Page 26 of The Deal

I gulp air into my lungs as his hand falls away from my face, and he steps back. He bends down, scooping my topoff the floor and thrusts it into my chest. “Stop embarrassing yourself and get dressed; we’re not alone.”

How can he go from panty-melting sexy in one second to an obnoxious pig the next?

“Carmella,” he calls out as I angrily shove my arms into the sleeves of my blouse and hastily redo the buttons.

A minute later, a short, middle-aged woman enters the foyer. Her long black hair, which is greying at the sides, is pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She’s wearing a simple, knee-length, loose-fitting shift dress paired with rounded-toe, black leather, boxed heeled pumps. The white apron tied around her waist tells me she must be his housekeeper.

She’s obviously not his mother since he so callously told me she had died.

“Mr Mancini,” she says with a nod before focusing her attention on me. “I see our guest has arrived.”

Guest?Prisoner would be a better choice of words.

“Carmella, this is Chloe.” She gives me a sweet smile that instantly has my scowl dropping away. “Can you show her to her room? Ensure you lock the door behind you when you leave.”

With that, he abruptly turns on his heels and stalks up the stairs, and I swear, if my eyeballs were daggers, he’d drop right where he stands.

Chapter 9

Alexander

As soon as I step inside my bedroom, I slam the door shut, locking it behind me and running a hand through my hair in frustration.

What in the hell have I gotten myself into?

I’m unsure what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. Logically, I threatened to kill her father—which I never would’ve done, just quietly—and forced her from her home at gunpoint, so I can’t exactly expect her to be jumping for joy. She will, however, have a better life living here with me. She’ll want for nothing.

I tilt my head towards the ceiling and groan. Have I lost my damn mind? I’m acting like this is a permanent arrangement … which it’s not.

She can return to her father once this, whatever the hell it is, runs its course. I’m sure we’ll tire of each other soon enough, that is, if we don’t kill each other in the interim.

Speaking of killing, I pull out the gun I shoved down the back of my trousers, dropping it to the floor and kicking it under the bed so I no longer have to look at it. It was never loaded, but they weren’t to know that.

I swore many years ago that I would never pick upanother weapon, so the fact that I was willing to do that today says a lot.

My men may be armed at all times, but that’s something I’m not interested in.

I slide out of my suit jacket and toss it on the bed as perspiration begins to dot my forehead. Next, I reach for my tie, viciously tugging on it as I struggle to get air into my lungs.

Images of the day I became amademan—at the tender age of fourteen—begin to flash through my mind as bile rises to the back of my throat.

All these years later, it still haunts me. It was the moment—much to my father’s dismay and deep disappointment—that I knew I was not cut out for his world.

I’ve done some pretty shitty things in my thirty-four years on this earth, things I’m not proud of, but ending someone’s life for personal gain, or to defend you or your family’s honour, is where I draw the line. It’s barbaric. My father may think he is God, but he’s not. He’ll have to atone for his sins one day.

For him, I’m sure it’s easy to sit back and give the order to end someone’s life, but carrying out that killing—for me, at least—was not the case. It destroyed a part of me … a piece I know I’ll never get back.

Staring into a man’s eyes—no matter how evil the deeds he committed—and watching him beg for his life, knowing you are about to end it, despite his pleas for salvation, has the potential to be soul-destroying.

The fact that my father didn’t hesitate to place such a heavy burden on his young son’s shoulders shows precisely the type of man he is. My mother would’ve turned over in her grave if she’d known the fate that awaited her two precious boys after she passed. Not that my brother seems to be affected by the lifestyle as much as I am.

As I stalk towards the bathroom, my fingers clumsily try to pry open the top button on my dress shirt. I quickly lose my patience as the walls seem to close in further.

Grasping the lapel and tearing it open, I hear the first few buttons ting against the adjoining wall as they go flying across the room. It reminds me of the other night when Chloe and I first met. But even images of her can’t seem to calm that inferno that is currently bubbling up inside me.

I reach the sink and turn the tap on full blast, bending over to splash cold water on my face. It may be enough to cool my heated skin, but it does nothing to quell those dreadful images in my mind.

It’s been years since I was affected like this by the memories of that incident, but I gather today’s events triggered it.

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