Page 10 of Entangled
“Very nice,” Jude said, walking over to the bed and the suit I laid out for him. He wasted no time getting ready. I could have sworn the man only needed five minutes.
What it must be like to be a man.
“Make sure you behave yourself in front of the dinner guests,” Jude warned, as if I wasn’t already planning on it.
“Of course, my love,” I replied in a voice as sweet as honey. If I didn’t think it would get a one-way ticket to the bottom of a river, I’d give him a piece of my mind.
But alas, I preferred to keep my legs on solid ground, and I made my way towards the bedroom door, having no idea what was in store for me tonight.
As we madeour way down the staircase, arm in arm, I could hear the sound of the piano being played. It was a rather beautiful tune, now that I stopped to really listen to it. It stopped suddenly, as the man behind it made his way towards the dining room. The only snippet of his features I was able to catch was his dark brown hair and his sharp black suit.
Despite the hour, Lilah was still determined to entertain her so-called guests. But I knew this dinner wasn’t for pleasure. I knew the underlying reason for this gathering had to do with business.
It always did.
We were the last ones to enter the dining room, everyone else already seated. Jude and I circled the table, and he pulled out the chair for me to take a seat as we stopped.
Perfect manners for a jackass.
It looked like I wasn’t the only one who was on their best behavior tonight.
“Matthias, this is Jude Peirano, my son-in-law,” Lilah said, gesturing to my husband as he sat beside me. “Jude, this is Matthias Luchetti.”
I took in the man sitting next to my stepmother and instantly regretted looking him in the eye. If looks could kill, I’d have been dead long ago. I knew just by looking into his eyes for a split second that this man was not to be fucked with. There was power behind those eyes.
Doing my best not to look his way again, afraid he could smell fear, I looked around the table at all the men surrounding it, Luchetti and Canella alike, when my eyes landed on the most beautiful man I had ever encountered.
His hair was short on the sides, and long on the top, intentionally tousled in a ‘I don’t give a fuck’ kind of way, and his dark, stormy gray eyes were stunningly beautiful against his tanned skin. It was the same man, I realized, who had been playing the piano when I waltzed down the stairs with Jude.
And as our eyes connected, I knew I was in deep shit.
4
KADE
I’m in deep,deep shit.
That was the first thought that crossed my mind as my eyes were met with a pair of stunning light green ones. They were the kind of green you’d see in meadows full of flowers, or the color of fresh cut grass on a sunny day.
I wouldn’t be in such deep shit if this wasn’t Lilah’s daughter, who she’d sold off to the highest bidder, who just so happened to be the son of another powerful Mafia Boss. The same one who was fighting with Lilah against us for the territory now.
Most definitely a marriage for power.
I tried and failed not to stare at her and take in everything about her. But it wasn’t her beauty that stuck out to me the most.
It was the cold, dead look in her eyes. The hopelessness. I knew it all too well because whenever I looked in the mirror, I saw it in my own.
Pity sliced through me like a knife, because she looked too young and too innocent to already seem so dead inside.
How had she gotten caught up in something like this?
I knew, without even truly having to think about it, how she’d gotten trapped into this life. Lilah had made her a prisoner and thrown away the key, forever trapping this girl in misery.
Just as the thought entered my mind, so did confusion.
Why did I care so much about a girl who was nothing to me? Why did I care about the relationship she had with her husband, or the hurt in her eyes?
But something underneath my skin began to sing the more that I looked at her.
