Chapter 28
“You think you can fall in love with me?”
The minute the words left her lips, she regretted them. They felt needy and clingy and reeked of desperation. Too many years of wanting to be loved, truly loved for who she was and not as a commodity caused an unassuageable ache to rise up in her chest. Yet, she didn’t know this man sitting opposite her at all. She didn’t know anything about him other than what the rumor mills spread, what her brothers warned her of and what she herself witnessed with the violence of the morning of their first encounter.
She looked away from his curious stare and she reached for the wine bottle to refill her glass. Surprised, she glanced at him when he took the glass from her hands and set it on the table. He easily lifted her like she was nothing more than a ragdoll and settled her crosswise against his lap. Gripping her chin, he forced her to hold his gaze.
“Alcee, I envision us, over the years, having a deep and consuming love for one another. It will not be a one–sided love where you dish it all out and I simply take and take and take. It won’t happen this way. What will happen is, gradually, over time and with a lot of communication, Intimacy and friendship, we will fall deeply in love. I am as sore of it as I am of my own name.”
She twisted her lips and played with the buttons on his shirt. “How can you be so sure?”
“That’s very easy. I spent one night with you and from then on, I never wanted anyone else. Did you know my parents divorced when I was a baby. I was a mere one–year–old boy when my mother found out my father loved someone else. There was a woman frum Rome he’d met on a job he’d done for my grandfather. He kept her as a mistress. My mother found out and she is a prideful woman and filed for divorce. She then went a step further and ensured her union was dissolved by the charch. My grandmother felt terribly about how my father treated my mother, arranged for my mother to be remarried.”
“Your maternal grandmother or paternal.”
“Paternal. My father’s mother. She and my grandfather had an arranged marriage, and they loved each other deeply over the years. She’d hoped a woman as sweet and loving as the bride she picked for her son would help settle him down and turn him into less of an asshat. It didn’t work and she felt terrible my mother was saddled with the offspring of a schmuck and thus tied to him for all of our lives. My grandmother however found a very nice young man and arranged for my mother to be given a partner and me a stepfather. His name is Cicciu. He is a good man. He treats my mother like a queen and between my grandfather and my stepfather, I was blessed to know how to treat a woman right.”
“Is your father still with his Roman mistress?”
“No. He’s now on marriage number three. He falls in and out of love so fast 1 stop counting the number of step mommies he brought into my life by the time I was a teenager. The worst is when they are younger than me. His current wife is only a year older than I am. It’s revolting.”
“My parents love each other very much.” She said quietly. “My father has the capacity to love quite deeply. It simply never trickled down to me. was a mistake. They decided they were done having children after my brother. Three boys and he was happy. Mom got pregnant during the time
but before my father’s vasectomy was confirmed to be working. Don’t get me wrong. My mom loved me, and I can’t say my father didn’t love me, I was the of no value to him. Mercuria is his heir. Allio and Falco are soldiers and are set to be capos someday. I was a princess. The best I could get for him was an arrangement which made him money. When I was twelve, he told me was to he married to the future Don of the Lozano family, and I finally was going to serve the family the way the boys did: When I was sixteen I heard him telling my mother he didn’t understand why I wanted to go to university since the only thing my future husband would be interested in was my pussy” She blushed at the word, “his word not mine.”
“Hey,” he squeezed her chin softly, “he is a terrible father. You were worth more than your vagina or abilities to birth heirs. He missed an opportunity with you. You’re brilliantly gifted and the fact at twenty–one with only a college degree you were able to wipe all evidence of yourself from a security system which was built by our own IT team speaks volumes. Tyrell liked you because you possess a strong work ethic, but he also wanted you to work in his company because you’re bloody smart, Alcee. Only a fool would discount how much you bring to the table in terms of your brain power. I’m thrilled to know your father was too stupid to understand you are worth more than what is in your panties.”
“You’re thrilled?”
“Yes, because his loss is my gain. I meant what I told Antero earlier, Alcee. I want you to keep working for us. If you want to remain as a technician and doing the setups and troubleshooting and the occasional jobs with Tank, I’m happy with this. Tank and Kylen both expressed how Invaluable you are to the team and how they’d both been pushing you to accept a promotion, but you’d be hesitating. I must ask why?”
d! To the
