Page 25 of A Trap So Flawless

“Because I took off the ring.”

I’ve still got it, though. It’s in my bag.

I don’t tell him that part.

Unpredictable as ever, Darragh doesn’t exhibit displeasure at that pronouncement. He merely laughs. A quiet, merciless scrape of sound.

“Stubborn little Titone.”

I try to stop it, but a part of me preens with wicked pleasure at his response. He’s called me his little Titone before. When he says it now, it feels like the past eight days have never happened.

But they have happened. He’s trapped me twice. First with the engagement, and now with the flight. If I don’t make some sort of stand against him now, I’m worried that I never will.

I steel my voice, lift my chin, and say, “I thought you said that you were going to call me Mrs. Di Mauro now.”

Something writhes in the back of his gaze. Something hostile. Hateful.

“I will never,” he says with venom in his voice, “call you by the name of some Sicilian piece of shit who wasn’t even man enough to survive his own fucking wedding to you.” His jaw ticks. “Tell me,” he says, the words going suddenly ragged, his fingers squeezing. “Tell me he got hit because he threw his useless shit-sack of a body in front of yours.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. The idea that Salvatore Di Mauro would have died protecting me is patently absurd.

“Because if he didn’t,” Darragh goes on darkly, “if he didn’t use his own skull as your personal fucking shield, then he deserved a far worse death than a bullet to the head.”

A bullet to the head. Sal’s broken face, bleeding and horrific, is burned into my brain. My body reacts as if I’m back there. I panic, pulling in Darragh’s hold.

“I have to go,” I gasp.

“Go where?” he demands, tightening his hold on me.

Go with him.

Go home to Toronto.

Go to some quiet corner of the world where no one knows my name and everyone is good.

But if everyone there is good…

They’d never let me in.

“I’m not supposed to be here!”

It’s not a real answer to his question, but it’s all my feverish mind can put into words. And technically, it’s true. I’m really not supposed to be here.

But clearly, Darragh disagrees.

“You’re supposed to be with me.” His mouth is at my temple, his lips hot urgency against my skin and hair. “So you can cry about it all you want, pet. Cry. Even though it fucking splits me open.”

He releases one of my arms and swings his hand, scythe-like, downwards. Hoisting up my bag, he pulls me away from the tourists and taxis towards another car.

“You can sob, and rage, and try to run,” he says when we reach it. “But you’re not stepping one foot outside this city so long as I’m still here.”

Chapter 10

Darragh

I drive Valentina to the townhouse I’ve started renting. I’m not going to have her in my grandda’s house – the house I won’t even own or control if I marry her. There isn’t a bed for her in Callum’s place. I’ve been sleeping, if you can call it that, in his office this entire time, unwilling to lie down in either my old bed or his.

This townhouse is on the very same road, though, and stands facing the fenced-in grass and gardens of St. Stephen’s Green. There’s nowhere to park immediately at the building, so I take the car to the nearest parking garage. When we emerge on foot, there still isn’t a cloud in the goddamn sky.

---