Page 72 of Savior

“Listen,” I say, wiping the tears off my face. “I appreciate you saved me, but you’ve done your due diligence, and I need you to see that I’m okay on my own. I’m going to be fine.”

“Are you?” He steps into me, backing me towards a wall. “Matteo is still out there, Sloane. I want to know you’re safe. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.”

“Because I’m Ray’s daughter,” I say.

He nods, but something else sits right on the surface of his face that’s unspoken. “Because you’re Ray’s daughter.”

He leans down, hovering far too close for comfort, and the world fades away. Such is the way when I’m near him. It’s like he’s a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and the world’s volume turns down when he’s near.

I close my eyes, drinking the feeling in. “I don’t know that we’ll survive one another, Luca.”

He exhales shakily. “I know. But we have to try.”

I shake my head. “I’ll settle for a bodyguard. Ardesia can do that, can’t he?”

He licks his lips, brows tugging together in concern. “Sloane, I?—”

I shake my head. “We’re like a fucking ticking time bomb together, Luca. I won’t be the reason you lose your job, nor your faith. While I don’t believe the things you do, I won’t ruin you because of it. A bodyguard is where I’ll compromise.”

He searches my face for indifference, but I hold fast to my decision.

He nods. “Alright, it’ll be arranged.”

He walks toward the curtain, stalling momentarily to gain his composure, and I grin, rubbing my finger over my lips at the thought of how far I’d pushed him tonight.

“Father Russo,” I say, walking up this back and pressing against him. With my heels on, I’m nearly his height, and I lean in and skim my lips over his ear. “Please, don’t come back here.”

He doesn’t say a thing, only thrusts back out into the club, leaving me empty behind the curtain that waves from his exit.

Standing in the private room, I hang my head and cry asCrazy in Loveby Beyonce plays on the speakers.

Luca Russo is the closest thing to happiness I’ve ever felt, and by letting him go, I’m endangering myself and leaving that behind, too.

But survival is something I need to do alone.

Because I’ve already tarnished the good father, there’s no need to corrupt him entirely.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

LUCA

“Dante will be perfect for her,” Brynne says as we head back toward St. Andrews so they can drop me off. Leaving her there, half naked and dancing on the stage with men ogling her, had been the hardest thing I’ve ever done before. But she doesn’t belong to me, and I have no right to tell her not to work to keep herself afloat.

“Dante is well-versed in sassy-mouthed women. I agree with that,” Ardesia says, and I look between them as they smirk.

“As long as she’s safe,” I tell them both, disconnected from the conversation.

“She’ll be as safe as we can keep her. Not as safe as she would’ve been with you, but whatever happened there must’ve been too hard to deal with otherwise,” Ardesia says, a smirk on his smug face.

Brynne pats his leg, silently telling him to leave the subject alone, and I’m thankful.

I look out the window of the SUV, my mind pondering in a million different directions.

“You have her address?” I ask Ardesia without turning to look at him on the other side of the seat.

“I do. Her apartment isn’t far from her mother’s.”

I grit my teeth, thinking about Belinda as her face flashes through my memory.

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