She couldn’t have known… No. I am not going down this rabbit hole again. She shook her head. “You were playing me.”
“I lied about my identity. I edited some of my past. That’s it.”
She couldn’t deal with that, couldn’t handle what he was saying. If it wasn’t entirely a lie—Rose shook her head again, harder this time. It didn’t matter. It didn’t fucking matter. No matter what her traitorous heart tried to interject, Dante Verducci was a monster and the enemy. She couldn’t afford to forget that. “If we’re done here?”
“Rose.” Even though she very much didn’t want to look at him, she couldn’t resist the pull in his voice. Dante waited for her to meet his gaze to continue. “The faster you figure it out, the better for everyone. You and me? We’ll never be done.”
Dante gave her space the rest of the day—after insisting that she eat something and cooking breakfast for her—but it wasn’t as if there was much space to be had in this cabin. Every time she turned around, he was there, finishing his workout in the gym, reading in the living room, showering in the bathroom. She wasn’t even certain he was doing it on purpose. The cabin just wasn’t big enough to avoid him completely.
Rose finally gave up and changed into some workout clothing and ran a few miles on the treadmill in the gym in an attempt to keep herself from climbing the walls.
She had to focus on getting free, but all she could do was go ’round and ’round again comparing Jackson and Dante. He might not have had to date her, but she shot him. Apparently that had only made her more interesting to him.
The man was unhinged.
She stopped at five miles, not wanting to overdo it. Even so, it had been weeks since she kept up a regular fitness schedule, and her legs were shaking as she stepped off the treadmill. “Damn it.” She really wouldn’t stand a chance if she somehow got free. She’d wager Dante’s stamina outdid hers, so he’d just run her into the ground if she somehow managed to get through the door.
That didn’t stop her from checking the high windows in the gym to see if they opened.
They didn’t.
She walked back to the door and braced herself. Dante might have allowed her distance for the last few hours, but it wouldn’t last. He’d brought her here for a reason, and that reason did not involve her avoiding him for days on end.
More than that, she couldn’t afford to avoid him for days on end. Not if she wanted to get home before the powder keg of a situation exploded and got someone killed.
She stepped out of the gym and inhaled sharply at the delicious scent that assaulted her. Dante stood at the kitchen island, wearing only a pair of lounge pants, and chopping vegetables. Behind him, a pot of water boiled, and he had some kind of tomato-based sauce simmering next to it. She took in the other ingredients, so familiar from how many times he’d cooked the meal for her before.
Spaghetti with rosa carbonara.
Her favorite.
“My mother taught me how to make this. Did I ever tell you that?”
She froze, her feet seeming to grow roots on the spot. Dante had never talked much about his mother. She knew the woman had raised him alone, away from the family, and that she’d died when he was a teenager, which was when his uncle took him in. But though he’d been full of stories of his asshole uncle or his chaotic cousin, he rarely shared anything about the woman who birthed him. “Oh?” Rose finally managed.
“Si.” He tossed the vegetables into a bowl of romaine lettuce and turned to lean against the counter. “She didn’t have many good days, but that was one of them. I think I was thirteen, or somewhere close to it.”
She should walk away from this conversation. Nothing good could come of it. “I couldn’t find any information about your mother. It’s as if she never existed.” She’d looked, of course. After she realized Dante played her, she’d spent far too long following the perverse need to know everything she could find about him. The paper trail only started when he was fourteen. Other than his mother being Lorenzo Verducci’s little sister, nothing else was known about his life before that point. The mystery bothered her.
“Lorenzo isn’t forgiving of those who step out of line.” He shrugged. “She got pregnant and wouldn’t name the father and wouldn’t let him marry her off to one of his men to cover it up. So, he threw her out.”
It wasn’t an uncommon story, especially among some of the other families. Even the Romanovs weren’t above reproach when it came to that sort of thing, though Papa would cut off his own hand before he cut off one of his daughters from their family. “Why did you go back?”
“She overdosed.” He said it without any inflection at all, almost as if reciting the weather. “In hindsight, I don’t think it was on purpose, but the drugs fucked her up, and she kept chasing that escape.”
Oh, Dante.
Rose’s throat threatened to close. She inhaled slowly, doing her best not to picture him at fourteen with a dead mother and nowhere to go. He didn’t have the market cornered on fucked-up childhoods, but she still couldn’t help the sympathy that flowed through her. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Not hers either.” Another shrug, though a line of tension had appeared in his shoulders. “Lorenzo will pay for his sins before too long, even if it won’t be my hand that finally ends him.”
“Dante…”
“It’s fine.” He moved to the stove. “I didn’t tell you so you’d pity me.”
She didn’t pity him. Not exactly. But Rose’s heart hurt at the thought of losing her mother so early. Mama was such a larger-than-life part of growing up, she couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to have a gaping hole in place of all those warm memories. Even when they clashed when Rose was a teenager, her mother had always been a safe space for her.
Rose cleared her throat. “So, she taught you to make this.”
“Si. I think we made four batches that day before she was satisfied.” He finally looked back at her. “Don’t argue with me about the couch tonight, amata. We’ll share a bed.”
She should say no. It was the right call to make. But Rose found herself nodding slowly. “Okay. I’ll share the bed with you.”
She hoped like hell she hadn’t just made a huge mistake.
Chapter 13
Three days later, Rose hadn’t made any progress. She didn’t know the code to the exterior door. She hadn’t found a single window to open or a phone to call home.
She had however, watched approximately twelve movies with Dante and eaten enough Italian food to put herself into a food coma. And they talked. Sometimes, it was her threatening him and him taking it as foreplay. Sometimes, he’d manage to coax little tidbits from her about her sisters. And sometimes, the times she craved more than she had a right to, he’d share tidbits about his life and history. About those years with his mother when she was alive. About some of the wild shit he’d gotten up to with his cousin Matteo when they were teenagers.
Some of the stories she’d heard before. The new context of knowing the truth of him gave her a framework that made a lot more sense why Dante and Matteo had never ended up in jail for some of the shit they’d gotten into.