Page 30 of Reckless Sinner

I swallowed, a lump forming in my throat. This wasn’t at all how I’d thought this visit would go and I suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable. “I mean, I know I often do things wrong. It’s all right. I’m just not naturally good at a lot of things.”

Dante looked away, like he was trying to formulate his thoughts. Then he looked back at me. “Delaney, ever since I met you, I’ve watched you do things that you don’t like. You drink wine when you don’t prefer it. You worry about what food to order on a date. You talk down about yourself constantly.”

“I’m just… trying to behave the way I’m supposed to behave. And make up for…” I gestured at myself. I could feel my eyes getting hot and the last thing I wanted to do was cry about this.

“Make up for what?” Dante’s voice was gentle. “You’re a beautiful and intelligent woman with strong, well-formulated opinions on literature. You’re open to learning, you’re observant, you understand people, you pay attention. I watched you at the little get-together last night. You knew exactly where everyone was in the room the entire time. You knew what everyone talked about. That doesn’t sound like someone who has to make up for anything, not to me.”

I quickly wiped at my wet eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“…crying?” I wasn’t supposed to cry. It showed weakness, an inability to take criticism, a lack of strength.

“Cry all you damn well want to,” Dante snapped. His hands seized mine tightly. “Delaney, who the hell makes you feel like you need to apologize for who you are? For crying of all damn things? Look my dad isn’t perfect and I can’t tell you how many screaming matches we’ve had but he never made fun of me or talked down to me for crying. It’s okay tofeelthings. Crying’s a release, whether it’s from sadness or anger or happiness—it literally purges chemicals from our body. There is nothingwrongwith crying.”

That just made me cry harder. Fuck. I felt so weak and stupid. Stupid, stupid Delaney. Such a disappointment, such a failure, even if my father would never say those words. He loved me too much to say those words.

Dante pulled me into him and hugged me tightly, so tightly I could feel his fingers shaking a little as he gripped me. After a moment one of his hands came up and stroked through my hair, and I found myself sinking into him, burying my face into his shoulder.

I felt so embarrassed, humiliated, to be crying just from a few firm questions. But my terror at failing, at doing things wrong, was just overwhelming. I knew that I had mis-stepped, that I was somehow in trouble.

Dante kept holding me until I stopped crying. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had done that, and that made me cry a little harder before I finally wrung myself dry.

I pulled back and Dante went to get me a glass of water. “Do you feel better?”

“A bit,” I admitted. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”

Dante handed me the water and I sipped it gratefully. “I think that you’re like me. You’ve had to hold a lot in over the years.”

“What did I do wrong?” I asked.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Dante said firmly. “But you seem to think that you do. And that worries me. Why do you do things you don’t like?”

“Because…” I fumbled for words. I didn’t understand. I just… did them. “Because I’m supposed to.”

“Why are you supposed to?”

“Because… Dante, I don’t know. They make me more likable? I’m not very likable.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “I like you.”

“You’re one of the few. All my life it’s only been me and my father.”

Dante squinted at me a little and I felt like a witness on the stand who had just said something that would help Dante win his case—some slip-up that the witness themselves hadn’t even realized yet.

“Yes,” he said slowly, like he was weighing each word before he spoke it. “Your father seems to be very important to you.”

“He’s important to you too,” I pointed out. “He’s an important man to a lot of people. I’m lucky to have him. He loves me, and he’s always supported me even though… I know that I haven’t been the daughter he deserved.”

“And who told you that you’re not good enough as his daughter?”

“Nobody’s had to tell me. I never finished college, I wasn’t good at anything—I’m not all that smart or talented—I know that people look at me and wonder why—why isn’t Alan Weston’s daughter so much more? Why isn’t she a high-powered lawyer too, or in politics, or working her way up the ranks of a business somewhere? Why isn’t she as accomplished as her father is?”

Dante looked away again for a long moment. When he spoke, he still didn’t look at me. His voice was rough and quiet.

“When I was much younger, a teenager, my father tried to make me feel ashamed for wanting out of the family. He tried to make me think that if I wanted that, it was because I wasn’t tough enough, or clever enough, to be a part of the mafia world.

“My older brothers were the ones who told me that he was wrong. I know they don’t like my choices in life. I know I didn’t make our home life easy with the arguments I had with our father. But they made sure I knew that I wasn’t less-than, in any way, for wanting a different life.”

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