It was sobering to realize how unimportant you were in your only surviving parent's life.
"I don't know if I believe I will be allowed to go back."
"If your father complies, you will go back. It's not exactly good for our PR if we start murdering random girls for the sins of their fathers."
"Right. Just roughing up and kidnapping and holding them against their will then."
"The way I heard it, you hit your own head," Emilio said, smirking at the mental image Lorenzo must have put there.
"I think it says a lot about you that you find it funny that I was so terrified that I was going to be raped and murdered, I hurt myself while I tried to escape that fate."
"I guess Lorenzo was wrong," Emilio said, letting the sentence hang, waiting for me to take the bait.
And, damn it, I did. "About what?"
"You getting out of that pissy mood," he said, smiling as he brushed past me to make coffee.
"I know you think you are so—" I started, tailing off when I heard the familiar whoosh of the elevator.
My gaze immediately went there. And, damn it, there was something dangerously close to anticipation fluttering through my stomach.
And not the bad sort of anticipation either. Though, as the doors slid open, and Lorenzo stepped out—shoulders tense, jaw so tight that a muscle ticked there, eyes blazing—I realized maybe it should have been the bad sort of anticipation working its way through my body.
My pulse quickened as his gaze turned to me, that anger lapping higher and higher.
"Fuck off, Emilio," he growled, voice even lower than it usually was.
It shouldn't have sounded sexy, not when he was so pissed off, but there was no mistaking it was. It shivered across my nerve endings, making my stomach feel a little wobbly as those green eyes pinned me.
"You fucking lied to me," he growled, the sound barely able to make its way out from between his clenched teeth.
"And I'm out," Emilio said, nearly breaking his mug he set it down so fast on his way out of the kitchen, then down the elevator.
I should have been worried as the doors slid closed, taking Emilio away, leaving me alone with a livid Lorenzo.
"I haven't lied to you," I told him, arching my chin up.
"You fucking lied right to my face," he snapped, fist slamming down on the counter, making my body jolt, the coffee sloshing out of the cup and onto my hands, making me nearly drop the mug on the floor.
Carefully, I placed it on the counter instead, wiping my hands on my pants.
"What did I lie to you about?" I asked, proud of how even my voice sounded even though my lower lip felt like it was trembling.
I'd known fear in my life.
I'd known fear at the hands of men.
And the cold, slithering sensation in my stomach made my throat feel tight, made my palms feel sweaty, made the muscles in my legs start to quiver.
"You let me think you were a fucking teenager," he growled, forcing his hands out of fists, pressing his palms against the counter, making his shoulders hunch forward.
"I didn't lie to you. You assumed," I reminded him, shrugging, trying to act a lot more casual than I felt while two clashing emotions—fear and desire —fought for dominance in my system.
The fear, I understood.
The desire, not so much.
Maybe it was some cavewoman instinct rearing its misogynistic head. My genes wanted the alpha male of the pack. And, let's face it, when a powerful man like Lorenzo Costa was angry, he was about as alpha as a man could get without bashing someone over the head with a club.
"A lie of omission is still a fucking lie, Giana."
"What the hell does it matter how old I am anyway?" I snapped, my own temper flaring.
"What does it matter?" he asked, tone deceptively calm. "Because you've been walking your ass around my place, throwing around all that sass and all that sweet, and you have made me feel like a fucking creep for noticing it."
"You're a creep for noticing I'm here?"
"I was a creep for fucking liking it," he snapped, straightening, moving around the counter.
"You're not making any sense, Lorenzo," I told him shrugging, even as he moved into my space, toes practically touching mine.
"You want me to make it more fucking clear for you?"
"That would be nice," I agreed.
I wouldn't have agreed had I known what was to come.
Or, at least, that was what I tried to tell myself. Because anything else would have been insane. Ridiculous.
One second, there was a couple feet of space between us.
The next, his chest was crushed to mine, his hand raised, grabbing the side of my neck, pulling me in as his lips crashed down on mine.
He kissed like he lived.
Dominant.
Demanding.
Hard.
My initial shocked gasp turned into a ragged moan as his hand slid from my neck and up into my hair, curling, pulling, the pain and pleasure combination spreading from my scalp and lower. Much lower.