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Especially with the way I couldn’t stop thinking about Gabe.
Couldn’t stop replaying everything that had happened over and over again.
Couldn’t stop wondering what would have been if circumstances were different.
But circumstances were what they were.
We never had a chance, not with the way we started, not with our families being mortal enemies.
He knew it, and I knew it. There wasn’t a happy end for the daughter of an Irish mob boss and the boss of an Italian Mafia family.
Not in this life, anyway.
* * *
Two weeks later
I looked up from my book when my little sister Jemma stuck her head through the door. “Hawk’s here again, and Papa asked me to come get you.”
I nodded, but even that tiny movement took a lot of energy, and just thinking about closing my book and getting up from my window seat in my room made me feel exhausted.
These days, everything cost me a lot of energy.
And I didn’t even know why.
I was back home. Back to the life, the golden cage I’d always known.
Outwardly, nothing had changed. Not in my everyday life: The same routine. The same sheltered existence.
Maybe Dad was a tad more protective than before—hence the doubled security and our personal details reporting on our every move.
But we all understood.
All managed somehow.
Only my way was not to talk at all.
Except for Fiona. I told Fiona everything—over the phone. But back home, no one knew.
Not my sisters.
Not my dad.
Not my therapist.
Because what was there to say that wouldn’t make me sound completely, 100% crazy?
I fell in love with a Mafia boss, who saved me from slavery, only to keep me hostage in his room?
I fell in love with a man who killed people without a second thought but cared for me enough to bathe me and stitch me up?
Well, that would sound perfectly reasonable, wouldn’t it?
And I didn’t even want to know what my therapist would say to that—and what would happen if he would report back to my dad.
I looked down at my bookmark—Gabe’s business card.
My insides knotted up, and a low-level queasiness—a near-constant companion these days—made me close the book with a snap.
