Page 38 of Runaway in the Mafia
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She just smiled. “I’m going to make your favourite gnocchi today.”
Why did Sicilian mammas always change topics like that?
A need tolearn her secrets overtook me.I caught up with her in the hallway. A shocked gasp escaped her when I curled my hands around her waist and pinned her to the wall.Fuck.She smelled good. I inhaled her like she was my addiction. A necessity to breathe.
“What’s with you and wanting to be free?” I goaded her.
Her pulse was a frantic beat under my hand. She was nervous but hid it beneath her scowl and sassy words. “I imagine the same reason women wanted to vote.”
“Nothing to do with the fucker who’s been putting his hands on you?”
She stilled. Her breathing stopped. Her pulse dropped. She froze right before me.Jesus Christ.Rage erupted inside me. My hand fisted, muscles straining on the wall beside her face. “I have plans for him. Would you like to know?” I took her lack of response as a yes. “I plan to scorch the whole damn world until I find him, and when I do, I am going to skin him alive and shred him apart. Limb. By. Limb.” Her eyes were a whirlpool of emotion. Anger. Fear. Confusion. I gripped her chin and cocked her face. “Would you like that?” Not that she had any choice in it. But I could pretend she did. She was stiff as a board in front of me. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“No,” she gasped.
No wasn’t a choice. “Let’s play a game.”
“Ugh.” Her voice was all cracked and broken.Fuck. I wanted this man’s head and a chainsaw in my hands.
“I’ll tell you my secret, and you’ll tell me yours.”
She was too dazed to reply, but a shake of her head conveyed her thoughts.
“Guess what?” I murmured next to her ear, and her thick swallow vibrated between us. “I’m playing, anyway.” I followed the bob of her throat with the back of my hand. “You can join if you’d like.”
She tried to push away, but I wasn’t in the mood to let her go. She was a rage in my blood, and the secret I’d been carrying burned a path through my veins. I could only do one thing at a time, and she was the reason I had to juggle two at a time.
The hollow behind her ear fascinated me. My thumb sank into it perfectly. The scent was intoxicating. It was a perfect place to carry a secret, so I leaned forward and buried it. “I was the one who killed my father.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
VITALE
“Vai affanculo.”
“Cugino,”Sergio’s voice grated through the phone and scraped at my budding headache. “I would if I could. Have you seen my dick?”
My cousin fucking himself was an image I didn’t need. I kicked my car door shut and leaned against it. Antonio’s house lay ahead of me. Inside it, a discussion I wanted to avoid, a contract I wasn’t keen to sign. My fingers pinched my forehead. It felt like I had an ever-present headache. It started with a scent, picked up with a brown sight, and had a name that started with an A.
“You might be of better use like that than finding information I asked for.Sei un idiota.”
“Now, now. DidziaAda bring you up to name call your cousins?”
“Well, if you aren’t an idiot, prove it to me. Did you even find anything?”
“Nope.”
Suspicion narrowed my eyes even if he couldn’t see me. “Did you even look?”
“Of course I did.”
He didn’t.
“You are fucking fired.”
He laughed, and I winced. “Who will you make your underboss then?”
