Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 115400 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115400 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Her stab stings, but sensing she’s not done yet, I don’t respond.
“I looked for you in your office, and when you weren’t there,” she continues, pausing to meet my stare, but the darkness in her gaze puts me on edge. “I went looking in your little room of horrors.”
“And?” I prompt, arching a brow.
“And you make me sick,” she says. “I saw the pictures and the police report from the Donatelli massacre, and though your name wasn’t anywhere on it, that brutality . . . it was you.”
I nod, not willing to sugarcoat it. “It was.”
Her bottom lip trembles, but she lifts her chin and goes on. “And the people you have locked up on those security screens. The man hanging from chains and the woman with her nails pulled.” Chiara pauses and again I don’t respond, giving her a moment to figure out what she wants to say. “You’re really not the man I thought you were.”
Meeting her broken stare, I take a step toward her, grateful when she doesn’t flinch or try to move away. “Do you fear me, Chiara?”
She nods, not hesitating for even a moment. “Yes.”
Her honesty wounds me, but when she first arrived here, honesty is what I demanded, and I can’t fault her for giving me exactly what I asked for. “And do you still wish to love me?” I ask, remembering her words in that maze as clearly as though they were tattooed across my chest.
She visibly swallows as tears roll down her cheeks, and I want nothing more than to close the gap between us and pull her into my arms, giving every last reason for why I’ve done all the terrible things she accuses me of. Her hand shakes against the door, and I see the exact moment the last of her resolve breaks and the pain radiates from her beautiful eyes. “How could I possibly love someone like you?”
And with that, Chiara slips out the door and walks away, leaving me a fucking mess.
24
CHIARA
I’m a fucking mess.
It’s been two days since I saw what Killian kept in his little room of horrors, and since then, I’ve done everything within my power to avoid him like the plague, but when you live within the same home and your bedroom doors are only feet apart, avoiding someone is a lot harder than it sounds.
I miss him. That’s insane, right?
I miss his touch. His warmth. His stupid delicious rich accent.
I want his arms around me, his lips on my body, and those deadly eyes locked on mine. But most of all, I just want him. I want things to be the way they were before I discovered his little room of horrors.
God, I hate this.
Don’t get me wrong, I see him more than I care for at the moment. His presence within this home is impossible to ignore. He’s everywhere. Every room I walk into, he’s right there taking care of business. I feel his deadly gaze on me like lasers in the night, and while I hear his voice, it’s never directed at me.
He’s trying to give me space. At least that’s what I assume. A man like Killian DeLorenzo isn’t the kind of man who would usually care about giving a woman the space she needs to process, but for some reason, he’s always given me exactly what I needed in his own demanding way.
There’s no doubt he cares for me, and I’m sure the words I spoke to him in his bedroom the other night have penetrated his soul in the worst ways, but I had to be honest with him. How could I not? What I saw in those pictures, on those screens . . . I haven’t been the same since.
How could I ever love someone who’s capable of such brutality? I can only imagine how he tore the woman to pieces in that interrogation room while searching for Monica’s name. I don’t even know who the woman is or which of the DeLorenzo men she’s married to, and yet I feel a responsibility to her. Whatever she went through in that room is on me because I refused to give Killian Monica’s name when I had the chance.
Is this what my life is going to be like? Am I damned to become that cruel and unforgiving? Will there be a point where my soul is so damaged that shit like this will simply roll off my back like water off a duck’s feathers? I don’t want that life. I just want him without all the bullshit that comes along with it. Why does that have to be so hard to ask for?
I was doomed from the moment I met him.
He told me he wasn’t my hero. I should have believed him.
Making my way through this ridiculously ginormous house, I turn into the kitchen to find Krista hidden behind a mountain of boxes with a pair of kitchen scissors in her hands. She happily tears the boxes open like a kid on Christmas morning, and I can’t help the smirk that pulls at my lips.