The Kiss Thief

He scanned me head-to-toe. “Who are you?”

“Wolfe Keaton’s future wife,” I answered with faux obedience. “Who are you?”

“Your father. Though you seem to have forgotten that.”

“You haven’t been acting like a father. Maybe that’s why.” I folded my arms over my chest, ignoring the reddening faces of his two guards. He looked intoxicated, swaying a little, his face a shade too red for it just to be the summer weather.

He waved me off impatiently. “I’m not the one who has changed, Francesca. You’re the one going off to college and talking about getting a job.”

“Being independent is not a disease,” I gritted out. “But that’s not your issue with me. Your issue with me is that I now belong to a man who wants to ruin you, and you are no longer sure where my loyalty lies.”

The cat was out of the bag, and even though I stood behind every word, it didn’t make it any less painful. He took a step toward me, and we were nose to nose. We felt different at that moment. Equal.

“Where does your loyalty lie, mascalzone?” Rascal. He used to call me that when I was a kid. It always made me giggle because in Spanish it sounded like más calzones. More underpants.

I stared deep into his icy blue eyes, leaned forward, and whispered into his face.

“Me, Papa. My loyalty will always be with me.”

He sneered, brushing a lock of hair off my forehead gently. Imperial as ever, even drunk. “Tell me, figlia, does it not bother you that your future husband encourages you to get an education and a job? Do you not think perhaps he doesn’t want to keep you long enough to take care of you, so he makes sure you can take care of yourself?”

I opened my mouth, then clamped it shut. When I wanted to marry Angelo, I also knew that my father would always have this power over him. He couldn’t divorce me, toss me aside, or wrong me. Wolfe, however, did not answer to Arthur Rossi. He did not answer to anyone.

“That’s what I thought.” My father laughed. “Take me to see him.”

“I will not…” I started, then stopped when I heard the sound of heavy feet behind me.

“Arthur Rossi. What an unpleasant surprise,” my fiancé said from behind me. I turned around, hating the butterflies that took flight in my chest when he arrived. Hating that the first thing I saw was how much taller and more impressive he was than Papa. And absolutely despising how my thighs clenched and my panties dampened at the sight of him.

Wolfe descended the stairs in leisured steps, passing me by without acknowledging my existence as he came face to face with my father. They stared each other in the eye. I instantly knew that something else had happened. Something much bigger than the stunt my father pulled at the engagement party.

“You raided the pier,” my father hissed, getting in his face. It was the first time I saw my father lose control over his voice. It was brittle around the edges, like a wrinkly piece of paper. His face was so swollen and red, he was barely recognizable. The last few weeks had obviously been eventful between them, but it only showed on one of them. “You sent cops when you knew we’d be there. Thirteen of my men are in jail.”

Wolfe smiled, plucking the handkerchief from my father’s blazer’s pocket and using it to dispose of the gum in his mouth, tucking it back in neatly and patting the pocket. “That’s where they should be. Francesca, leave,” he ordered me, his tone steel. He was a different man from the one who visited my bedroom every night. Not even related to the man who took me to eat waffles in the middle of the night, then came back to lick me again and again until my thighs squeezed his face.

“But…” I started. My father turned around from Wolfe to snap at me.

“I sent you an obedient, well-mannered girl, and look at her now. She’s wild, talks back, and doesn’t even follow your orders. You think you can crush me? You can’t even handle my teenage daughter.”

Wolfe was still staring at him, smirking and not paying any attention to me, when I shook my head and, deflated, made my way outside to the garden. I put my gardening gloves back on, then lit a cigarette. As I crouched down, internally cursing my father and my fiancé for treating me like a dumb kid for the millionth time, I noticed something peculiar peeking from the edge of the vegetable garden. A rusty door leading to what I assumed was the mansion’s pantry. It was laced with ivy, but I could tell that it was recently used since the ivy was torn around the edges. I stood back up and sauntered toward it, yanking the handle. It opened easily. I took a step in, realizing that it did not lead to the pantry, but to the laundry room right next to the foyer. My father and Wolfe no longer had the privacy of the double-glazed balcony doors. I could hear them through the thin, wooden door of the laundry room. I wasn’t supposed to eavesdrop, but I figured they deserved it for keeping so many secrets from me in the first place. I pressed my ear against the door.