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“This is so fucked up.”
“Is it?” he asked. “Would you rather it be your mother?”
My heart dropped into my stomach.
“Because I almost took her instead, but then I remembered, I’m still a gentleman.”
I held Dante’s gaze, desperate to fight for Scarlett, but also desperate to get that gun off my father. “I didn’t do it?—”
“Shut up, Axel. My daughter is naïve, but I’m not.”
“I really didn’t do it?—”
“Whatever you say.”
“Instead of interfering in her relationship, why don’t you just talk to her?—”
“Do we have a deal or not? Because my finger is about to slip.”
I wanted to scream. “Dante, I love your daughter, and I’m pretty sure she loves me too?—”
“You don’t know what love is, Axel. You’re a rapist and a wife-beater—and you’re a liar. I told you to stay away from her, but you fucking did it anyway just to get under my skin?—”
“Trust me, that was not the reason.”
He lost his temper and slammed the gun into my father’s head. “I’m talking, bitch.”
“Jesus.” I tried to move for my father, but then one of Dante’s men pointed a gun at me.
My father had collapsed on the floor, and he was bleeding from the head.
Dante stared me down. “Do we have a deal or not? Because if we don’t, I’ll kill your father and come after your mother next. And if that’s not enough, then I’ll go to Uncle Donovan, Aunt Kelsey…and the list goes on and on.”
“You’re a fucking psychopath.”
“I know.” He continued to hold the gun steady. “Love makes us do crazy things.”
“This isn’t love.”
“Do you accept my terms?” he asked in annoyance. “Leave her and never speak of this. I will keep a team of men on your parents at all times, for fucking years, ready to kill both of them if you try anything.”
This would hurt her—and it would hurt me even more. But my father was on the floor bleeding from the head, so scared he’d probably already wet himself. He’d turned his back on me, so I should do the same to him…but I couldn’t. He was there because of me. His estrangement wasn’t enough to protect him from my unsavory affairs. “Yes.”
Dante grinned. “You made the right decision.” He pointed the gun at my father’s arm and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was loud in the parlor, like an explosion rather than a single bullet.
My father screamed and clutched his arm, the blood everywhere.
I dropped down to my father and hooked my arm under his to get him to his feet.
Dante stuffed his gun into the back of his jeans. “That’s for crossing me, Axel.”
I got my father to the ER.
They stopped the bleeding, did a couple of X-rays, and then took him to surgery to repair the shattered bones and retrieve the bullet.
I sat alone in the waiting room, staring blankly at the screen that showed the news. There was a story about the market festival coming to Florence, and then an international story about an Italian native who had been kidnapped on their holiday in London. The back of my head rested against the wall as the emptiness dropped inside me like a weight. When I’d woken up yesterday, it was to my woman making me breakfast. I did the dishes, and then we returned to bed, where I’d spent the rest of the afternoon between her legs or in her arms.
