Sassy in Lingerie (Lingerie 8)

He massaged one knuckle with his other hand, his eyes trained on me. “Something in your story doesn’t make sense to me. I’m not suggesting you’re lying, but I think you left something out.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“Explain to me how my daughter fell in love with you. You kidnapped her, didn’t kill her, still wanted to kill her whole family…and then what? You took her to dinner, and she agreed? I know my daughter. She’s fierce and loyal. After everything you put her through, falling madly in love with you doesn’t make sense. So tell me.”

I held his gaze and felt my heart pound in my chest. The blood was loud in my ears. I could barely hear my own breathing because my distress blocked everything else out. The smart thing to do would be to lie, to lie to this man so I could have his daughter. I’d established enough credibility that I could probably get away with it. But it went against everything I believed in, to pretend to be something that I wasn’t. I wanted to be accepted into this family, but only if they accepted me for everything that I was. “It didn’t happen overnight. It took months for us to reach that level.”

“I know. So how did you keep my daughter around all that time?”

He knew. He fucking knew.

“After everything you did to her, how did you keep her around?” His eyes narrowed further, drilling into my gaze.

“Crow, don’t go there…”

“I already did.” His jaw clenched. “I went through this story in my mind over and over. And then I remembered you said you fell in love with her and dropped your vendetta against us. But if that was months into this relationship, what happened before that moment? How were you connected to my daughter? Under what circumstances were you still seeing each other?”

“With all due respect, if I were another man, you wouldn’t be asking such a personal—”

“Answer the fucking question.” His nostrils flared.

Shit. I was about to lose everything.

“I wish you were another man. I wish you were a respectable man from a good family so I wouldn’t have to ask these questions. I would know he treated my daughter with respect, took her to dinner, and earned her love. With you, I have no idea what the pretenses were. I have no idea if she ever would have loved you if the circumstances had been different. If she had a choice.”

He didn’t even need me to say it. He just wanted the truth out there so his actions would be justified. Maybe he planned to kill me. There was gun sitting on his hip, fully loaded.

“Answer me. I’m giving you the opportunity to correct my assumption. Now, correct it.”

I kept my mouth shut, refusing to lie even to save my relationship with Vanessa. I had too much respect for my reputation, for being recognized as a man who always told the truth. That honesty got me here in the first place.

“How did it happen? Tell me.”

I looked down at my hands for a moment, silently saying goodbye to everything I’d built with Vanessa. I’d imagined living in Florence with her, making love to her every morning before she went to her gallery in the city. I pictured adding ink to my body in her honor, getting a black ring tattooed on my left hand. I pictured myself having dinner with her family, five years down the line, and her father looked at me with kindness rather than hatred. But that beautiful vision was nothing but a dream. “I couldn’t kill her because she deserved better. But I couldn’t let her go either, not until I figured out what to do with her. So I told her I would spare her entire family…if she gave herself to me.” I lifted my gaze again, looking him in the eye like a man. “And once she stopped, I would continue my vendetta.”

Crow didn’t react at first, his eyes unblinking and his gaze exactly the same. Slowly, the color started to come into his face, his olive skin reddening from the adrenaline that circulated through his heart. It seemed to take him a moment to process what I said, to absorb it to full capacity. It was the worst thing that a father could hear, that his daughter had to save her family by fucking me.

I wasn’t sure if I would walk out of there alive. “We’re in love now—”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” His hands balled into his fists, and the vein emerged on his forehead. Throbbing and sporadic, it moved in time to his unpredictable behavior. He had so much rage but wasn’t sure what to do with it. His breathing slowly increased, and the monster behind his eyes emerged.

He slowly rose to his feet, his hands by his sides. His arms were shaking, and his jaw was clenched so tightly he was about to break off a tooth.