Page 32 of Possessive Mafia Vows

Wait. What?

“What do you mean?”

“Someone is coming to look at it this afternoon, right?”

I swallow. The last coffee I drank with Bash is buzzing through my veins. “How do you know about that?”

He grins at me, revealing large front teeth. “I found the buyer for you. He’s a friend of mine. When I told him about your gallery, he said he’d buy a piece or two. You know. To help you find your feet.”

I’m trying to process this.My father. A friend of his. My favorite painting.

“Why?” I shake my head. “Why would you do that?”

“Because you’re my baby girl, and I’ll do anything to help you.”

His bottom lip rolls out again, and I realize that this must be his go-to expression of hurt. The sympathy-call. Next, he’ll say:I was only trying to help.

“I was only trying to help, sweetheart.”

Ugh! I forgot the sweetheart.

“I don’t need your help.”

He glances around the gallery, his eyes settling pointedly on every painting before returning to me. “That’s not how it looks from where I’m standing. How many pictures have you sold?”

“A couple.”Why am I even telling him this?“I’ve only been open a few days.”

I’m still justifying myself to the man who tried to kill my mom and walked out on me when I was six years old. I don’t need his validation. I don’t need anything from him.

“Which is why I’m trying to give you a head start.” He steps closer to me, and I move backwards. “Hey, there’s no crime in getting some help from your family.”

You’re not my family.

It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t say it out loud. I’m acutely aware that no one knows he’s here, and I left my cell phone on my desk in the office. If he tries to hurt me, I’d never get to it in time to call for help. I don’t like that this is how I feel when I’m around him, but he’s never given me a reason to trust him.

“So, this guy, your friend … he’s not an art collector?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?” I’m already working myself into a rage of I’m-never-letting-this-piece-go levels, and he isn’t doing anything to salvage the situation.

“He collects beautiful things.”

“Beautiful things?” I’m repeating his words like a fucking parrot, my voice growing shrill. “Come on, give me something I can work with here. Are we talking statues, Faberge eggs, women?”

He wrinkles his nose from side to side like I’m the one out of place in my beautiful gallery. “Sweetheart, something is wrong. You shouldn’t be this stressed over a painting.”

He’s still talking to me the way he did in the Rinse, slowly, his voice low and measured as though he recognizes that a word out of place will send me careening over the edge and into an abyss.

“That’s just it.” I match his tone—two can play at this game, and if he wants to treat me like a kid, I’ll react accordingly. “It isn’tonly a painting. It’smypainting. No one else on this planet will ever be able to recreate it because only I know what went into it. And it isn’t thepaintingthat’s stressing me out. It’s you.”

He blinks, fluttering his eyelashes like a cartoon character. “Me? What have I done?”

“Why are you interfering? Why are you even here?” I throw both arms up into the air as though posing the question to a higher being.

“You know why I’m here, Sienna, and I didn’t think I was interfering. I thought I could help you make some money. That’s why you opened the gallery, isn’t it? To sell your work.” He furrows his brow like he’s having a hard time understanding his new-found daughter.

I shut my eyes briefly. It makes no difference what I say, he’ll always turn this around to him being the loving father trying to make amends.

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