Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77359 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77359 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“I was just joking,” she said quietly, concern on her face. “I know you’d never hurt me.”
I noticed she didn’t say that she knew I’d never hurt anyone. I waited for the realization to hit—for her to recognize what a dangerous man I was. A bad man.
I waited for fear to cloud her expression and for her to pull away.
But she didn’t.
When I finally spoke, my voice was even lower than usual. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
“I’m not.”
“Most people are.” I didn’t point out that a lot of them had good reason to be. Like that asshole who’d drugged her drink at the bar.
She squeezed her little fingers around my hand. “I’m not. I don’t know all that your job entails, Carmine, but I’m not quite as naïve as everyone thinks. You, Massimo, my dad… you’re not boy scouts. I know that. But I also see good in you. How you’re patient and caring and gentle. That’s the side of you I know, and that’s the side I really like.”
Her words should have cheered me up, but they didn’t. She thought she had an inkling of what my job was like, but she didn’t. If she had, she would’ve jumped out of the car and run away in terror.
And I couldn’t change that. A handful of dons in the Chicago area already thought that Massimo was messing with the natural order of things. No way I could just grab Leila, take her somewhere far away, and be a different man for her. People would die.
People in my family would die.
Since I couldn’t do that, I’d settle for just not scaring her. The thought of ever causing her fear or pain—it was a step too far. A hundred steps too far. It made me feel physically ill to think of her being afraid of me. Shying from my touch. Keeping her distance. It made my stomach ache like a son of a bitch.
“Carmine?” She tugged at my hand, and I lifted it. She kissed the back of my knuckles. The same knuckles that regularly met the jaws of my enemies—and sometimes even people in our own organization who stepped out of line. “I’m sorry I said that.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” Concern filled her dark eyes. “I’ve made you upset.” I shook my head, not because it wasn’t true, but because this whole situation was absurd. Now she was upset because I was upset, and I was the bad guy here. She’d done nothing wrong.
“I’m a big, strong guy. I can handle it.” She clutched my hand to her chest with both of hers. I sighed. Probably, I should have let it go, but suddenly, I couldn’t. “I frighten the shit out of most people. When they see me, they don’t wonder what I’m thinking, they only worry if I’m going to hurt them. It’s been like that ever since, well, pretty much since I started school. I was always the biggest kid in class.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
“Let’s just say that I got sick of always standing in the middle of the back row for class pictures.” I glanced over at Leila—she was staring out the window. “People must make judgments about you based on your appearance, too.”
“They do, and that’s a good thing.” She let go of my hand and looked out the window.
“Good?” I echoed. Did she mean that she was glad people judged her on her looks since she was so damn beautiful? But that didn’t seem like something she’d say. Leila wasn’t vain. “What do you mean?”
Her gaze shifted to her feet. It was like my self-loathing had transferred over to her. “I want people to judge me based on how I look. Because once I open my mouth, their opinion will change.”
“How so?” Nothing she was saying was making sense.
“They’ll see how dumb I am.”
“You’re not dumb.” My response was automatic, but I truly believed it.
“Yes, I am. I never went to school. I—”
“Going to school doesn’t make you smart,” I interrupted. The idiots I’d gone to high school with proved that. “Besides, you learned from tutors, right?”
“Only what my father wanted me to learn. Which wasn’t much.” Finally, she looked over at me. Her face was solemn. “Maybe you don’t have to go to school to be smart, but you have to have some kind of knowledge and experience. And I don’t. I’m twenty and I haven’t done much of anything.”
Was that why she was so timid when talking to people? I’d chalked it up to her being shy by nature, but maybe part of that was a fear of people making assumptions about her intellect. “You were robbed.”
“What?”
“You were robbed of the experiences most kids got growing up.” Not that my own upbringing had been all that normal, given the family I had. But still, it had been a wealth of experience compared to hers. “There’s no doubt about that. But you’re not stupid or uninteresting or anything like that. And news flash, you’re only twenty. You’ve got time to make new experiences.”