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“He is with Sylvia. She is reading him a bedtime story,” I explain, motioning my hand at the food in front of her, encouraging her to eat.
“I want to see him.” She’s trying to sound brave and failing. Her skin is white, proving she’s still traumatized by what she saw this morning.
“You’re not stable enough to be around him at the moment,” I point out, reaching for my wine glass.
“Stable. I’m not stable? Rafe, you just killed someone. Your friend.”
“I executed a traitor. Believe me, Riley, I am perfectly stable.” Placing down my glass, I hold out a steady hand flat in front of me to prove it. “You, on the other hand, are a wreck, and children pick up on those things. I won’t have you upset my son.”
Riley’s eyes widen as she stares down at her lap.
“Eat,” I order.
“I’m not hungry.” Her voice is so quiet that I hardly hear her, but I still have to tense my fist to hold in my reaction. I’m not in the mindset for Riley’s games. She shouldn’t test me when I’m like this.
“I won’t apologize for what I did to Ricardo. The man betrayed me.” I clear that up straight away for her. If she’s expecting remorse out of me, she’s heading for disappointment. Ricardo must have known what the repercussions of his actions would be. He’s worked by my side for eighteen years.
The defiant little bitch doesn’t respond. She’s still refusing to make eye contact with me too. Riley will learn that she can’t deny me a damn thing. She still belongs to me, even if she despises me.
“I want to know what you know, Riley.” I lean forward, expecting her to flinch away from me, but she doesn’t. Instead, she gives me what I’ve been desiring since she came into the room, and I feel the cold sting of her pupils right in the center of my chest.
“I know how you make your money. And what you do to women,” she answers, straining to hold back her tears. She looks broken, and it’s every bit as beautiful as I expected it to be. I just never expected it to hurt like this.
“Were you going to leave me?” I’ve had time to think things over, and I can’t help wondering what else Ricardo was helping Riley do. It certainly explains his sudden need for cash.
“Yes,” Riley admits freely, still attempting bravery despite the shake in her fingers.
I have to turn and look away from her for a few moments. My anger is ugly, and the fool in me still feels the need to protect her from it.
“And you really think you would have gotten away from me?” I find the strength to look back at her, and Riley shrugs her shoulders.
“You were going to run to your brother, weren’t you?” I question. It all makes sense now. It’s why she was calling out for him in her sleep. Ricardo was going to help her run to him. To them. The Souls.
“I told Ricardo that would be the easiest option. But I don’t know what he was planning,” she confesses, and pure rage surges through my body when I imagine the two of them scheming against me.
I stand up from the table, my chair scratching against the wood floor as I step toward Riley and take a clump of her pretty red hair in my fist. Her high-pitched squeal echoes around the large room when I use it to force her up to her feet and then drag her out through the door.
Stefano looks surprised at the sight he sees when I continue to drag Riley down the hall and into my office, and once I’m inside, I shut the door, release Riley from my grip and go straight to my top drawer.
“You want your brother, yeah? You think he gives a shit about you?” I question, picking through the photographs and finding the one photo I have of him smiling. He’s sitting on his bike outside the tattoo studio that the Souls run, and he looks so happy that I know it will cause her pain.
“Your brother has a new family now. Does that look like the face of a boy who’s searching for his lost sister?” I force the photo into her chest and watch as she looks down at it. Pretty tears wet her cheeks as she takes in his carefree smile. “He’s forgotten you. He’s moved on,” I tell her spitefully. Knowing that it will hurt her, I want her to feel the fucking agony of loss the way I do.
“I’m your family now, me and Gabriel. I’ve tried so hard to give you everything.” I hear the sound of weakness in my voice and have to rein myself the fuck in because she doesn’t deserve it. “I can’t believe you would do that to our son. You brought him into this world, and you were going to abandon him.”
None of this makes any sense. Riley loves Gabriel with all her heart.
“I would never have left him behind,” she bites back bitterly. And her words stoke the flame in my temper.
My hand reaches out to her, clasping either side of her jaw and squeezing tight, forcing her lips open into the perfect round hole. I hock back and aim a ball of saliva straight down the bitch’s throat. Then I take in the shocked breath she inhales and watch her eyes grow wild and scared.
“Rest assured that I would kill you before I let that happen,” I warn her, and I even think I fucking mean it.
Riley’s eyes fall to the floor to deny me the hurt inside them. But I want to see her pain. I want her to suffer the way I am.
“So what will you do now?” I drag her face closer to mine, taking her bottom lip in my teeth and gripping it hard. I’ve always stopped before I made them bleed because I’ve never wanted to spoil them, but now she’s ruined, and so I sink them deeper until the metallic taste slips through my lips onto my tongue.
I want to know if I’ve lost her forever. If maybe despite all she knows and the things she’s seen, she might still be able to love me.
