I spit in his face.
I can’t help it. I need to let out my frustrations. But I’m not sure it’ll do me any good.
With disdain, he wipes it off with his sleeve. “It seems I must teach you how to behave.”
“Fuck you,” I snap again.
He suddenly lunges at me and grabs my throat.
But I won’t back down. “You’re just pretending you know what you want, but deep down, even you don’t know why you bought me or why you want me.”
He stops and stares at me, his body rigid and muscles tense. Indecision flickers in his eyes.
“You’d be dead without me,” he says through gritted teeth.
The words shake me to my core.
Then he releases me from his hold and walks off, and I’m left quivering in place from the sheer power and restraint he exuded. Because if he hadn’t walked off, he probably would’ve ripped my clothes off right then and there.
And no matter how much I try to deny it … part of me wanted him to do it.
Marcello
Two days later
It’s been a miserable two days since my confrontation with Harper. The memory of it haunts me. My hand on her throat, the feeling of her flesh beneath my fingertips, and how badly I wanted to finish what I started—taste her, claim her, own every inch of her with every inch of me.
It’s brought up old memories, and I’m trying to piece the puzzle together. But I can’t just sit here and do nothing about it, so I decide to go pay an old friend a visit.
“This it, sir?” the driver asks as the car comes to a stop.
I peer through the window up at the giant church looming over the street. “Yes. Stay here. This won’t take long.”
I get out and walk up to the huge building. I don’t knock on the door before entering. There are no unwanted guests here. Especially not for the nun who runs the place.
I spot her before she sees me. She’s sitting on one of the benches, her hands folded in front of her, muttering some words to God.
I close the door behind me and lock it so we don’t get any unwanted guests. Then I stalk toward her, silent as I can be, as I don’t want her to run.
“Marcello?”
I pause in my tracks. How did she know it was me?
“I can hear your footsteps,” she adds.
A brief smile forms on my lips. “Is it that obvious, Andrea?”
“Only you would wear such expensive shoes that they’d click-clack all over the place.”
I snort-laugh. “Of course, only you would recognize them.”
“As if I didn’t memorize the sound from all those years ago.” She stops praying and turns her head to look at me. “Why are you suddenly here? I haven’t seen you in ages.”
It’s true. I have not been to this church, her home, for ages.
I used to believe it was because of my inability to believe in a God the way she does.
Or maybe it’s because I wasn’t ready to face my own past mistakes.
I approach her and sit down on the other end of the bench. “I know, Aunt, and I apologize for that. It’s just that … I’ve been busy.”
“Busy,” she repeats, but in a scathing way. “Of course you have.” She draws a cross on her chest like she’s trying to make the lord forgive me for my sins.
But there’s no way I could ever go to heaven after all the crimes I’ve committed, and I don’t even fucking care.
“What do you want?” she asks.
“Do you always assume the worst of me?”
She throws me a damning look. “Am I wrong?”
I snort again. She’s always seen right through me. Perhaps that’s why I chose her all those years ago.
“Now tell me why you’re here,” she says.
“I wanted to ask a question.”
“That’s all?” She raises her brow at me. “Spill.”
She still has that Dellucci fire in her.
“Remember all those years ago, when I brought a little girl to your doorstep?”
She frowns, clutching her nun dress, scrunching it up in her hands. “Of course, I raised her, she—”
“Is her name Harper?”
She licks her lips, taken aback like she’s confused. “How … how do you know? Did you check the bracelet she wore before you dropped her off?”
Fuck.
When I dropped the child I rescued from the fire at her doorstep, the only reference to her identity was a bracelet on her wrist with her first name… but I’d forgotten what it was.
The second Harper mentioned Molly and Frank’s names, all the little wires in my head started coiling up. And now I finally know why.
It’s her.
She’s the girl I rescued.
The girl searching for her parents who may not even be alive.
Fuck!
How could I not have seen this?
“Why are you asking me this?” Andrea asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
I take in a deep breath, my nostrils flaring. Then I get up from the seat and march off.