“Mr. Angelini, are you all right?” Davina’s half-sister asked, her eyes wide with concern.
She was beautiful, of course, but there was not one thing about her that attracted me to her. I rose to my feet.
Davina’s mother appeared suddenly. “Mr. Angelini,” she said sweetly.
A quiet explosion went off in my brain. I held her gaze and spoke very calmly, doing all I could to hold myself back, “You have two daughters, Madam. It is a shame you do not chose to recognize that, but if you do not get out of my way in five seconds, I will make sure the banks that hold all your debts recall their loans. You will lose everything.”
It took a second for the threat to sink in, another to realize I meant every word, and a third to convince herself I was more than capable of accomplishing exactly what I had threatened. “Get up!” she shouted in a panic to her clueless daughter. “Get the hell up.”
Barely able to contain my disgust at the ugliness of human beings, I went after Davina. I reached her just as she had hailed a cab. She already had the door open, but before she could get into it, I caught her arm and pulled her towards me.
She slammed into my body. “Let go of me,” she yelled and put up a fight, but she was no match for me. I waved the driver off and I dragged her to the back of my waiting Bentley. As I pulled the door open, she stopped to glare at me.
“Get in,” I grated.
She refused to move.
“I seem to be the only one that you have no problems defying.”
She got into the car then, and I slid in after her. Neither of us said a word as the car sped into the night. I drew my bow tie from my neck and flung it aside.
Eventually, she spoke. “Please let me off somewhere so I can take a cab home.” When I didn’t respond, she turned to me. “Gabriel.”
I was still furious. “Your home is my house,” I grated.
My driver sped all the way home and the moment we arrived, she jumped out of the car and started running at breakneck speed towards the house.
I got out and went after her.
She headed straight to her room, retrieved her luggage from the closet, and began to throw her things into it.
I grabbed the bag from the bed and flung it so hard it crashed into a free-standing mirror and shattered it to pieces.
She gazed at the chaos in shock, her eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.
“Am I a joke to you?” I snarled.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Why are you packing your things?”
“Because I want to leave.”
“Why do you want leave?”
“I would have thought it was obvious.”
I slammed the door shut behind me, and fought to control my breathing. “Answer me!” I roared Suddenly, tears filled her eyes. “What do you want from me?”
“Let me rephrase my question. Why don’t you want anything from me?”
She stared at me hopelessly. “What can you give me?” she asked. “Besides a broken heart?”
Silence.
“I thought so,” she taunted. “What do you want to hear, Gabriel? Or what do you want to see? You want to see me crazy in love with you? Worshipping the very ground you walk on, or crazed with jealousy, like tonight, when that bitch fearlessly came to ask for the seat beside you?”
They shared the same mother. I wondered if she realized it. “And you got up,” I reminded her bitterly. “So easily.”
“I have no place in your life Gabriel. Isn’t that what you would prefer? A fuck toy? Hmmm?”
“A fuck toy. That’s rich. I invited you to accompany me and you treat me like I am nothing,” I bellowed. I couldn’t believe that these words were coming out of my mouth. “You gave me up to a stranger without a thought. Where did your insurmountable pride go?”
“It disappears,” she said. “When people ask me for things that don’t matter.”
“Or yeah? And when it comes to falling asleep in my arms? Can’t do that can you? Is it because it matters?”
She took a step back. “What if I fall in love with you?”
I glared at her. “I want you to be in love with me.”
She looked stunned. “What?”
“Yes, I want you to fall in love with me.”
“For what? So your ego can feel good about another conquest?” she demanded aggressively.
“No, because I want to take care of you.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me.”
Silence.
“I need you by my side.”
“For how long?” she spat. “Until you get tired and need another?”
I took a step towards her.
She took three steps backwards. “Don’t come close to me. I need you to let me go, right now. Before it’s too late.”
“Before it’s too late for whom?”
“I’ve never assumed or expected love in my life, because even the people who should be biologically programmed to give that to me, couldn’t. I’m not asking you for anything, just let me go, okay?”
“Will you able to leave?” I asked her. “And forget everything about me? About us?”
“Time and my brain. They’ve allowed me to survive my fate thus far. I’ll keep leaning on them.” She started to leave.
I stopped her before she could get past the door. “Come with me to my Chateau in France. Both you and Michele. I don’t have the confidence to love you. In my world, a billion things are always on the edge of going wrong. Having you in my heart will drive me insane, but my body needs you now, and I just can’t let you go. Not yet.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and made a quick call in Russian. In seconds, two hefty guards appeared at her door.
She gazed at them in disbelief.
“We will return from the chateau in a week. After that, you’re free to do whatever you want.”
“Are you imprisoning me?” she asked in disbelief.
“I’m making a decision for the both of us. Let’s fuck each other out of our systems before the week is over. This madness has to burn itself out. It can’t last. Nothing that burns this bright can last.”
She snorted in bitter amusement. “Do you actually believe that it will work?”
“It doesn’t matter if it does or not. We will be done with each other when we return from France. Not a day earlier. We’ll leave tomorrow night.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
Leave a Reply