Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 31205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
She recoiled. “N-no.”
He stared at her.
“I … uh, I can go anywhere in this house?”
“Yes,” he said.
She looked toward his office door.
“No.”
“But that’s anywhere.”
“My office is off limits. Everywhere else is yours to go and freely look at.” And with that, he opened his door and stepped inside, closing it behind him. He didn’t have time for hand-holding or any of that bullshit.
However, he was curious about what Vanessa would do, so he turned on the wall of monitors that kept track of every detail of his home. She was still outside his office.
At first, she stayed perfectly still, then he watched as she took several steps away, only to come back as if she wanted to interrupt him. He kept expecting a knock on his door.
None came, and he watched as she finally found the courage and wandered through his home. She walked and acted like she was in a horror movie, expecting the bad man to come jumping out at a moment’s notice.
There was no one in his home but the two of them. He hired cleaners to regularly come into his home, and they were heavily vetted. No one entered his home without him knowing every detail of their life first. Vanessa was no different.
She stopped at the dining room and stepped inside. Her hands kept clenching and unclenching at her sides.
She looked so nervous. There was no reason for her to be nervous.
Diago sat back and watched his cameras as his guest learned his home. She wandered downstairs for a good hour before venturing upstairs, and he couldn’t help but smile. No one had ever seen him smile before.
It wouldn’t be long before her nervousness was a thing of the past.
She had nothing to be afraid of while she was with him.
Chapter Two
Vanessa didn’t know what to do with herself. She kept looking around his home and expecting him to come out and attack her for touching his things. He never came out. She stayed downstairs, looking into every dark shadow, but he still didn’t come and stop her.
She had no doubt her father owed him money.
Isaac Norma had started to get a lot more visits, and some of the men were not exactly nice about it. Her father had even offered her to one of the men, but the man had simply laughed. His debt wouldn’t be paid off by damaged goods. That was how people saw her. It did kind of piss her off that they had dismissed her. She was more than just a damn scar, but not according to her parents and their close circle of people. She hated them.
With her anger back in place because of her memories, she grabbed the banister and started to make her way up to the bedrooms. She noticed the house was two stories high. The ground floor was the main living area, and upstairs the bedrooms. The closed doors looked even more daunting than the open downstairs.
Still, he asked if she was stupid or if she needed a man to show her the house. No, she didn’t need a man to show her anything, nor did she need a man to tell her she was stupid. No one had ever talked to her like that. She explored the upstairs. Several of the rooms were bare, even though they had en suites, which were also bare.
Only one room was filled with a bed, furniture, and looked lived in, and she imagined it was Diago’s room. There was no sign, no pictures, nothing to give anything away about the man who lived here. She knew nothing about him, other than his first name.
She didn’t know his last name, his age, who he was, or how he came to be the most feared man in the room. He wasn’t owned by the mafia. She heard people talk in whispers about him, almost as if they were afraid to put any real substance to the man who scared them.
The upstairs wasn’t quite as interesting as downstairs. Her stomach had started to growl in protest at not being fed. They had left the party before dinner. Her parents always loved to mingle, let the wine flow, loosen people up, and then feed them. Her father often said it made conversations more interesting.
She was starving, and made her way toward the kitchen. Back home, she’d not been allowed in the kitchen. Her mother had said it was no place for a Norma woman.
Maureen had taken her to the kitchen many times and shown her around. She had told her every woman needed to know how to take care of herself. Besides the tutoring, Maureen would talk to her about the art of survival if she ever found herself alone.
Again, she missed Maureen. That woman had been her one and only friend growing up.