Page 27 of Savage Proposal

My body froze in place, even as my heart pounded in my chest. Adrenaline was pumping through me, but I couldn’t move. When he stepped over the threshold, I let out a noise that would be embarrassing if I wasn’t so filled with fear.

“What are you doing here?” Amalia’s voice broke through the ringing in my ears, and I was able to move again. I shot off the bed and landed somewhere near my closet door, as far away from Lorenzo as I could manage.

“I came to check on her.”

“Why?” Amalia demanded. “You can see she’s terrified. Isn’t that enough?” She gestured in my direction, and I hated how I wanted to cower and make myself as small as possible so that he didn’t actually see me. I was not this weak of a person, so why was I acting this way? I was more frustrated with myself thanwith anyone else. “Why don’t you walk the hell away for now, Enzo? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, behaving that way.”

How could she talk to him like that? Didn’t she worry about his reaction?

I groaned softly at my own racing thoughts. Not two days ago I would have said something similar without a thought in the world to what he might say or do. Now, I was here with my throat on fire and voice like gravel, and all I could think was that if he reached for Amalia right now, I would run past them and straight out of the house. Guards and my budding friendship with her be damned.

Fucking coward.

To my utter surprise, however, Lorenzo didn’t say a word. Instead, he let her curse at him for a few more minutes, a giant letting a gnat buzz around them without consequence, and then his eyes slid to me. My heart leaped into my throat again, but I forced myself to meet his gaze.

“From now on, you stay in your room,” he said, ignoring the indignant squawk that Amalia let out for being ignored. “Amalia will bring you meals.”

“I will not,” she declared. “You act like a damn brute, and now, she’s getting punished for it? I won’t stand for it, Lorenzo.”

He gave her a dead-eyed stare. “So, she’ll starve,” he said, as if it didn’t matter if that happened or not. He was well and truly done with me.

Beneath the fear I was drowning in, I felt a flash of pain. We weren’t anything to each other. He didn’t have to tell me that for me to understand it. But before he had sent me away thesingular night I’d spent in his bed, I thought there had beensomething. A glimmer, maybe.

I shouldn’t care about that now; I should be glad that he was never going to touch me again. But I couldn’t help but mourn the loss of it, even if I was scared of how he had made me feel.

Still, there was something that I needed to know. “Lorenzo.” Both he and Amalia stopped arguing to look at me. “What about our deal?”

“What deal?” Amalia asked.

We both ignored her. “What about it?”

“Are we—” I swallowed hard, gritting my teeth against the pain. “Will you still honor it?”

He was quiet for a moment, and then nodded. “I’ll set everything up with Dr. Coleman.”

It’ll be clinical. Just like it should have been all along.

CHAPTER 18

Lorenzo

There was a headache digging like an ice pick behind my eye. I had already thrown the letter opener on my desk at Damian once today. I had missed on purpose, but he was still pouting about it.

“Boss, you havegotto snap out of it.”

Elio was the only person who didn’t have enough sense to leave me alone. “Do you think if I tried hard enough, I could rip your tongue out through your nose?” My cousin actually laughed. The man had a goddamn death wish. “Go make yourself useful and check the warehouses. Take Damian with you.”

That wiped the laughter off his face.Good. “I checked them yesterday. The men doing intake know to check everything thoroughly; we haven’t gotten any calls about problems.”

“Go check in person, all right? Triple check everything.”

Elio scowled. “Is this about what happened with Isabella?”

Damian’s head snapped up. He looked at Elio like he’d grown a second, much dumber head. “Elio, drop it.”

“Why should I?” he demanded. “He’s been pouting like a goddamn toddler for a week because he’s too stubborn to—” I smashed my fist into Elio’s face. His nose gave way under my fist, but he didn’t scream the way I had hoped he would. Instead, as blood poured down his face, he grinned at me. “Do you feel better,cugino?”

I nearly hit him again, but then I realized he was right. I did feel better. I rolled my neck, feeling all of my muscles in my shoulders pull. “I still want you to go to the warehouse.”

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