His (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance)(43)

I can’t look at him without feeling vivid reminders of the torture. I can’t look at him without blaming him.

I turn my head away from him, blinking away more tears and ignoring the sharp pain in my neck that comes from turning. His fingers are gentle against the soft skin of my cheek, but they hurt, too. He’s stroking my cheek so softly, probably as softly and tenderly as he can, but it still hurts. Isn’t that his problem? As much as he might want to protect me, even his most tender touch is still dangerous, still painful.

“I want to go home,” I say. My words come out thick and slurred through swollen lips and cheeks.

“And let you out of my sight again? You’re staying here.”

“I’m afraid of you.” The words leave before I have time to think them over, to find out if I really mean them in the way they will sound. The silence that follows says enough, it’s thick, heavy, and stifling like a blanket. I want to take them back, but I know it’s too late. There’s too much truth in them to say I didn’t mean them. They were the thoughts hanging on the tip of my mind and on the tip of his, the thing he was afraid to hear and the one thing I knew I shouldn’t say. After all, wasn’t that why I was special to him? He liked that I could look into his darkest corners and not run.

I feel him slip off the bed and hear the door close quietly a short time later.



It has been nearly a week since I was tortured. My swelling is mostly gone now and I just have a sore chest and some nasty bruises to show for my trouble. To my surprise, Vince kept taking care of me, even after what I said. I’ve caught him changing his own bloody bandage several times now, but he acts as if I’m the only one who’s hurt. He sleeps on the couch, I guess, because I can’t say for sure. The doctor told me to stay in bed for a week until my ribs healed, and Vince has made sure I do that. He helps me up when I need to use the restroom and waits outside to help me back to bed. He helps me into the shower and steps out while I bathe, waiting just outside the door incase I call for help. He does all of this with barely a word. It’s like he’s suddenly a professional nurse and waiting on me hand and foot doesn’t strike him as anything unusual.

I’ve done nothing but think. I’ve thought about how things between he and I have gone, about the life I left outside this apartment that’s probably crumbling into an unrecognizable heap, about my dad who is going to have another round of bills he can’t pay soon, and about Aria, who must be worried sick by now. She might think I’m dead. I have no way of knowing, because Vince said my phone was lost and he won’t let me make any calls. He just tells me to focus on getting better and not on trying to deal with what’s going on out there. I think the real truth is that he doesn’t want me calling for help. He doesn’t trust me. It’s probably in his best interest, because I honestly don’t know what I’d do if he gave me a phone right now. I would probably call the cops.

I carefully sit up in the bed, looking out at the ridiculous view through his huge penthouse windows. The bed is comfortable, but after a week, it feels like a prison, even though Vince has been taking the times I bathe to change out the sheets. He has really surprised me. I thought he was a man of all hard action. I never imagined he could be so considerate or tender in caring for me. His behavior makes me regret what I said even more, but I still can’t be with him. What happened could happen again, it probably would happen again. He lives a dangerous life and apparently has dangerous enemies. It would only be a matter of time before they came after me or someone I care about.

I can’t keep doing this. Staying with him is going to get me killed. I have to end it.





21





Vince





I find her sitting up in bed. As usual, the sight of the dark bruises against her white skin makes me want to kill those fuckers all over again. I clench my fingers so hard on the plate I carry that I feel the ceramic start to crumble under my fingers. I try to relax. C’mon, Vince. You got them. It’s over. I didn’t get all of them though. And they got Dino. He was just a kid. Whoever killed Jackie is still out there, too. As if I needed any more reason to want to put the entire Anastasio family under the ground.

I try again to smooth my features. There’s not an hour that goes by where I don’t hear her words. She’s scared of me. I’ve never let anyone or anything matter this much to me in all my life, and she’s fuckin’ scared of me. I took a long, hard look in the mirror after she said that. I asked myself if I could change for her. The answer is that I can’t. I won’t. Not because I don’t want her. God, do I want her. I won’t change because she’s scared of who she thinks I am, not who I am. If she was an Anastasio or one of those Sanatore rats? Yeah, then she should be scared, but the only people in the world who need to be scared are the ones who want to hurt her.