“I love you too, Griffin.”
I kissed her on the mouth.
She kissed me back, her kiss warm and inviting. She gripped my arms and pulled me farther into her, trying to give me a reason to stay.
I wanted to stay with her always, but I had a duty to fulfill. Regardless of how much money I’d saved over the last decade, I couldn’t turn my back on the business—because that meant I’d have to turn my back on my boys.
I would never be that pussy-whipped.
Vanessa would have to accept my terms.
I kissed her a little longer, loving the flesh of my woman. I loved her smell, her heat. I loved the way she kissed me with love. I loved the way her fingernails dug into me. She would do anything to get me to come back upstairs and forget about the mission altogether. I indulged myself a little longer, knowing I would miss her the most when I lay in the dark without her beside me.
I abruptly ended the kiss and walked away, turning my back on her so I wouldn’t have to see the devastation in her eyes. I loved her affection and her desperation, but I didn’t enjoy looking at the suffering in her gaze right before I drove off. I knew she was worried about me, worried that the only man she’d ever loved wouldn’t come back to her.
But I would come back to her—no matter what.
Ten
Vanessa
The first night was the hardest.
I was sleeping in his bed, his smell still soaked into the sheets, but his hardness was nowhere in sight. The bed was too big without him, and I found myself reaching for him in the middle of the night in the hope he was there…somewhere.
He left a loaded pistol in the nightstand if I needed it, but he assured me I wouldn’t since he’d changed all the security measures around the building. I was sleeping in a fortress rigged with cameras and alarms.
There was no safer place for me.
He told me not to call him while he was gone. We never spoke when he was on his missions, either because he didn’t want to be compromised, or because he didn’t want anything to be traced back to me.
So I would spend an entire week without seeing him or talking to him.
That felt like a lifetime.
I’d turned into the kind of woman I didn’t want to be…so sickly dependent on my lover that I didn’t know what to do without him. I missed him constantly, and being inside his home just reminded me he wasn’t there.
It was pathetic.
I’d always wanted to fall deeply in love like this…but I didn’t want to be weakened by it.
But I was so weak.
I made a pot of coffee and sat down to enjoy it when my phone rang.
It was my father.
Alarms went off in my head, and a jolt of terror exploded in my heart. I was sitting inside Bones’s place after sleeping all night in his bed. Now I’d have to speak to my father while I was doing the one thing he would despise.
I almost didn’t answer. “Hey, how’s it going?” I tried to be upbeat and cheery despite the sadness in my heart.
“I’m good. What about you, tesoro?”
I looked around Bones’s dining room, the walls covered with artwork instead of pictures. He didn’t have pictures of family or friends anywhere—because he didn’t have any. I was standing in the enemy’s castle, absorbed in his surroundings. “I’m great. I’m excited for Conway to get hitched. He needs to grow up.” Teasing my brother was the best way to seem normal.
My dad didn’t chuckle. “Your mother and I are in Milan today.”
Shit.
“I’m meeting a client for a few hours, and afterward, we were hoping we could get together for dinner. Are you free?”
I loved seeing my parents every chance I got, and since they didn’t want to do anything until that evening, I had time to return to my place and pretend I was still living there. “Yeah, that sounds like fun.”
“Great. We’ll pick you up at six.”
“I’ll see you then.”
“Bye, tesoro.”
I headed back to my place and set up my easel so it made it seem like I was actually living there. I put a few bottles of wine in to chill along with some snacks so my fridge wouldn’t look completely empty. If my parents thought I didn’t have what I needed, they would throw money at me so fast.
I didn’t want their money.
They arrived at six right on the dot. My mom walked inside first, wearing tight jeans and a nice sweater. She beamed when she looked at me, like she hadn’t seen me in months instead of just a week. We were the same height even though she was twice my age, so it made it seem like she was my friend rather than my mother. “Hey, sweetheart. I love it when I see you this often. I wish it were like this all the time.”