“She was the mother of his child. He couldn’t have just… killed her. They were family. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
His angry gaze snapped to mine and I knew I had said the wrong thing. “Family?” He spat the word, like I was his enemy for even daring say such a thing. “You don’t get to be family if you’re not loyal to your own, Colette. That’s what family is. Beth was a gold-digging whore who didn’t give a single fuck about my family. That makes her not family, whether she squeezed out his kid or not. Lot of fucking regard she had for the poor kid, too. Trying to sink all of us,” he muttered, shaking his head, but I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Fuck Beth. She knew what she signed up for. She couldn’t fucking handle it, and that’s no one’s problem but hers. Beth is in the past now and she earned her spot there, so don’t worry about it.”
That was easy for him to say. Him, the man with all the power. Dante had no idea what it felt like to have to trust anyone with his life, let alone a dangerous, volatile man like him.
Letting me know he was done talking about it, Dante shifted and pulled up the covers so he could drag them halfway across his naked body. “It’s late. We’ve both had a long day. Let’s get some sleep.”
I tried, but I wasn’t like Dante, I couldn’t shut my feelings off like I had them hooked up to a switch. I couldn’t turn off my brain or quiet my own doubts. While he drifted off to sleep, I drifted away down a long, lonely highway of paralyzing fear. It was impossible not to put myself in Beth’s place, not to envision a future where I crossed Dante, and it was my cold, lifeless body lying on the bed, waiting to be “cleaned up” and swept under the rug.
I might have been lying mere inches away from him on our king-sized bed, but I’d never felt farther away from him. After what I had experienced at Morelli mansion that night, I wasn’t sure I’d ever find my way back. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to anymore.
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