Page 113 of Only for Him
That’s not all he is, and you know it.
I do know it.
He hesitates, darkness sweeping across his features.
“Murdered,” he replies, voice low. “Over a couple of loose cigarettes. I avenged him with the same piano I learned on.”
There’s a crushing sensation in my chest as I picture the scene—brutality and loss, a life snuffed out over nothing at all. I imagine Roman as a younger man, confined to those walls yet filled with such passion for the art that saved him from despair.
My heart breaks for him.
It shouldn’t, but it does. This time, I know it’s useless to try and convince myself otherwise.
My head aches. There’s a stinging pressure behind my eyes, tears I won’t let fall.
“Years went by before I touched a real piano.” His voice is hard again, the barriers reinforced.
I know that I shouldn’t ask the next question. My stomach sinks even as the words are leaving my mouth. I’ve been pushing his boundaries already, and now I’m probably going to find out what happens when I enter forbidden territory.
“Why were you in prison?”
His face hardens, tension flaring as he pulls back, an unyielding force. Suddenly, his hand lunges through the air towards me. Hegrips my neck, holding me with enough pressure that I know he could be hurting me but isn’t.
Yet.
“Some things deserve to be known,” he growls, voice laced with an unrelenting warning. “But not everything.”
I swallow hard, staring into the blue depths of his gaze. My heartbeat quickens: intense, raw, vulnerable. Maybe now he’ll throw me to the floor, punish me.
I want to press deeper. Ask again. Peel him open.
But I can feel the edge of the blade I’m balancing on.
One more step, and he’ll make sure I remember who holds the knife.
I have a choice to make: pursue the shadows, or step back and wait for the light to return, no matter how long it takes. Even if it takes forever.
But as his fingers linger at my throat, the truth settles in my blood like poison.
This man is going to ruin me.
And I’m going to let him.
29
ROMAN
Giselleand I take dinner alone.
Dakota’s holed up after this morning. Rosa’s with her, cradling her through the aftermath like she’s still a child. I don’t blame the girl. She’s seen hell, and it left its fingerprints all over her.
I want the people who did this to suffer. Slowly. Publicly.
I know my little viper does too. It’s just a matter of showing her that the way I deal with them will always be superior to the “official channels” she’s still clinging to.
She’s close. Closer than she thinks.
I note the tension in her jaw, the fury coiled in her shoulders. It won’t take much more before she snaps the leash herself.
