Page 20 of Merciless Desires

“I disrespected you?” I pulled my dress over my chest, trying to hold it in place. “How did I do that?”

“By dancing with that wanna-be mobster. Letting him rub against you and sweat all over you.”

“You’re exaggerating.” Paulie and I were on the dance floor for less than three minutes. He intercepted me on my way back from the bathroom. I figured if I danced with him, Gio would come and look for me. It worked.

“Am I?”

“Last time I checked, dancing with someone was not an invitation to marry them.”

“When you act like that, it could be construed as an invitation for other things.”

“You mean like when a man restrains you against your will and does nasty things to you.” I wasn’t complaining, but I thought I should act a bit offended.

“You liked those nasty things.”

I would hit him again if I thought he’d let me get away with it a second time.

“I specifically told you not to talk to strangers.”

“We weren’t talking, and he’s not a stranger. You introduced me, and he knows my father.”

“He knows of your father. He’s never met him. He’s nowhere near your father’s league, and he doesn’t have any business being around you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are mafia royalty,” Gio said. “This isn’t your country. Some people don’t have the same respect for your father as they do in Italy. Men like Paulie don’t have any honor. That’s why he can’t join a respectable organization.”

“I don’t care about any of this. I don’t want to be involved in your business. I’ve had enough of it my whole life.”

“Then you need to pay attention.” He put his knife back in his pocket. “You are here to obey me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t care what you think.” He placed his gun back in the waistband of his pants. “You’re not on some vacation where you get to do whatever you want. You’re here because your father needs me to keep you safe and away from people like Paulie.”

“Isn’t that difficult to do in a place like this?”

“Exactly.” He took off his suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders. “Which is why you won’t be coming back here. From now on, you are confined to the penthouse.”

“I am not your prisoner.”

“I beg to differ.”

“I’ll call my father right now and tell him how you’re treating me. How do you think he’ll feel about what happened between us tonight?”

“Are you going to leave out the part where I made you come two times in ten minutes? Make sure to tell him how I drenched your pussy with my blade.”

“You’re vile.”

“That’s true.”

I thought by coming to America, I had found the freedom my father never gave me. I wanted a life with Gio, a world where I could be free to do what I wanted and go where I wanted. Gio couldn’t give me those things because he was cut from the same cloth as my father.

I had fallen in love with a lie. He wasn’t the man he portrayed himself to be when he was with me in Italy. That was a show for my father. He had been a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The problem…I prefer the wolf.

Chapter Seven

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