Page 153 of Legacy
Then closes.
Her brown eyes soften, melting like caramel under heat.
Her shoulders loosen just slightly.
There she is.
She draws in a breath, chest rising slow and deep.
“Then how come when I got here, you treated me like some whore?”
Oh.
I wasn’t ready for that.
“I didn’t—”
“You tried to force consummation. You threatened me with my jewels. Why?”
Fuck.
The word echoes inside me as humiliation coils tight in my gut.
I don’t do this.
I’m the Don, I don’thave toexplain or apologize.
But here I am, choking on shame I can’t seem to swallow.
I drag a hand over my face, forcing the words out.
“Alright… when we were here before, when we would—”
“Fuck?” she cuts in, her voice dry, merciless.
A bitter laugh slips from my lips despite myself.
“No,” I say quietly. “It wasn’t just that. Youknowit wasn’t. There was trust. The way you let me have you... the way you let me take. The way you surrendered.”
I pause, breathing through the flood of memory, her skin, her taste, the way she looked at me like I was more than what the world saw.
“It wasn’t just that you matched me outside the bedroom—you matched me in it. You let me see you.Allof you. And I—”
My voice halts, the truth splintering through.
“I showed you all of me. Not the heir to Cosa Nostra. Just... Angelo. No masks. No polished version. Just me.”
I look at her, my voice softening to almost nothing.
“I thought… if we could get back there, it would mean something. That you’d feel it. That you’d see how sorry I was. That it would say what I didn’t know how to say.”
I swallow hard.
“But instead it came out like a threat. Like a fucking game. And it wasn’t. It wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about fucking you, Adriana. It was about trying to stitch myself back together the only way I knew how.”
She doesn’t waver. Doesn’t blink.
“Okay.”
