Page 113 of Violent Attraction

No way in fucking hell do I want to deal with a pissed off Emilio. The fucker is a moron on his best day but who knows how miserable he could make our lives.

Isabella nods, accepting my answer, still not looking up from her bowl.

“Why did you do it at the wedding?”

Why in-fucking-deed.

Out of all the places that we could have shot Emilio we chose the most impractical place. If our plan hadn’t gone how we wanted it to, a lot of people could have gotten hurt. Isabella was already too close for my own comfort with how I did it, I can’t imagine if something had gone wrong.

“It was a power move. Show whoever was in that room what could happen if you cross us. What it could really be like when you get involved with our cartel.”

It’s a shitty reason nonetheless.

“You couldn’t do it any other way?” She finally looks up at me. There is a tinge of anger in her expression.

“We could have, but we were running out of time. It had to be done and I’m sorry I did it that way.”

I should tell her that it was Leo’s idea to do it at the wedding. If it was me, I would have done it last night, but Leo wanted theatrics.

I scoot closer to her, place the soup bowl on the nightstand and take her hand in mine.

“I’m sorry, Bella. I really am. But I did what I had to do to get you out of that situation. No way in hell was I going to let the wedding progress further than it did and have you legally tied to that fucker.”

I have no idea what I would have done had I waited until after she married him to execute the plan. Seeing her marry another man right in front of me is not something I want to experience ever again.

Isabella looks at me, not saying a single word. For a second, I think that she’s going to dump the soup over my head.

Finally, she speaks.

“I hate it when you call me Bella.”

I smile a little. Definitely not what I expected her to say.

“Noted.” I give her a curt nod to drive the point.

She takes her bottom lip between her teeth and looks down at our joined hands.

“What are you thinking?” I ask when she’s silent for a few minutes.

“You’ve hurt me a lot. You hurt me when you threw me to the side when I was sixteen. You hurt me when I gave you a big part of myself and walked away when I was eighteen. Then you hurt me again last year when you said that you wouldn’t fight to get me out of the arrangement. I know the last one doesn’t really count because you were trying to do things yourself, but it still hurt. It hurts that you kept something so big from me and I had to basically force it out of you. There’s been a lot of hurt throughout the years and I don’t know how much more I can handle. I don’t know if I could handle all the back and forth that has taken place throughout the last year.”

If she ends what is happening between us once and for all, I will accept it.

Because she’s right.

I did hurt her.

I hurt her because I was trying to mold our situation into my own agenda. Before our relationship started, I was trying to have Isabella when it was convenient for me. And when it wasn’t, I walked away because I thought that was what she needed. I did the same thing last year when all this fucked up shit with Emilio started.

“A simple act of conversation would have saved me a lot of heartache. You could have told me to wait for you and I would have. I would have waited for you as long as you needed me to, even if I had to go through with the wedding, I would have done it. Because that’s how much I loved you, how much I believed in us.”

Believed.

Loved.

All past tense.

Does she not feel those things anymore?

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