Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
My heart squeezes as I imagine the horrors the women under their control have endured and are still experiencing.
It makes me grateful my family valued my virginity more than my sex appeal.
I could have been those women if things were the other way around.
With my emotions high, words spill out spontaneously. “You left. You walked away from me. So why are you here now, acting like I fucked you and left?”
Dante’s dark brows pull together, his expression hardening. “I didn’t walk away from you. I removed my daughter from a potentially dangerous situation.”
My throat thickens as shame sinks my shoulders. “Dangerous?”
“You lose yourself when you dance,” he says softly, his tone strangely in awe. “You become a different person. All your worries disappear when you twirl around the pole, and you come out of your shell. After seeing how much it boosts your confidence, how could I deny Camille the same crutch if she came to me, desiring the same uplift?” He lifts his gaze and locks eyes with mine. “I want her to be anyone she wants to be, but can I call myself a father if I didn’t try to lead her in the right direction? I’m sure it’s the same with your father. Does he know what you do for a living?”
His question almost splits me in two, but the force of his underhanded jab doesn’t stop my reply. “He wouldn’t have cared.” I look away before steering our conversation away from the many failures of my past. “Your plan won’t work.”
“Which plan?”
“Any of them.” My voice cracks. “I can’t do attachments.”
When Gabriele moves, I move with him. Even though my contact has only been electronic for the past two years, the chance of accidentally bumping into him is much higher if I stay in the same region as him. That’s why I follow Edoardo’s bounce from providence to providence and country to country. I can’t give up meeting my son in person for the first time on anything or anyone.
I step away from Dante and the hole in my wall that is a metaphor for everything he’s doing to me. I’m done talking.
Dante doesn’t stop me. He merely watches as I walk past the construction crew and the mess of my life, which he rearranged without permission.
Unlike Dante’s apartment, mine is cold and uninviting, but since it’s all I have, I crawl onto the recently uncovered mattress, pull the blanket over me, and then bury my head into the pillow.
I have no idea how to fix this, and worse, I’m not sure I’ll ever figure out how to stop wanting things I can’t have.
Camille has appeared in my dreams as often as her father over the past two weeks. Spending time with her daily will only make matters worse. That’s why I need to keep them at arm’s length.
It shouldn’t be hard. I know how to be cruel and detached because that’s how I was raised.
All I need is to make it through the night.
I’ll sort everything else out tomorrow.
Chapter 12
Dante
Valentina’s dark locks look frazzled from wrestling a mini tornado when she answers my FaceTime request. Knowing Camille, she probably has been.
“She’s brushing her teeth.” Valentina rolls her eyes. “Again. She wants them extra shiny… like that silver pole she’s hoping you’ll install in her new bedroom.”
A groan rumbles in my chest. Camille wasn’t solely obsessed with glitter and fake diamonds in Fenicottero Rosa’s dressing room. She also noticed the pole that gives Lucia a brief escape from her life.
I wasn’t lying when I said Lucia loses herself to the pole. Negativities fall away, and the woman she could become if she were free to live her life as she wishes shines brightly.
I scratch my brow. “Or perhaps she’s excited about her new bed?”
Not the bed I see behind Valentina. Camille picked one from a catalogue for the apartment I bought and renovated in under an hour. The apartment next to Lucia’s lacks a child’s bed because it was purchased by the very men I’m trying to keep Lucia and Camille away from.
Daniele Romano couldn’t keep his paid mistress in the same building as his wife and kids, so he chose a discreet spot half a block from the brothel his wife also doesn’t know about. For a glorified pimp, he has good taste. The apartment is upscale and would sell for top dollar in the right part of Carlisle, but the furniture was bought with money from the prostitution ring.
The reminder immediately makes the high-end finishes appear cheap.
Although I could have let Camille pick any bed from the oversized rooms, I couldn’t stand the thought of her sleeping on a mattress once used by a man who saved a woman from trafficking only to enslave her in a poorly disguised BDSM arrangement.
The model Camille chose from a glossy catalogue arrives tomorrow. It shipped immediately per my agreement with the manufacturer, but the barge portion of the route means it won’t arrive until well after Camille’s bedtime.