Page 41 of Entangled
“Name the time and place Lilah, and we’ll be there to collect the contract and return your daughter.”
“The old shoe factory down on Seventh, at 8 o’clock,” Lilah declared, before standing from her chair. She had decided herself that the discussion was over, and there was no room for compromise. I knew Matthias wasn’t one to be told what to do, but for this turf, I knew he was willing to do anything.
This turf was a gold mine for whoever it belonged to, and both of them were walking on thin ice to get their hands on it.
I waited for the doors to close before I opened my mouth.
“Well, that went quicker than expected,” I chuckled, sipping my drink.
“You boys need to watch your fucking mouths,” Matthias hissed, slamming his tumbler down on the table. “You are embarrassing me, and I won’t stand for that.”
“Yes sir,” Maverick and I grumbled practically in unison. I downed the rest of my drink, placing my empty tumbler on the table before standing up, adjusting my suit, and heading towards the door.
“Be ready in three days, Kade,” my father warned, and I knew what his tone was implying. It was as if he knew how attached I’d become, like it permeated in the air and he could smell it.
“I’ll be there,” I replied as calmly and coldly as I could, knowing in the deepest part of my soul that I wasn’t prepared for the goodbye that was inevitable.
18
SOREN
The house wasquiet without Kade in it. Even though we barely saw each other when he was home, I could still always feel his presence.
Now that I was alone in an empty house, with men quietly surrounding the place, every noise made me jump.
I was alone with my confusing feelings about the man of the hour, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that I was falling for him and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Something had always pulled me towards him, like the broken parts of my soul called to his. He’s the first person since my dad passed away to actually be nice to me and give a shit about me. I couldn’t get him out of my head no matter how hard I tried.
I tried to read in the library for a little while, but eventually I got spooked so I went up to my room and locked the door. If someone wanted to fuck with me, they’d have to come and get me in here.
But I obviously didn’t wish for that.
My nerves are shot, for fuck’s sake.
I stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours, waiting for Kade to come home, which felt incredibly stupid. The fact that I was waiting for him was dumb. I could just go to bed and wake up tomorrow and he’d likely be here.
But my mind continued to buzz with the thoughts of his hands on me, skimming my skin, leaving sparks of electricity in the wake of where his fingertips had been. Then my thoughts decided to take a darker turn.
I thought of Kade lying in a ditch somewhere, his car wrapped around a telephone pole, him tied to a chair in some creepy warehouse in the middle of nowhere.
Somehow, in the short span of a month that I had been kept at Kade’s house, I’d grown attached to him. To the smirk he wore on his face. How delicious he looked in a suit, and the way he messily fixed his hair. The way his dark, steely eyes would bore holes into me when I was reading and he thought I wasn’t paying attention.
But I paid attention to everything he did. And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.
Even when I had first been married to Jude, I didn’t pay attention to him as much as I do Kade. I didn’t care enough to, although I should have. Maybe I would have noticed his red flags a little sooner.
I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt when we first got married. The benefit that maybe Jude wasn’t such a bad guy in all reality. Maybe I got lucky in my arranged marriage like you read about in romance books. We’d hate each other and fall in love.
But try as I might, I couldn’t fall in love with him. And for good reason too.
I would have loved a monster who dug his claws into me every chance he could get.
My conversation with Vanessa not long ago rolled around in my head. She was right when she said not all Mafia men were bad. My father was living proof of that. He was proof that you could make mistakes, and do bad things, but still hold love in your heart. He never let the corruption that surrounded him seep into his heart. It’s probably part of the reason he died. His heart was too kind for this world. Too soft.
My heart used to be soft and kind too. But unlike my father, I let the world harden my heart, and I’d learned having a good heart seemed to get you nowhere.
I had managedto fall asleep around two in the morning, and I knew I hadn’t been asleep all that long when my door clicked open. I kept my eyes closed, pretending I was asleep, and hoping and praying whoever had just come in wasn’t here to murder me in my sleep, and that they’d leave. But the question I should be asking is how the fuck did they get through the lock on my door?
