A Hunger for the Forbidden(15)

But he didn’t speak of it. So neither did she.

“Tell me about you,” he said.

“Alessia Battaglia, Pisces, oldest daughter of Antonioni. My father is a politician who does under-the-table dealings with organized-crime families. It’s the thing that keeps him in power. But it doesn’t make him rich. It’s why he needs the Correttis.” She returned his style of disclosure neatly, tartly.

“The Correttis are no longer in the organized-crime business. In that regard, my cousins, my brothers and I have done well, no matter our personal feelings for each other.”

“You might not be criminals but you are rich. That’s why you’re so attractive. In my father’s estimation at least.”

“Attractive enough to trade us his daughter.”

She nodded. She looked tired suddenly. Defeated. He didn’t like that. He would rather have her spitting venom at him.

“You could walk away, Alessia,” he said. “Even now you could. I cannot keep you here. Your father cannot hold you. You’re twenty-seven. You have the freedom to do whatever you like. Hell, you could do it on my dime since I’ll be supporting my child regardless of what you do.”

He didn’t know why he was saying it, why he was giving her the out. But part of him wished she would take it. Wished she would leave him alone, take her beauty, the temptation, the ache that seemed to lodge in his chest whenever she was around, with her. The danger she presented to the walls of protection he’d built around his life.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t move. She was frozen to the spot, her lips parted slightly, her breath shallow, fast.

“Alessia, you have the freedom to walk out that door if you want. Right now.”

He took a step toward her, compelled, driven by something he didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand. The beast in him was roaring now and he wanted it to shut up. Wanted his control back.

He’d had a handle on it again. Had moved forward from the events of his past. Until Alessia had come back into his life, and at the moment all he wanted was for her to be gone, and for his life to go back to the way it had been.

He cupped her chin, tilted her face up so that her eyes met his. “I am not holding you here. I am not your father and I am not your jailer.”

Dark eyes met his, the steel in them shocking. “No, you aren’t. But you are the father of my baby. Our baby. I’m not going to walk away, Matteo. If you want an out, you’ll have to take it yourself. Don’t think that I will. I’m strong enough to face this. To try to make this work.”

“It would be better if you would.”

“Do you really think that?”

“You think I will be a hands-on father? That I will somehow … be an influence in our child’s life?” The very thought made him sick. What could he offer a child but a legacy of violence and abuse? But he couldn’t walk away, either. Couldn’t leave Alessia on her own. But he feared his touch would only poison a child. His baby would be born innocent, unspoiled by the world, and Matteo was supposed to hold him? With his hands? Hands that were stained with blood.

“You think you won’t be?”

“How can you give what you never had?”

“I hardly remember my mother, Matteo, but I did a good job with my brothers and sisters.”

“Perhaps I find that an absence of a good parent is not the same as having bad ones. What lessons shall I teach our child, cara? The kind my father taught me? How to find a man who owes you money? How to break his kneecaps with efficiency when he doesn’t pay up? I think not.”

He had thought she would look shocked by that, but she hardly flinched, her eyes never wavering from his. “Again you underestimate me, Matteo. You forget the family I come from.”

“You are so soft,” he said, speaking his mind, speaking his heart. “Breakable. Like a flower. You and I are not the same.”

She nodded slowly. “It’s easy to crush a flower. But if it’s the right kind of flower, it comes back, every year, after every winter. No matter how many times you destroy the surface, it keeps on living underneath.”

Her words sent a shot of pain straight to his chest, her quiet strength twisting something deep inside of him. “Don’t pretend you were forced into this,” he said softly. “You were given your choice.”

“And you were given yours.”

He nodded once and turned away from her, walked out of the room ignoring the pounding in his blood, ignoring the tightness in his chest. Trying to banish the image of his hand closing around a blossom and crushing the petals, leaving it completely destroyed.