Page 56 of Sinister Intentions

I narrowed my eyes. “Not if your end goal is a slow and painful death.”

He continued to stare, but I didn’t back down either. “Are you threatening me, little punk?”

I pushed my hands into my waist. “Since you’re insulting me, it only seems fair.” I glared at him. He was an asshole; I’d known he was one, so why was I even surprised?

“I just saved you; does that count for something?” He suddenly gave me a lopsided grin.

Which was so not okay.

“We’re having a fight here; honor the rules, dude.”

It was as if something shifted inside of him. His features tightened, he clenched his jaw, and suddenly, the ruthless, dangerous version of him was back.

He took a step forward, cupped my jaw, and came closer and closer. “Let’s make one thing perfectly clear, my little punk. I don’t honor the rules; I make them.”

I should’ve head-butted him or something. That was what he deserved; sadly, that would also mean I had to jump to bridge our height difference and then head-butt him, which could potentially go one of two ways. And I really didn’t want to fall on my ass accidentally in front of Vince Salvini.

“Contemplating violence? Is that how you solve your conflicts?”

I stared at him for a good five seconds. “Rich coming from Vince Salvini, Mafia asshole extraordinaire.”

The muscles around his mouth tightened when his lip started to quiver. “You, Jemma Donnelly are really something else,” he said, and there was suddenly so much warmth in his voice, I could only stare at him.

What the hell? He was flipping between emotions faster than a strobe light.

Somehow, for some weird reason, he was more intriguing than any other man I’d ever met. Added to that were those brief, intense moments when he was actually really caring for me. It all spelled disaster with a capitalD.

Somehow, the more I knew him, the harder it became to reconcile his actions with my hatred for him.

His eyes moved from my eyes to my lips and back before he let go of my jaw. “How about a truce for the rest of today?”

I stared at him, then nodded before I even realized what I was doing.

A truce? Really? As if that changed anything.

We continued our walk, but the air had shifted between us.

At least, my awareness had shifted.

I exhaled slowly, tried not to focus on the man beside me.

Vince Salvini wasn’t just a danger to my freedom, but he could very well become a danger to my heart.

And that was nothing I had anticipated or taken into consideration.

Vince

“So, where are we actually going?” Jemma asked after a couple of minutes of silent walking.

My gaze lingered on her for a moment too long as she turned those mesmerizing green eyes on me, waiting for my response. “Since your father called earlier to excuse himself from the meeting tonight, we’re meeting up with Fee, Alex, and your future husband,” I said, the words rolling off my tongue with a practiced ease that stood in complete contrast to the sudden tension coiling in my gut.

Despite Connor Donnelly calling earlier and excusing himself from the planned family dinner, my father still insisted on bringing Jemma.

And as if calling Matt her future husband wasn’t enough to leave a bitter aftertaste in my mouth, our destination, once we met up with them, was the Salvini family home on Staten Island—which was a misnomer at best.

Nothing about that estate even whispered home. And with my father residing right there, family was just a set of outdated expectations, a lot of guilting and shaming to fit said expectations, executed along with a lot of violent outbursts in an overall oppressive atmosphere.

Maybe I should’ve just run away from the family like Dante and Hero did—well, they’d distanced themselves as much as they could—hadn’t run away.

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