CHAPTER TWELVE: VITO
I’mnotadumb man, far from it.
But right now, there can’t be a dumber man on this fucking earth.
Because I’ve crossed the line with Winter. No, I didn’t just cross it, I obliterated it, shredding it into pieces to the point that I can’t even remember where it once was.
And I have no one to blame but myself.
I saw this coming the moment I first laid eyes on her. That day when I found Maximo hovering over her, forcing her to shrink away from him into the mattress of her new bed. She hadn’t looked at me at first, her attention focused solely on the monster pinning her to the bed. But it hadn’t mattered because I’d looked at her.
And the moment I did, I knew I was fucked.
All that beautiful, curly black hair, smooth brown skin, and luscious curves that I wanted to get lost in. I should have turned then and never looked back, told Giovanni to keep her as far away from me as possible.
Because he saw this coming too.
I may know Giovanni better than he knows himself but it goes both ways.
And it hadn’t taken the man long to notice that I was feeling things for Winter that weren’t just limited to a sense of protectiveness.
No, I’d thrown protectiveness right out of the fucking door and switch to infatuation.
Not in the same way that Maximo was infatuated with her. He wanted to play with her, break her and skip over the pieces before fucking Enzo in the pile.
Me… I wanted to tear Winter apart, but in a way that would bear everything that she had, showing me the depth of her lovely soul and writing my name right on her heart, keeping her as mine until I’m buried six feet deep.
Apparently, I hadn’t learned my lesson after I fell in love the first time and had her viciously taken away from me.
What’s worse, is that with Elena, I hadn’t known she was going to be taken from me. I knew the risks of this life we lived, knew that the reason so many women in this world were hurt was because they could be used to expose the vulnerabilities of love. Yet, I thought we were safe, thought that I could love a woman and keep her until a natural death took one of us.
I hadn’t banked on her being shot in the head over a war that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with who I was. I should have known better, but I was young and foolish.
I’m not young now, I’m thirty two going on thirty three, and I’m certainly not fucking foolish.
But I’m making the same mistake again.
Guess that just makes me insane, that’s the definition of insanity after all: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Any woman I’d want in my life would be in danger, their life always hanging in the balance. The odds of them living shifting with who we’re at war with at the moment.
But Winter is different.
I always knew that she was going to be marked for an early death.
Giovanni had told me himself multiple times.
Don’t get close to her, Vito.
You're already growing attached to her, you need to stop now.
I have plans for her, Vito, and I’m not going to change them for anyone, not even you.
I told him not to worry about it, that I understood what was going on here. I told myself the same thing every night when I would lie in bed wanting to travel across the compound to find her. Not even to touch her, but to just look, to watch, to take in everything about her. I wanted to know how she slept, was it in an uneasy feat or as easy as a newborn. Did her nose wrinkle even when she slept? What did she do with all that hair at night time? Did she let those curls fall over her pillow in wild tangles or did she pin it up in a ponytail or bun?
Those were the dangerous thoughts.
I could deal with lust, thoughts of her face whenever I fucked another woman. But those deeper thoughts, the emotional ones, were the first hint that I was a lone man on a sinking ship and no one was going to throw me a life vest.