Page 79 of Throne of Sin

A shot is fired, my feet are frozen to the floor and my arm radiates with heat as it’s grazed by a bullet. I hiss through the burn. When I look up, both men are dead on the floor and Dante stands, coming toward me.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yells.

“Saving your fucking ass so I can kill you myself when you tell me Oakleigh is hidden in here.”

“I would never put her life in danger! You fucking know that!” he hollers back.

“Where the hell is she? You can’t leave her by herself.”

Dante’s arm slips past me and shuts the door to close us in. “She’s safe at home with a nanny I hired. I told you I had business to deal with. If I didn’t come here…”

“See, this is why I didn’t tell you right away.” My hands fly through the air. I hit him in his broad chest. Each pound hurts, but he doesn’t flinch or make any indication it hurts him.

“Did you really spray my mother with the hose?” The right side of his lips lift upwards in a crooked smirk. It adds to his dangerous handsome look he pulls off.

I snap my fingers. “Focus right now. I’m mad at you.”

“We’re still trying to run with this, huh?”

“How should I explain to your daughter that the dad she just met got himself killed while he hired a nanny and left her in the middle of the night.”

He takes a step toward me and I take a step back. “Good thing you don’t have to. You saved me.”

“And I got shot for my efforts!”

He looks at my arm. It’s red but not bleeding. The bullet grazed me, digging itself into the wall behind.

“To save me.”

I roll my eyes. “I did it for our daughter.”

“No, you did it because you love me.”

I take a step back and meet the wall. “That doesn’t matter because I can never change the fact that I didn’t tell you about Oakleigh right away.”

“Did you really write a hundred letters to her and tell her about me in each one?” he asks.

I tilt my head, confused by his question. I did write her letters, but that was so long ago, and they disappeared one day without a trace.

“Oakleigh showed me all of them tonight.”

“What?” I lost those five years ago. There’s no way it was Oakleigh…

“Babe,” he tilts my chin toward him, so he can look me in the eyes. “She also showed me all the mementos you kept of us. You never wore the bracelet after I gave it to you. I thought you pawned it. I saw the two hundred dollars cash, with your eighteenth-birthday date written on each bill. I’m ready to forgive you. I’m tired of feeling like my heart has been ripped out. I’m sick of missing you.”

What is there to say? My eyes dart to the floor and the dead bodies. A normal life would be boring as hell…

“Are you still mad at me for thinking I allowed Oakleigh to be at a strip club?” he fucking chuckles as he asks.

“Yes, I’m mad! Because I know you again, and you’re just as perfect as you were back then.” I sigh out. “I can’t stop loving you, no matter how hard I try, and every time I think about how I broke your trust; it makes me sick.”

“Because you love me,” he probes.

I hate that he makes me repeat it. It hurts every time I think about how much I love him.

“Yes! Because I love you, you stupid idiot!”

“Good, because I still fucking love you. I can’t fucking sleep knowing you’re away from me.” He crushes his lips to mine.

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