“Yes.” He gives a somber smile. “You showed your ID to one of my bouncers. That was after Bishop had instructed them to take notes if someone matching your name and description showed up.”
No. I keep shaking my head, denying my secrets have been his for what… days? Weeks? He knew all this time and didn’t say anything?
“You’re Layla Hart,” he continues. “Sister to Cole Torian. Daughter to the infamous Luther Torian. And part of the notorious crime family that rules over Portland.”
My shoulders hunch with the verbal blows that punch like a physical assault, but this time, it’s not shock that overwhelms me. It’s shame.
I didn’t want him to find out about the sinister shadow cloaking me.
Bile sears the back of my throat, scarring, choking.
He’d known this whole time. During the lovemaking. Through the conversations and seduction.
“How could you?” The contents of my stomach surge for attention.
I stagger around the coffee table, dashing for the far hall, needing the bathroom. I shove open the closest door finding more candlelight in a room of darkness, the flames dancing from tea lights along a vanity and reflecting in the wall-to-wall mirror.
I scamper toward the faint hint of the toilet in the corner, falling to my knees beside the shower as coffee and croissants desert my body in rolling waves of dread.
I submit to the devastation. The loss of hope. The failure.
Each purge claws at me, scratching away parts of the fairy tale I never should’ve believed in but couldn’t stop myself from falling for.
How could I have been so oblivious to the truth?
I continue purging until nothing but acid escapes. That’s when I hear him entering the room, his footsteps approaching before he clatters something to the vanity beside me.
I want to scream for privacy. To yell at him to leave me to my destruction. But he moves closer, his hands finding my hair with gentle authority, pulling the errant strands away from my cheeks as more bile floods my lips.
“We’ll work this out.” He speaks with confidence.
I spit, clearing the dredge from my mouth. “Get out.”
“I’m not going anywhere, amore mio. You’re stuck with me.”
His vow makes this worse. The caring hands. The affectionate determination.
I shrink away from him and reach over my head to flush the toilet. First shame, now humiliation. Add to that the stupidity and danger. The naivety and gullibility.
I’ve created a Molotov cocktail of mistakes. All I need now is to strike a match and let the flames take hold.
I pull myself to my feet, appreciating how he keeps his distance as I approach the sink that now holds company with my toiletry bag. I close my eyes briefly, thankful for his thoughtfulness and desperately despising the sensation at the same time.
How could he do this to me? How could he keep both secrets—his and mine—when alone they’re problematic, but together they’re catastrophic?
I retrieve my toothbrush without a word, cleansing my mouth of the humiliation while his gaze taunts the back of my neck.
I rinse and spit, rinse and spit, scrubbing the enamel from my teeth as if I were dislodging my mistakes. But no matter how hard I scour, he doesn’t disappear, and neither does the romantic flickering firelight.
He remains quiet behind me until I turn to face him, broken, hollow, and defeated.
“How?” I croak. “How could you keep this from me?”
“It was no secret to either of us that we had things to hide. You wanted your privacy and I needed to keep mine until I figured out who you were.”
“But you figured it out,” I accuse. “You learned who I was days ago and never breathed a word of it. You never even acted differently.”
He stares into my eyes, hard and strong and powerful. “I never acted differently because where you come from doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t change a thing.”
I scoff.
“And I didn’t say anything,” he continues, “because I held out hope you’d tell me yourself. I wanted you to trust me.”
“Yet you knew exactly why I couldn’t. There’s a reason you never gave me your truth either. I’m only learning it now because you were forced to confess.”
“I wasn’t forced to do anything. You don’t think I could’ve convinced you your original assumption was right? That you were the target of the shooting? That the Costas were behind this?” He lowers to sit on the edge of the bathtub, his penetrating eyes all the more commanding in the candlelight. “I could’ve hidden for a lot longer. I could’ve hidden forever if I wanted. But I brought you here because I was done with the secrecy. Shooting or not, I would’ve told you who Lorenzo is before we returned to D.C.”
Pain radiates beneath my sternum.
Burning, branding pain.
“Did you do it for information?” The question sears my throat. “To get insight on my family?”
“Fuck your family,” he spits. “I said I was out, Layla. And despite knowing how much you love to question me, it’s the fucking truth.”
I want to deny him. To deny all of this.
I sink against the vanity, then slide to the floor, my ass planting on the cold tile.
“We both had our reasons to keep quiet, amore mio. There’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t mean what we have isn’t real. I fell for you long before I found out who you are.”
I swallow over the mint taste dominating my tongue, wishing I was somewhere else. Anywhere else… Yet somehow I still want to be here with him. To remain where attraction rules and affection flows.
“Well…” I lick the dryness from my lower lip, committing the sight of him to memory. “It was fun while it lasted, I guess.”
He presses his mouth closed, the tilt of his chin swift as he narrows his stare.
“My family can’t find out about this. I need you to let me walk out of here and pretend we never met.” My heart squeezes with every word, hating their necessity.
“They can and they will. And I’ll be right by your side when they do.”
I whisper a pained laugh.
He continues to believe we have a future, and my heart wants to believe it, too. If only it were possible.
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m begging you. You have no idea how my brother will treat me if he learns I’ve been sleeping with someone who worked for the Cappellettis.”
“Lorenzo and Cole aren’t enemies.” He slides from the edge of the tub to sit on the tiled floor opposite me, bolstering my naivety with statements that simply aren’t true. “As far as I know, they’ve never had anything to do with one another.”
“Doesn’t matter. Competition is competition. And stupidity is still stupidity.”
“You say that as if either one of us had any control over this.” He stretches one suit-covered leg toward me. I’m sure it’s to test how jittery I am at the proximity. “Do you think I’d be here if I had the ability to walk away?”
“We’re not star-crossed lovers, Matthew.”
“Aren’t we?” He raises a brow.
I’m not sure if he’s being derisive or insane.
I glance away, hating how he makes me feel warm through the icy chill of reality. We’re not star-crossed anything. No matter how much I crave the opposite.