"When we get home."
I released a quiet sob, turning my attention to stare out the window.
I was so fucking screwed.
???
The door to Matteo's office closed behind him with a quiet click. He turned to face me, a thousand emotions flitting across his normally impassive face. "You need to understand that what I'm about to tell you will change nothing."
"Teo, you're scaring me," I whispered, stepping back as far as the space would allow when he prowled toward me. He caged me between him and the desk, touching my cheek so gently I might have thought I imagined it had my eyes been closed.
"Anyone but you would be right to be afraid. Anyone but you would have to be stupid not to be, but I'll never hurt you, Angel," he whispered. "I wish I could be a better man for you, but I'm not, and I can't be."
"Why can't we just leave? Go somewhere and be someone else?"
"This is all I know. They raised me to run the family businesses, and I can't abandon that legacy. I'd always be a threat to whoever tried to take over, and we'd never be safe. Not really."
"I don't understand." I shook my head, staring up at him with glassy eyes.
He sighed, touching his forehead to mine. It felt final. It felt like he knew, no matter what he demanded, that whatever came next would cost him.
That it would cost him me.
"My family has run this city since my grandfather was in charge. Nothing happens here without our say so."
"You make it sound like you’re some kind of mob boss." I shook my head with a dark chuckle, my smile fading when his eyes caught mine. He didn't laugh. Didn't flinch. "No. That's ridiculous."
"We call it more of a syndicate, but the premise is the same," he said, voice low.
Quiet, as if waiting for me to scream.
"But mobsters deal drugs and sell weapons!" I whisper hissed. "They sell women, and you told me you didn't do that."
"I told you I didn't take part in sex trafficking. The women who work for me are willing and very well compensated—" The sound of my hand striking him across the face echoed through the otherwise silent office. I stared at him in horror, waiting for the beast to strike. But to my amazement, he only nodded. "I deserved that."
"You think?" My eyes went to the ring on my finger, staring at it as tears slid down my cheeks.
"Don't even think about it," he snarled at me, pulling my attention away from the ring that suddenly felt like a shackle to a life I didn't want.
"I don't want to be a mob wife."
"Too fucking bad. I told you, this changes nothing," he stressed, pressing into me tighter. "I do what I can to keep innocent people from getting caught up in this world, Ivory. I'm not a good man, but I'm not the worst there is. Me in charge is what's best for the city."
"You shot your own uncle!" I protested.
"He disrespected you!"
"Was it the first time you've shot someone then?" I asked with a grimace, because he and I both knew that I didn't want to know the answer to that question. I needed to bury my head in the sand and pretend the day never happened.
"No," he admitted.
"Have you killed before?" I whispered, and his face shuttered as he stared at me.
"Don't ask me questions you don't want the answer to, Angel."
"Oh God," I cried, flinching away from him. But I had nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. "You're a murderer," I whispered.
"In my life, it is kill or be killed. I have done what I need to do to survive."