Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
I placed a hand on my chest and took a steady breath. Whew, this was not pleasant at all. I didn’t like it or how it felt. Jealousy had never been an emotion I was familiar with, but I realized it was a powerful one. Sheer envy for some woman I had never met was eating at me.
“Is she married?” I blurted out when I thought about Daisy Buchanan.
For him to have paralleled their story so much that he tattooed the clock on his body, then how similar were they?
“Who?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes, still looking at the wall. “The woman you are in love with. Daisy was married.”
He chuckled. “You’re taking that too literally, and, yes, she is married now. She wasn’t at the time. If I were still in love with Wilder’s wife, he’d put a bullet between my eyes. Family or no family, he’d not think twice.”
Who was Wilder? Had she married his brother?
Unable to help myself, I turned over and looked at him. “She married your family? Is Wilder your brother?” I asked, horrified.
Sebastian appeared amused for someone whose family had married the woman he’d loved. Why I suddenly went from envying her to hating her, I had no explanation for, but honestly, she sounded like a bitch.
“No, Wilder is not my brother. He is in the family though. The Mafia in the South is also called the family. His grandfather joined the family in the ’50s. Mine, however, goes back to the beginning, over a hundred years ago.”
So, she’d married another Mafia member. Then that wasn’t the reason she’d rejected his proposal.
“How do you handle that?” I asked, finding myself worried about his feelings. “Seeing her with him. Do you even speak to him?”
Sebastian chuckled, but I didn’t understand why he was finding humor in this.
“Ace,” he said, reaching out and tucking some loose hair behind my ear, “it was years ago, and in Wilder’s defense, he loved her first. She loved him, and she never stopped. What I felt for Oakley wasn’t love. It was respect and affection, but not love. When she turned me down, I didn’t fall apart. I moved on rather quickly, not once looking back. This tattoo isn’t me mirroring Jay Gatsby. I love books, significant words that I read on paper. That clock he broke meant something different to me back then than it does now. Everyone has their own interpretation of a story. It’s not literal. I don’t have a Daisy. I never did.”
He loved books. Why did that reminder make it even harder for me to paint him in a villainous light? It shouldn’t. He had lied to me and abducted me. His reasons why didn’t matter. He’d still done it.
I turned back over to face the wall. “Good night,” I told him, wanting to get on with my plan.
The longer I had to think about it, the more I feared I would change my mind. I had to be smarter than that. Even if it was now clear to me that my feelings for Sebastian were much stronger than I’d realized.
Leave it to me to go and catch feelings for a man in the freaking Mafia.
• Twenty-Seven •
“I didn’t bring you all the way up here for a bear or wolf to get you.”
Sebastian
I’d been waiting for this, hoping I was wrong, but knowing she wasn’t one to be handled. She used her charm and savvy to get by in life, not ever coming against someone who could see right through her. The bed barely moved as she eased herself out of it slowly. It had taken her three hours to either work up the nerve to do it or she was just making sure I was in a dead sleep.
When she had been jealous of the reason behind my tattoo, there had been a moment when I thought I might be able to crack this shell she’d put around her since we’d arrived.
But she’d turned over and told me good night instead.
The barest whisper of her feet as she moved across the floor and to the stairs made me smile. If I wasn’t me—someone who had been raised to track, always be one step ahead, use the element of surprise—then she might have just pulled this off.
When she had sent me up to take a shower and insisted that she clean up the kitchen, I’d known exactly what she was up to. The fact that she didn’t leave then was interesting. She wouldn’t have gotten far—although the shower was running, I wasn’t in it; I was watching her. Standing back just far enough from the railing that the shadows hid me. When she found the key fob, I thought she’d take off, but she left them in the pocket of my coat and went back to the dishes.