Page 42 of His Stakes (His Obsession 2)

Her eyes met mine. “Ruin my meals.”

“I’m not trying to ruin anything. I just want to know why you’re not acting like yourself.”

“Maybe this is me,” she said. “The me I usually am. And the person you’ve known up until now is just some version of me that you brought out because you were such an asshole.”

I had to give it to her, she almost had me with that one. Shaking my head, I said, “No. I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t believe you’re an asshole?”

“Oh, I know I’m an asshole. But I don’t believe that this version of you is the real Veda. I think the real you is the one I’ve been dealing with these last weeks. I’ve felt the fire in your blood. This person”—I waved my hand from her head to her feet and back again—“isn’t you. This is someone who’s acting like she’s content and happy because she’s hiding something from me. And it drives me fucking insane when you hide things from me.”

“Did you ever think that maybe it’s okay if you don’t know everything?”

“No,” I told her. “Not knowing things is how you get caught with your guard down. It makes me twitchy.”

“Well, you have nothing to worry about.” She picked up her fork again. “I don’t have any nefarious plans to take you out.”

I laid my hand on her arm, and her fork clattered to her plate. “Stop lying to me.”

She stared down at her plate for a long while, and when she finally looked up at me, there were tears in her eyes. “Luca, I’m not hiding anything from you. I’m just trying to make the best out of a bad situation so I can get out of bed in the morning. I’m bored. I’m lonely. And I miss my life. The one I had before. I had friends. Not many, but one or two. I have parents, and I miss them so much I can’t stand it. Well, I miss my dad,” she corrected.

I sat back in my chair and thought about what she’d just told me. “If I let you call your father, what guarantee would I have that you wouldn’t tell him something that would have the cops banging on my door?”

“You wouldn’t,” she said. “You’d just have to trust me.”

I removed my hand from her arm, and she picked up her fork and started eating again, and I did the same. “I’ll think about it,” I told her after a moment.

She stopped chewing, her eyes flying to my face. “Thank you.”

Taking a piece of bread, I said, “Would you like to go out on my boat tomorrow with me?”

Her eyes widened. “You have a boat?”

“Of course, I do. What kind of gangster would I be if I didn’t have a way to escape by water?”

It took a second, but then a smile lit up her face. “That’s true. At least from what I’ve seen in the movies.”

“So? Do you want to go out on the lake tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That would be fun.” Then, after a minute, she asked, “Do you have water skis? Or like a tube or something?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s not that kind of a boat.”

“What kind is it?”

“You’ll see tomorrow.”

Her good mood returned as quickly as it had left, and I smiled as I watched her plow through her dinner with all of the gusto of any Italian worth their salt.

I wasn’t going to tell her that tomorrow’s excursion was for more than just spending an afternoon on the lake. I didn’t want to spoil her joy. It was a simple meeting between families, and I wasn’t expecting any problems. I wouldn’t have invited her otherwise. However, I would be sure to take the necessary precautions, just in case.

Throughout the rest of the meal, I allowed her to believe she had successfully thrown me off the scent, but I still wasn’t fooled. Something more was going on with her. And I was going to find out what it was.

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