Page 55 of The Players

“Forty. Give me more lip and the number will only go up.”

Dammit. Knowing she didn’t stand a chance, she pushed up. At five, she was already panting.

“Sy never makes me do this,” she complained.

“He wouldn’t,” Vince admitted. “He considers himself the wall between you and everything that’s bad. In an ideal world, he’d be right. There would be no reason for you to learn to defend yourself, push your limits to strengthen your body.”

Six. Seven. Her muscles were burning.

“Funny how, in the beginning, I believed him to be the big, bad wolf.” They both knew he wasn’t. Sy might be a little rough around the edges, but he was not evil. “So, you and Sy. How did you two meet?”

He looked hesitant for a second. “Let’s say he saved my ass when I was at a bad place. We quickly found out that we shared the same life and interests.”

“Like sharing women?” she asked, curious.

“That too,” he admitted. “But I was more referring to our backgrounds. We come from different worlds, yet exactly the same. We both lost our parents at a young age and had to make it on our own. We were both lucky enough to have an older brother carrying the brunt of the heavy burden.”

She frowned. “I don’t recall Sy telling me that his mother died.”

His mouth tightened. “Some parents are dead, even when they are alive.”

She felt there was more to that story, but Sy should be the one telling it, so she let it go. “You both seem to be doing well now.”

He held her stare for the longest moment. “Everything we have today, we built ourselves. When our parents died, Gio and I were left alone in the world, to fend for ourselves or be broken apart. Luca and Jackson were so young, they hardly understood what had happened.”

There was a raw edge to his voice. “We were raised with the idea that nothing is more important than family. A man has one job, and one job alone: to provide for his family, and protect it. Our father failed at that. When he got killed, it pulled our mother with him into the grave. I swore that day that I would never leave a child of mine behind as an orphan.”

When his gaze landed on her abdomen, she looked away. Her heart went a million miles an hour. He didn’t need to express what he was trying to say. She could see it clearly in his eyes—Vincenzo Detta longed to have a family of his own. And she feared he had chosen her to give him one. Little did he know, there was no way Fate would give her another child.

“How many more sit-ups left?” she asked, hastily changing the subject.

“Eight more.”

“Okay.”

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

“Carmen.” He grabbed one of her curls and wound it around his finger. “Everything I did, everything my family built up from the ground, nothing came without a sacrifice.”

Once again, her heart rate sped up, but this time, it wasn’t because of the exercise. “I don’t want to talk about—”

“Then don’t. Just listen. What I’m trying to say is, that morning when I didn’t show up as promised, it’s the single, biggest regret of my life. I wanted to—”

She pushed herself up and put her fingers on his lips. “Please. No more talk about the past. I can’t look back anymore. It is killing me. Every time I do, it’s like little shards of glass cut through me, bone-deep. They hit me in the stomach, opening my belly to more ache. They hit my eyes, blinding my sight, destroying my vision. They seep into my ears, and deafen me.” Her eyes pleaded for him to hear her.

“Three more to go,” he said softly.

By the time she was finished, she could feel the sweat running between her breasts and down her back. Vince got up, pulling her up with him.

She all but ran toward the shower in the master bedroom. When she passed the California king-size bed, her lips tightened. For as long as they shared a bed, she had never awoken with either of them. She knew why—it was psychological warfare. They were trying to force her to move into this room with its plush, cream carpet, wooden paneling, and beautiful French doors.

Of course she couldn’t do that. If she did, she’d be giving a message; that she was here to stay. But that would be the most dishonest thing to do. After all, they didn’t know who they had really invited into their home.

Taking a huge towel, she stepped into the glass-enclosed shower.

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