Page 39 of Wicked Sinner
“All quiet still?”
He nods in return. “Everything’s fine here. You said you had a tail?”
“Seemed like it. They dropped off after a while.”
“No clue who it might have been?”
I shake my head. “But I’m not up on everything that’s happened recently, let alone in the last twenty years. Who knows what enemies my father might have made that could still be hanging around?” I toss my jacket and tie over the back of the sofa nearest me as I walk into the open-concept living room. “Do you know anything about Tristan O’Malley?”
“Probably less than you do.” Marco slips his gun back into the holster. “Showed up shortly after Giovanni Russo’s death. Konstantin married him off to Simone Russo, gave him the whole mess. Heiress, money, legacy. Must have had some prior ties with the Abramovs. But I don’t know more than that.” He chuckles. “I’m just the help. But I can do some digging if you like.”
“I’d appreciate it.” I run my hand through my hair. “I’m going to go check on Bridget.”
“Good luck.” Marco pauses. "Maybe you need some sleep, boss. You've been pushing pretty hard lately."
He's probably right. Between the pressure from Konstantin, the situation with Bridget, and the general stress of trying to establish myself as my father's successor, I haven't been sleeping well. It would make sense that my nerves are frayed.
“I’ll do my best.” I nod at him and head upstairs.
When I reach Bridget's floor, I pause outside her door. It's quiet—no shouting, no sounds of things being thrown. Either she's finally resigned herself to her situation, or she's planning something.
Given what I know about her, I'd bet on the latter.
I unlock the door and step inside to find her sitting by the window, staring out at the city lights. She doesn't turn when I enter, doesn't acknowledge my presence at all.
"You're very quiet tonight," I observe.
"I'm thinking," she says without looking at me.
"About what?"
"About how long it would take to fall from this height," she says matter-of-factly. "Whether I'd have time to regret it before I hit the ground."
The words hit me like a physical blow, and I'm across the room before I've even consciously decided to move. I grab her shoulders, pulling her away from the window, my heart racing with sudden terror.
"Don't," I say roughly. "Don't even joke about that."
She looks back at me, and her lips curl, but it’s not a smile. “You don’t think I was serious, do you?” She shakes her head. “I’mpregnant, Caesar. I’m not going to fling myself from a window. Do you really think I give that little of a shit about my child?”
“Ourchild,” I snap at her, my fear making it impossible to soften my words. I don’t let go of her, my fingers curling into her shoulders, and I realize that at some point she changed clothes. She’s wearing a soft black T-shirt, not unlike the one she was wearing the first night, and my momentary terror starts to dissolve into something else.
Something much more heated.
My hands slide down to her upper arms, squeezing lightly. Defiance flares in her eyes. “Mychild,” she hisses back. “You did your part, Caesar. I don’t need you anymore.”
“See?” I lean in, looking down at her. The room is dark, only the Miami lights glowing around Bridget’s face, and there’s something warm and intimate about the moment, despite her ice-cold refusal to let me in. “See why I might think you don’t care? I’m offering you everything, and you want to struggle to raise our child. You want to be left alone with your stack of bills and your crumbling house, with a child that I could?—”
Her palm strikes the side of my face, so quick that I didn’t see it coming. I was too focused on her, on her hazel eyes, dark in the dimness of the room, on the fragile lines of her face that hide so much strength. My cheek burns from the impact, and Bridget glares up at me, her nails curling against my cheekbone for a moment before she drops her hand.
“Don’t fucking insult my life,” she spits out. “Or my house, or my garage, or any other part of it. I don’t need you or your ivory tower, Caesar. I hadeverythingI needed before this, all on my own.”
She shoves my chest, hard, stumbling back as I let her go. For a moment, she stares at me, our eyes locking, and I can see that despite what I might have thought before, there’s no progress here.
She hasn’t given an inch. And I don’t know how to make her take even a single step down that path.
I’ve never been further away from making Bridget mine.
12
