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“Are you doing it on purpose?” I ask him.
“What?”
I don’t answer. Instead, I stab my own meat, dunk it in the rosemary polenta, and eat it. A little sigh escapes me when the flavor of the wine reduction he drizzled over it hits my tongue. He’s an amazing chef. I’ll give him that.
“Why do you hate me?” he asks out of nowhere.
I flick my gaze up to his and frown. “You mean aside from the obvious imprisonment?”
“A prison where your captor has made you come several times and prepares you a meal fit for royalty can hardly be called a prison, can it?” His lips pull up in a sly smile that makes me roll my eyes. “That’s not what I mean. You’ve always disliked me. Since we were kids.”
I take a sip of the Cabernet he placed beside my plate. Filled the wineglass to the rim, too, I noticed. It goes down smoothly, warming my insides instantly.
“I haven’t disliked you since we were kids,” I finally say. “The dislike didn’t come until I understood why your family came to my house. The hate happened when I became Daddy’s cleanup crew.”
“You hated me from the start. You attacked me the day we met,” he says. “I almost lost my hair.”
“No, I didn’t.” I shake my head, recalling the day I first saw him.
“You jumped me from the roof. Like some fucking cat.”
I blink at him in confusion, then a burst of laughter erupts from me. “Is that what you thought?” Drawing my legs under me, I shove hair behind my ear and chew on my lower lip. “You had just come out of the kitchen door, and I saw the back of your head. I’d never seen a boy with hair like yours. It seemed so soft and long, and I just wanted to touch it. So I reached out and tried but obviously was too far away, and I fell.”
“You fell.”
“Yes.”
“What the fuck were you doing on the roof?”
Shrugging, I say, “It was my safe space.”
His brows lift as if that sentence has given him all the understanding he needed.
When he doesn’t say anything more, I decide to ask my own question. “What about you? Do you hateme?”
“I do.” The reply comes fast and honestly.
“Oh. I thought so.”
“Would you expect anything different? It’s been your mission to make business impossible.”
“Only when it related to my father,” I reply defensively. “Do you know how many times I had to deal with shady fucks because of him? How often I found myself in the office of some criminal, bargaining for my father’s life? That’s right,” I say when he frowns. “You weren’t the only ones I dealt with, Luca. You’re just the only one I was forced to marry.”
I set my fork down, my appetite suddenly lost.
“It sounds like we both had shitty fathers,” he says, taking another bite of his meal. “Eat.”
“No thank you.”
“I won’t repeat myself. Eat.”
I want to point out that he did, in fact, just repeat himself. But I don’t. No point.
“I’d like you to take me to my house,” I tell him after a tiny nibble.
“Youarein your house.”
“All right. But my clothes are in my old house. I’d like to get those. Please,” I add politely.
