Page 35 of Ruthless Mafia Heir

"But if he hadn’t pulled the gun on me, you might have thought twice, right?"

The person we’re talking about is Raul, one of the cooks at the restaurant. Turned out he had been siphoning cash from the lockboxes for a while and had gotten greedy about how much he could take without being caught.

I had worked with him, known him, heard about his brother, who was starting college, how proud of him he was. Of course, I have no idea if that was all just a lie he told to hold his cover, but I still feel like I knew him. And knowing what happened to him, knowing what went down as a result of him putting his hands on me... it haunts me.

Blake doesn’t reply. But he doesn’t deny it, either. I want to scream. I grit my teeth, forcing myself to keep going.

"I’ve never seen a body before," I breathe to him. "I-I've never..."

"You know this is the kind of person I am, Sophia," he shoots back, his voice harsh. "You know this is what I do, what I have to do for the sake of protecting my family."

"It’s one thing to know it, and it’s another thing to see someone’s brains spattered all over the floor!"

"So that’s how it is, then?" He drives a little faster, the roar of the engine rumbling beneath us. "You wanted to be with me until it got hard? Until you actually had to face up to what I do?"

"That’s not what I said—"

"It’s what you meant," he snarls back. I fall silent.

Is he right? I mean, no matter what lies I’ve tried to tell myself, I know that death has always been part of his game. His family didn’t earn their money and power without a few casualties along the way. But being faced with it, seeing what it looks like—the cold, hard sound of a bullet leaving a barrel, those bloodied, empty eyes staring back at me, knowing that, just a few seconds earlier, it could have been my skull blasted across the office—it's a horror I can’t come to terms with.

I curl into myself, arms crossed, staring out of the window.

"You need to take me back to my dorm," I tell Blake softly.

"What?"

"You need to take me back to my dorm, Blake! Now!”

My voice is sharper than I intend it to be, but harshness feels like the only way to get through to him in this moment. The Blake I knew, the Blake I thought I had, the one who can soften and show me the sides of him I need to see, he’s gone. The walls are back up. And this Blake needs me to be sharp with him. It’s the only way he can understand.

He screeches the car to a halt in the middle of the wide road that leads out of the university, nearly tossing me out of my seat, and does a U-turn. I want to curse him out for being so reckless, but I remind myself—this is what I signed up for.

He drives me back to my dorm and stops the car outside the door. His eyes are still fixed straight ahead. He won’t even look at me. He’s clutching the wheel so tight, it looks as though his knuckles are going to bust right through his skin at any moment. I want to touch him, to reach out, lay a hand on him, and try to assure him that it’s going to be okay. No matter how much trouble I know he is, no matter how much danger I know I’m putting myself in when I’m around him, there’s still a part of me that wants him—that needs him.

"Blake, I—"

"You need to go," he snaps at me before I can get another word out. I draw in a sharp breath, reeling back from him.

"Maybe we can talk about this some other—"

"You’ve made yourself clear."

He stretches across my lap and opens the door. He still won’t look at me. I can feel his rage coming off him in waves, just like that day at the restaurant. I can still recall, all too clearly, how he glowered at the man who had his hands on me, like he wanted to rip him to pieces.

Is that what he wants to do to me now?

I step out of the car. The tears won’t stop falling. I feel like I’m being ripped in two, one part of me wishing I could just stay with him, the other knowing, knowing above all else, that I need to put as much space between myself and this man as I possibly can. He’s dangerous. The tiny glimpse I got into his world, it’s enough to tell me everything I need to know.

And I can’t handle it.

I watch him drive off, waiting for him to at least look over at me, but he doesn’t even bother. I dissolve into sobs as I sink down on the stone steps in front of my dorm, my heart ripped straight from my chest. I can still feel his arms around me, his mouth against mine, his grin on my lips first thing in the morning when the two of us were all tangled up together.

And now I know I’ll never get to experience that again.

And I don’t know how I’m going to live without it.

Chapter Twenty-Two—Blake

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