AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hysterical laughter bubbled up my throat. I felt my sanity evaporating from my body like sweat. The man was unbelievable.
“The only thing I want back is my freedom.”
“You were never free with your parents to begin with. Don’t insult both our intelligence by pretending so.” His flatlined tenor whiplashed on my face.
He took a step deeper into the room. I cemented my back to the drawers, their bronze handles digging into my spine.
“Think,” he enunciated. “What can I give you that your parents never will?”
“I don’t want any dresses. I don’t want a new car. I don’t even want a new horse,” I cried out, waving the shears in my hand desperately.
Papa said whoever decided to marry me could buy me a horse to show his good faith.
And to think I was devastated then.
“Stop pretending to care about materialistic things,” he snapped, and I twisted around and threw an Oxford shoe at him to stop him from getting any closer, but he just dodged it and laughed.
“Think.”
“I don’t have any wants!”
“We all have wants.”
“What’s yours?” I was stalling.
“Serving my country. Seeking justice and punishing those who deserve to be brought to justice. You do, too. Think back to the masquerade.”
“College!” I yelled, finally cracking. “I want to go to college. They’d never let me get a higher education and make something of myself.”
It surprised me that Wolfe caught the fraction of the moment in which I had to school my face from being both embarrassed and disappointed when Bishop asked me about college.
My grades were great, and my SAT scores were glorious. But my parents thought I was wasting my energy when I should be focusing on getting married, planning a wedding, and continuing the Rossi legacy by producing heirs.
He stopped his stride.
“It’s yours.”
His words shocked me into silence.
My quiet inspired him to resume his steps.
He smirked, and I had to admit, albeit begrudgingly, that he was always raggedly stunning—his face all sharp edges like an Origami figure—but especially when his lips were curled in an Adonis-like grin.
I wondered what he looked like with a full-blown smile.
I hoped I’d never stick around to find out.
“Your father has explicitly asked me not to send you to college when we get married to maintain The Outfit’s status quo in regard to women, but your father can also go fuck himself.” His words stabbed me like knives.
He spoke completely different than he did in public. As if he was another person with another vocabulary. I could never imagine him dropping the F-bomb anywhere but here.
“You can go to college. You can go horseback riding, visit friends, and go on shopping sprees in Paris. Hell if I care. You could live your life separately from mine, play your part and, when enough years go by, even take on a discreet lover.”
Who was this guy, and what made him so ice-cold?
In all my years on Earth, and all my time spent with the ruthless men of The Outfit, I’d never met anyone quite so cynical.
Even the most horrid men wanted love, and loyalty, and marriage.
