Page 26 of Scorned Obsession

I couldn’t even understand his vendetta against Dad. “He’s sick.”

Sandro shrugged. “It’s the sadistic disease in the Rossi blood.”

I thought about his brother and the rumors about Frankie’s cruelty to his wife and the prostitutes he used. Despite my current situation, I felt the need to say, “You’re not like that, Sandro.”

He smiled faintly. “Hold that thought.”

I never feared Sandro when it was just the two of us, but those two days when he was surrounded by Rossis? It was as if he was a different person and that they controlled him.

We continued staring at each other. Finally, he cleared his throat, thumbed his nose, and walked to the closet. “There are clothes here you can use. We’ll get you some more. Can you eat? I can send the guys to get something.”

My mind was in priority mode, and my whole body was trying to survive. Sleep. Then food. I should’ve been starving because I’d barely eaten anything, but even the thought of chewing felt like a chore. I guzzled a can of Coke on our way here and I needed to pee.

I shook my head and checked the closet, too tired to ask if Griselda picked the clothes for me or even drill Sandro about our unfinished conversation in the car about her. But when I peered inside, the contents of the closet surprised me.

These clothes were in my style.

My eyes fell on the carved box on a skinny accessory tower inside the closet. “What’s this doing here? I don’t want it.”

His mouth tightened. “I wanted something familiar in this room for you.”

“You think it’s going to comfort me?” I picked up the box to hand it back, but Sandro’s hands wrapped around mine.

“Keep it for now.” His voice was gruff. “Please.”

A pleading I hadn’t seen in his eyes before made me reconsider. Its rawness cut a slit through the wall of my anger.

“Fine.”

“We’ll talk about the situation tomorrow.”

“Oh, you bet we will,” I retorted, setting the box down. “We’ll have some ground rules too if we’re going to be stuck in this house together.”

“You’re not a prisoner here, Bianca.”

“I don’t have a phone. I can’t talk to my family. I can’t leave.”

“Consider me your family now.”

Bitterness wrapped itself around my heart at how twisted and wrong those words sounded to me when I’d wanted to hear them for so long.

The irony didn’t escape me, and my lack of response only led to an uncomfortable silence between us. The silence stung with palpable hurt. Mine was mixed with anger. Sandro’s… I tried not to read too much into the flash of regret that broke his mask. He’d schooled his features again. But Sandro had been rejected all his life and I was doing it to him now.

He raked his bottom lips and broke our stalemate. “Do you need help getting out of that wedding dress?”

Heat flushed my cheeks. I hadn’t thought about taking this monstrosity off me. “There are faux buttons in the back, but it’s really a zipper. Er, you can help me with the top zip.”

I turned my back to him, and I felt him come up behind me.

“Who helped you with this?” he whispered near my ear.

“No one. I was quite the contortionist.”

The sound of the zipper lowering sent an awkward chill through my veins. I stepped away. “Thank you.”

“No problem. I’m briefing the guys on the security around the property. It’ll take me fifteen minutes at most. I’ll be in the room across from you if you need anything. There’s no lock outside this door. And there’s bottled water right there.”

Sandro retreated and closed the door. He used to send goose bumps of exhilaration through my veins whenever he was close, but I wondered if this last act of fuckery had finally broken my obsession with him.

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