Page 137 of Mafia Don's Secret Twins

“Ran?” I ask.

He nods. “Eventually I came to this hut. There wasn’t anyone in it, but it was clean and dry. I think maybe this might have been an outpost, or something that someone built to spy on your father. There’s a fence, or the remains of a fence, that we crossed before we came here. That fuckin’ fence marks the edge of your father’s property,” Dino says.

When he’s trying to whisper, his voice is so low.

It’s sexy.

This is a terrible time to think of anything sexual, Marisol.

I nod. “Can you help me up?”

Dino slowly helps me to my feet.

I stretch, trying to check and see if anything is broken.

“How do you feel?”

Nodding, I look back at him. “Fine.”

“You passed out from shock,” he says quietly.

I sigh. “I figured.”

“When I say that you’re sick or in trouble, Marisol, I fuckin’ mean it,” Dino growls.

The wound is just too new. The attitude. The argument.

I turn on Dino with the full force of the anger that’s been sitting in my chest for far too long now.

“You don’t know me better than I know myself.”

He freezes.

There’s no stopping me now, though. I’m a fighter. I’m not someone who freezes under stress. I’m someone who can stab a dead body to make sure it’s dead. I’m someone who can give birth to twins.

And I’m not going to take this anymore.

“I’m so tired of the men in my life seeing me as fragile. Delicate. I’m not fragile or delicate, damn it!” I practically yell. “I’m a mother. I’m tough. I’m the one who has figured out how to handle my father. I’m the one who came here to protect my mother and my children. I am not delicate, and you don’t know anything about me that I don’t know about myself!”

Dino nods. “I know.”

I blink.

“One of the things I like about you, Marisol, is that you’re brave. You’re fuckin’ cute as hell and you make me want to tuck you into bed so I can fuck you senseless for weeks, but you’re brave. You’re smart. You can figure shit out faster than I can, and you’re fuckin’ good at it. You’re the best mom I’ve ever met, and I fuckin…” he pauses.

My heart is thundering in my chest.

What was he going to say next?

“I’m not tryin’ to say I know more than you. But people in shock don’t really know they’re in shock,” he says calmly. “I wasn’t tryin’ to tell you what to do, Marisol. Fuck no,” he says with a little rasp. “I was fuckin’ warning you, since it’s pretty common for people in shock to not know what’s happening for them.”

“Oh,” I say quietly.

Dino nods.

“Well. Um. Okay.”

“I respect the hell out of you, baby,” he says. “I’m proud as hell that my girl is like a fuckin’ tiger, she’s so fierce.”

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