Page 46 of Possessive Mafia Vows

“Don’t be silly, sweetheart.” He stops in the middle of the room and stares at me as if he can’t remember how I got here. “I never thought… Well, I hoped that one day you’d come to visit me. You’ve made an old man very happy.”

Fuck!

“Sit down, Sienna. I’ll make coffee. I don’t know about you, but I could do with some. It’s only instant. Not sure if you’ve got a taste for the expensive stuff.”

He talks to me from the open-plan kitchen. I’ve no idea where he deposited the laundry and bottles, but he’s no longer holding them.

“Instant will be fine.”

I check out the sofa cushions. They’re smeared with something that was probably greasy and has now left dirty gray smudges in the weave of the fabric. I find a clean spot and sit down stillwearing my coat. I feel uncomfortable standing in the middle of the room like I don’t belong here.

I don’t belong here. But I’m trying to think of it as a haven. A harbor in the storm. For now. Just while I get my head around what Kyle told me.

I realize as I watch my father hunched over the kettle on the counter, spooning coffee granules into two mugs, that when Kyle was talking about his father, I automatically confused the story with my own. His father almost killed his mom. I watched this man hurt my mom more times than I could count.

But they’re not the same person.

I keep this in mind as he comes into the living room and hands me a cup of coffee that has too much cream in it. I cradle it in both hands, and stare at the milky swirls on the surface of the liquid.

“You want to tell me why you were in such a hurry this morning?” He eases himself into an armchair and slurps his drink.

“Not sure I know where to start.”

“It’s easy. Start at the beginning.” He wipes his nose on the back of his hand and sniffs loudly. “Sorry. I’m a fucking idiot, I know. The beginning is the last thing you want to remember.”

I’m not reliving the car accident for him. I’m not telling him about Kyle or Nick either; I might as well sit here and spill my heart onto the floor and let him sift through the pieces. No. He doesn’t get to know everything, especially not the vulnerable parts.

“I need to find somewhere to live.”

Last night, this was a disaster. A bomb thrown into the middle of a chaotic bonfire, just to shake things up a bit and see which way the sparks would fly. This morning, it feels like the easy part. There must be plenty of affordable apartments out there even if their location isn’t exactly desirable; I’ve already made up my mind not to stay at the Wraith.

Call it pride. Call it stubbornness. Whatever.

I’m already indebted to Caleb and Victoria for the gallery. I’m not sure how much more debt I can shoulder before I crack beneath the weight.

“Why? What have you done?”

“Nothing.”

Maybe if I was thinking straight, I’d have considered the oddness of the question. But I’m not, and it fades into insignificance compared to everything else that is going on in my life.

“My time is up.” I shrug.

“Lucky for you, I came along when I did then.”

I stare at him blankly.

“I have a spare room. You can stay here, sweetheart.” He guzzles his coffee in one go and licks the dregs from his upper lip.

“I…” My pulse is racing. I walked straight into this one, and I need to dig my way out of it before it’s too late. “No, I can’t. Thank you, but?—”

“Why can’t you?” He scratches his eyebrow like I gave him a conundrum to solve rather than telling him I can’t use his spare room.

“I just can’t.”

I wish I could muster some conviction in my voice, but I’m still battling the notion that someone is having me followed. I’ve been abducted once already since Victoria met Caleb. How do people like the Murrays live with this constant threat of danger? Or do they become anesthetized to it over time? And this is the world that Victoria has brought baby Holly into.

“It wouldn’t work,” I add as an afterthought.

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