"Don't listen to what the Don told you. The Moretti Family can provide for you. I made a promise to my brother that I would look after you and honor his trust. So put any idea of leaving out of your head. You stay where I can see you."
I laughed.
The sound carried a bitterness I couldn't name and an irony I couldn't swallow.
I genuinely could not understand him. All he had to do was let me walk out the compound gates, and every complication unraveled on its own. He could stand at Adrian Winslow's side in the open, no more maneuvering around me, no more dread that one day I'd notice a crack in the mask.
So why put on this show of refusing to let me go?
He seemed stung by my laugh, by the tears caught in it. His expression stalled. He was about to speak when his phone cut through the silence, the ringtone sharp and out of place in the still air.
He glanced at the screen, and the hardness around his eyes dissolved at once.
He answered. Adrian Winslow's soft, sweet voice carried through.
"Darling, is the soup ready? I'm so hungry."
His tone turned gentle in a way I had never heard directed at me. "Almost done. I'll bring it to you in a minute. Be good. Just a little longer."