Page 92 of The Deal

“I know that now, Alessandro,” Angelina replies. “But at the time, I didn’t.”

“How did you end up being the collateral?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“I begged and pleaded for him to take me instead. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my little girl safe.”

“So dad was in on this?” Chloe asks. “He knew where you were all along?”

Angelina nods as tears fill her eyes.

Chloe shoves me hard with the heel of her foot, catching my shoulder from my crouched position. The forcethrows me off-balance, and I stumble backwards, landing flat on my backside. She rises from the sofa with purpose, wincing in pain as she limps across the room.

“Where are you going?” I demand, springing to my feet.

“To call my father,” she replies, her voice steady, but I can hear the defiance in it.

I stand in our bedroom doorway, lurking like a voyeur as Chloe ends her call with her father and curls herself into a ball. She’s a sobbing mess.

He confirmed everything her mother had told her, and I’m guessing it hit her like a ton of bricks. I’m desperate to approach her and wrap her in my arms—I can almost feel her isolation … the sting of betrayal—but I know I’m probably the last person she’d want comfort from right now.

I put Angelina in one of the spare rooms and told her to get some rest. The poor woman has been to hell and back over the past few days.

She got her story out—well, the CliffsNotes version, anyway. Now, she needs to give her daughter some time to digest it.

I don’t move, despite every fibre of my being screaming at me to climb onto that bed, pull her into my arms, and shield her from whatever pain she’s carrying. I’m partly to blame for this, and it eats at me, knowing I’ve irrevocably contributed to her suffering, to the heavy sadness she’s shouldering now.

I stupidly thought that bringing her mother home would fix something … that it might offer some relief. But instead, she’s left feeling like everyone who ever mattered to her has betrayed her—including me.

When a racking sob tears from the back of her throat, Ican no longer hold back. I cross the room in long, purposeful strides, my heart pounding as I approach the bed.

“Amore mio,” I murmur softly, my voice barely a whisper, as I tentatively climb onto the mattress beside her.

“You lay one finger on me, and I’ll gut you like a fish,” she growls.

Despite this horrific situation, I roll my lips to mask my smile. Her fire is something I’ve always loved. “I highly doubt that,bella.I saw how squeamish you were when I was teaching Giovanni how to clean the fish we caught. You didn’t even have the stomach to bait the live worm.”

“That’s your first mistake, Mancini. Don’t underestimate a woman scorned.”

I deserve her anger for keeping all of this from her, but her defiance—her sass—tells me we haven’t completely broken her. And for that, I’m thankful.

“I’m sorry I kept this from you.”

She rolls over onto her side, facing me. Her tear-stained cheeks tear me up inside. “I’m not one to speak ill of the dead, but you are no better than your father. You are a despicable human being … just like he was.”

Was.

I’m still struggling to comprehend he’s no longer with us. With everything else going on, it hasn’t really hit me yet, but I don’t doubt that moment will come.

“I’m nothing like him.”

“Really? You came to my house to collect on a debt your father had already settled. Wasn’t one Carmichael woman enough for your family?”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I didn’t come to your house that day to take you. I wasn’t there for that. I was getting a feel for the situation. Did I go there because I wanted you? Yes, I did. But I had no concrete plan of how Iwould make that happen. I never expected to run into your father while I was there.”

“So, when you saw him, you thought,bingo, I’ll just steal her away like my father did her mother? Do you not understand how barbaric that is? This is the twenty-first century, not the Palaeolithic era, where a caveman would drag a woman back to his lair by her hair.”

“I’m pretty sure caveman dragging women around by their hair is more myth than fact,” I reply, with a hint of amusement in my voice. We may be partaking in a ridiculous conversation, but she’s at least talking to me, so that’s a start. “And in my case, there was no hair pulling.”

“You pulled me by the arm, you brute, same thing,” she snaps, glaring at me.

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