Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 56680 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56680 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
“Yeah,” Dante says. “I’ve seen him. He’s… got a pink face.”
I laugh. “I can’t tell if you think he’s cute or gross.”
“Babies are… easy targets.”
“What the fuck?” I snap.
He glances at me, jaw tight. “From a tactical point of view. They lack logic. They lack speech. For a twisted, sadistic person, they make easy targets.”
“But their parents protect them.”
Dante snorts, and I know he’s thinking of his dad. After a pause, he says, “What happened to your mom, Mia?”
“She died when I was ten.”
“Ah, dammit.”
I sigh. “Yeah, I know… but it’s life. Life is pain. Life is bad things happening. That shouldn’t stop us from trying for the good stuff.”
“Are you trying to talk me into having a kid with you or something?”
I turn to the window and fold my arms. That crazy, unfair tingle is dancing over my body again. I don’t want to listen to it.
“I want to be an artist,” I tell him. “A real artist. I want to have displays in galleries and maybe travel a little. I don’t want kids.”
“Imagine how worthless you’d feel, how sick, how messed up if something happened to them.”
Suddenly, I hate the darkness in his voice, even if it’s the thing that defines us—our darkness. “You can’t focus on the negative. The what-if.”
“Sometimes, the what-if happens, Mia. Then you don’t have the luxury of pretending it’s not there.”
He’s talking in a husky, almost forced way. It’s like he’s reciting it to himself as much as telling me, as though he needs to convince us both.
“We don’t need to talk about this anyway,” I tell him. “It’s way too soon.”
“Does that phrase even make sense with us?” he says, looking at me with those dark eyes. “Too soon?”
I hug my arms tighter around myself, ignoring the shivers dancing through me. After ten more minutes of quiet driving, he parks around the back of a restaurant. He climbs from the car and walks around to my side. When he opens it, a silly, big grin spreads across my face.
“What?” he says, smirking down at me.
“You… opening my door. It’s like a real date.”
He leans forward and gently presses his lips against mine. It’s like he’s doing it softly so he doesn’t lose control. I can feel the hunger in him trying to burst out. It triggers something deep in me, the lust that somehow smooths everything else away.
He puts his hand on the small of my back and leads me to the back entrance. Flipping on a light, he leads me through a cool kitchen into a large restaurant area. It looks somehow eerie with nobody in here.
“I’m a silent partner here,” he tells me, turning to me with an unreadable expression like he’s hiding something.
I reach up and touch his face. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” he growls.
“Your whole stone-face thing. It’s like you can lock yourself down, like our apartment.”
He sighs. “I need to explain something to you.”
He takes my hand and leads me to a nearby table. As he pulls my chair out, I imagine this place bustling and loud, but I prefer it to be like this. Just us. Just the dark look in his eyes.
“This place has a hidden basement,” he says. “There’s a cell in there. Sometimes, the Family gets into scuffles with people: bikers, gangsters, plain old criminals. Sometimes, it’s easier to settle this nonviolently, but often, Mia, we learn things about these people just in case we need to use them against them. We learn evil, evil things.”
Dante clenches his hand into a fist on the table. When he trembles, the table judders around. I rest my hand on him, feeling his knuckles bulge against me.
“Let the law handle it, the Family says, but I can’t always let that happen. Sometimes, a person deserves to pay for what they did.” His voice trembles. “Let’s say a man breaks into a woman’s home, kills her pet in front of her, then kills her. Should that scumbag be allowed out with ten years?”
I say nothing, sensing he needs to vent this.
“So I take the job for myself. I make arrangements. I handle them, and I get rid of them. The Family doesn’t know. Nobody does… just you. The owner thinks the downstairs is just for the secret freezer. I tell him we’ve got a cheap deal on meat. It’s a good vendor, and I just pay the difference. It’s a good excuse. It lets me do my business.”
“Business,” I repeat, my mouth suddenly dry.
Dante looks at me bleakly. “I get it. You’re terrified now.”
I sit up and look at him with as much confidence as I can come up with now. “I’m not scared,” I tell him. “I know you. You’re a good person.”
He laughs, shaking his head. “When I handle these bastards, how do you think I feel? Do you think it’s just business?”