Page 61 of Assassin's Obsession

Even I want to melt into a silly puddle of goo around him. But I've seen too much. Been through too much. I'm not swallowing his claim to love me when I'm still all but a stranger to him.

Strangers hop into bed together all the time. They don't fall in love across a crowded strip club.

"You can't love me if you don't know me," I continue. "People might get married without love inyourworld but they don't fall in love at the altar."

"We know each other,amate."

"You don't know the important things about me. I don't know the important stuff about you." And I'm going to keep reminding him of that until he gets it through his gorgeous, thick head.

"Don't we?" The look he gives me sends an arrow of want straight to my core.

I shake my head, trying to dislodge the thoughts and feelings I should be too exhausted to experience right now. "If you knew me, you'd know that I don't like being threatened. Or held down. I especially hate being trapped."

Just because I didn't react to the whole duct taping thing like I would have expected doesn't change that truth about me. Or that he allowed it to happen to me without knowing the risk he was taking with my mental wellbeing.

"And yet you're not hysterical." He brushes his fingertip down my cheek. "Not a single tear has fallen from your beautiful brown eyes."

"I'm not a crier." My first foster placement taught me that crying was a weakness that, at best, got you sent out of the room and taunted by the other kids.

You learn early to protect yourself in the system, or it eats you alive. I didn't get eaten. Not even by my last foster father.

"You will cry when you need to when you are with me," he says, like it's a rule. "You will always be safe to show your emotions when I am there."

How can he know what I'm thinking? Or has Angelo had his own experience of learning to hide vulnerability? I can't imagine Death was ever helpless. But little Angelo? Maybe his vulnerability is where Death came from.

"Whatever. Me not crying tonight doesn't change what happened, or your part in it."

"I would not change my part in it. You are alive because of the protection order I put on you."

I can't argue that point because deep down, I know he's right. "Still doesn't mean you really know me, or that we're somehow meant for each other."

"You demanded to be let go, but you didn't beg for your life," Angelo says with undisguised admiration.

"You didn't hear me in the alley. I begged for Derian and Mario to let me go." And I'm not ashamed of that.

If the choice is death or begging? I'm going to plead for my life. I can't leave my mom and Cookie unprotected.

"They didn't listen." And I'll make them regret the duct tape and gag someday.

Somehow.

"They were under orders."

Unimpressed, I rolled my eyes. "I care because?"

Angelo laughs. "You give me joy, Candi Brigliano."

"My name is Kathleen." Not that I want him to use it, but Candi is the name my family calls me.

Angelo is not my family. Besides, right now, I'm seriously annoyed by the mafia assassin.

"Which you never use. The only person who calls you Kath is the social worker."

"It's creepy that you know that."

"Is it? I should know everything about you—"

I put my hand up, stopping him. "Don't start with the soulmate stuff again. And if you knew as much as you think you do about me, you never would have had your men tie me up."

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