Then what the fuck are you going to do?
Give up the bakery and run back to California? Hope I could find a job before I ran out of money?
Angelo was right. I hadn’t valued my family heritage. My dad was a piece of shit. My mom spent so much time praying my father would change that her religious devotion became an obsession. She tried to do right by me, I guess, but when she caught me with a boy from my new school, she freaked out. She tried to force me to attend daily mass and spent hours praying for me to turn back to God. I got the fuck away from her, her cousin, and the shit town in Indiana where she’d dragged me. We talk about once a year, and that’s all the contact I can handle.
Angelo thought I was so fucking self-righteous. Maybe I was, but distancing myself from my childhood had been the only way I could survive. That meant I got used to being really fucking judgmental. Now that was going to bite me in the ass. I could either turn to crime, whoring, or hold my head up and lose the only asset I had and the one thing that still connected me to my grandparents, the only family I’d had whose love I never questioned. They’d asked me to come back home after college, but I couldn’t face the memories, so I’d said no. A few years later, I lost them both within six months of each other. I’d had no reason to even consider returning until now.
So yeah, I hadn’t been big on family, but I had a reason to refuse to rely on anyone but myself. I loved my grandparents, but they put up with my father, coddled him, and never made him face the consequences of his actions. From the time I left Boston with my mother until I’d stepped back into the bakery, I’d tried to forget my family connections and everything that came before I went to college. Once I was here again, I was reminded of the best parts of my childhood. They’d all happened in the bakery kitchen or at the same rickety tables that still sat in the dining area atop the battered checkerboard linoleum.
I wanted to breathe new life into this place more than I’d wanted anything since I’d been an idealistic newly minted lawyer. I’d worked damn hard then, and I would work hard now. Angelo wasn’t going to take my dream from me.
But you could let him take something you always wanted to give him.
No. I’d wanted a hot fuck with a bad boy. This would be… something else. I will own you.
I should just walk away. I’d let go of everything else already: severed all ties with my mother, ignored every attempt people from my past made to reconnect, acted like my father never existed. I’d started my life over when I moved to California. The only time I’d used my pickpocketing skills since I was a kid was to get the money for my plane ticket out there. I could walk away, and the memories would remain. I didn’t have to own the bakery to hold on to that. And yet, while I’d never been one to put much stock in gut feelings or messages from the beyond, I was certain my grandparents were telling me I needed to hold on to this part of my heritage. For whatever reason, this was exactly where I belonged. I just hoped like hell they wouldn’t be looking down on me when I did what I had to in order to keep it.
I racked my brain to think of a better option than giving into Angelo. What would working for the Marchesis entail, and how long would they expect me to do it to consider the debt paid off? Was there any way I could get enough money to satisfy them for a while? I needed advice, but I’d become so good at keeping people at arm’s length there wasn’t anyone I could talk to about the predicament I was in. How would I explain it even if I had a confidant? Would I actually tell a friend I owed the local mafia half a million dollars? That didn’t even sound real.
I was trapped. Either the bakery would never be mine, or my fresh start would be tainted by me working for the fucking Marchesis.
Could I give myself to Angelo instead? Three months. That was all. Three months for five hundred thousand dollars. Three months and this bakery would be mine. The way it should’ve been all along. The way my grandfather would’ve wanted it.
I’ve never been a romantic, never thought of sex as something sacred. Once I got out on my own, I’d slept with a lot of men. It had mostly been for the physical release and the fulfillment of needs. I took baking way more fucking seriously than I did fucking. Sex was something casual I did for pleasure. But Angelo wouldn’t be concerned about my pleasure, would he? This was all about revenge for him. How far would he go with me?