb up into the truck.
Atlas pulls the seatbelt across me and hooks it and while he's still leaning over me, presses his lips firmly to mine.
"No one else touches you." He closes my door.
I wait for him to come around and get into the driver's seat before I say, "I don't share either."
He smirks and starts the engine.
The smile I give him is filled with the delight coursing through me. Wearestarting something and neither of us wants to see anyone else while we see where this thing goes.
I give him the address for the house I'm buying and he puts it into the GPS.
It takes twenty-five minutes to get there and we talk the whole way. Atlas tells me he's only moved to the Portland Metro area recently.
"What brought you here?" I ask.
"Business and family."
The same reasons I settled in Oregon. To start a business that could support me and Lenny's care and to get away from what was left of our families. I doubt Atlas is trying to get away from his family though.
"Where did you move from?"
"San Francisco. Our parents still live there, but my brothers and I wanted to build our own business."
"That's admirable." So different from the mafia culture I was raised in.
Sons in the Russo Famiglia followed in their fathers' footsteps to become made men, never straying from the same zip code. Unless it was for an alliance.
Atlas reaches for my hand and puts it on his thigh while he drives. "Does your family live here?"
It takes me a second to answer. The gesture feels so intimate, like we are a couple already. "I don't have any family."
It's why I use Esposito as my surname now. It's common in Italy to give it to children without family. For all intents and purposes, mine is gone.
"I am sorry."
