Page 72 of Taboo Flames

However, I can’t find the words to refuse him either. I want to be his comfort.

“Okay,” I mutter weakly.

I don’t even notice that Carlos has come up behind me until his hand gently drops down on my shoulders.

“Try not to lose her. Again,” Gio commands. I’m pulled away with a wordless Carlos, and when I look over my shoulder, Gio is still standing there. He’s staring forward, but I have the feeling he’s not looking at me. Rather, he’s lost somewhere in his head.

“Who was that man?” I ask Carlos as I climb into his car.

“You’ll have to ask the boss,” Carlos replies.

I turn and look at him. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

Logically, I know Gio won’t kill me over what I saw tonight, but tell it to my brain that’s whirling with gruesome images of what he is capable of doing to me.

Gio doesn’t need to keep me quiet about tonight. I’m a mafia daughter, regardless of how sheltered I’ve been. I know never to go to the cops. It might even be pointless anyway, as I’m sure he has a lot of cops in his pocket. So even if I did, it would be futile.

Yet the tremble in my hands persists, and my heart beats painfully fast.

The second Carlos’s car shuts off in Gio’s driveway, I’m dashing out of the car and into the house to find a hiding place.

The kitchen has far too many windows, and the bathroom reminds me too much of watching Gio masturbate, so I end up crawling into the empty closet of a guest bedroom, unable to tolerate his scent in his room. I curl myself into a ball and go to dig out my phone, then realize I left it at the studio.

I don’t know how much time passes by, but suddenly, the closet door flies open and off its hinges to reveal a very enraged-looking Gio.

I whimper in fright.

“What are you doing in here?” he growls, glaring down at me.

I retreat back into myself and as far back into the closet as I can. “No, stop!” I scream as he reaches out for me.

“Wh—” he trails off before following my fearful gaze to the blood on his hands. “I’ll wash them?—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I snap, averting my eyes. “You can never truly wash it out. Especially from my memories.”

He lets out a dry bark of laughter. “And do you think all the times I’ve touched you, that I did so with clean hands?”

I let out another miserable whimper.

“You’re mine, Aurora,” he informs me firmly.

“Not like this. Oh, God.” He reaches for me again, and this time, I let out a blood-curdling scream. “Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me. You’re a monster!”

He flinches, and then his gaze hardens. Next thing I know, I’m being lifted and carried to his room. I scream at the top of my lungs and struggle, but Gio’s grip is like a vice.

When we get to his room, he drops me to my feet and stands before me, fuming.

“You insult me with your assumption that I’ll harm you.”

“I don’t know what you will and won’t do,” I spit out. “I really don’t know you, and you haven’t given me any opportunity to.”

“At least tell me that you know I won’t hurt you,” he says.

Deep, deep down, I know, but I stubbornly stay mute. Fabio was right when he told me that Gio isn’t all flowers and roses. I had desperately wanted to think the best of him, and now I don’t know what to think.

It isn’t just because he killed a man. I’d be a fool to think the men around me have not taken a life or two. It’s the brutality of his actions, the way he had done it without remorse or any show of emotions. So clinical and methodical.

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