Page 15 of Once A Crime Lord

With one arm wrapped around their daughter, he grasped her by the chin and kissed her. She was too rattled by Jonathan’s appearance to respond. Gavin pulled back. She felt the heat of his gaze on her face but didn’t meet his gaze.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

She settled on the couch with Nora and shifted her scarf so she could breastfeed. Gavin resumed his call and paced as he talked.

Seeing Jonathan had shaken her to the core. Cozy memories of a life she forced herself to forget drifted through her mind. Jonathan had been the first person to make her feel safe after she left Gavin. If she had stayed, would they be married by now? Life with him would have been smooth sailing. She definitely wouldn’t be scarred, responsible for killing at least two men, or dogged by panic attacks.

She focused on Gavin as he paced. Jonathan and Gavin couldn’t be more different from one another. Gavin was dominant and possessed a palpable aura of power and danger. His role as the crime lord fed his natural tendency to control and manipulate things to his liking. Even as a teenager, she sensed something wild inside Gavin and ignored it to her own cost. He was borderline psychotic, possessive, and domineering, but he loved her, and she loved him.

Gavin caught her staring and raised a brow. She immediately shifted her gaze to Nora. She leaned down to draw in the baby’s sweet scent and wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of sorrow. She had lost so many people—Manny, Vinny, her parents. Jonathan was a man she would trust with her life, but if he knew the real her, he would run and never look back. Her heart squeezed painfully over things that could never be.

That note of hurt in his voice when he asked why she left made her feel like crap. The day Blade came for her was the first time Jonathan had gone on a business trip since they moved in together. Did Jonathan think she had been waiting for him to travel so she could leave him?

“Lyla?”

She jerked and saw Gavin watching her. Apparently, he had finished his call.

He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

She cleared her throat and adjusted Nora in her arms. “Nothing’s wrong.”

There was a long silence. She clenched her teeth and hoped she appeared serene rather than deeply troubled.

She mentally bitch slapped herself. Jonathan was her past. There was no sense in wondering what could have been. This was her reality. She was married to Gavin Pyre and had a child with him. Her life would never be normal. She would have security guards, a gun, and night terrors for the rest of her life. She couldn’t get rid of her scars or change the fact that Gavin blackmailed her into leaving Jonathan and then coerced her into marriage. Gavin was who he was and she... She was now a part of him, good and bad.

“How did the meeting with Alice go?” he asked.

She placed Nora on her shoulder and rubbed her back. “It went well. Your donation for the hospital was very generous.”

“It’s a good cause.” He paused and then said, “I don’t want you going to the event.”

“I’m going,” she said with more heat than she intended.

His brows drew together.

She tried to soften her tone. “Like you said, it’s a good cause, and they need as many hands as they can get. I want to be a part of it.”

“There will be other events.”

She tensed. “I want to go to this one.”

“I said no, Lyla.”

After the effort Alice, Janice, and the employees had put in, the least she could do was show up. Besides, she needed to do something to remind herself of the good still happening in the world. Why spend another day pacing the house, waiting for bad news when she could make a positive impact in her community?

“I’m going,” she said firmly.

There was a loaded silence in the soundproof office.

“You haven’t left the house for months, and now you want to volunteer at a hospital event to give him another shot?”

She didn’t need Gavin to clarify who he was referring to. “I’m not going to the mall. I’m going to an event being hosted by your foundation.”

“No.”

No discussion, no elaboration. Just,no. The dictator telling her what she could and couldn’t do. She ground her teeth.

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