Page 17 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
The dinners become more frequent after that night, almost daily. We have lunches on the veranda with Giulia, and it becomes quite clear to me that we’re not in Ashbury, Oregon anymore. Where it is that we are, I’m not certain. The landscape beyond the walls of the compound—or whatever this church hideout thing is called to these mafia snakes—looks familiar enough to be the Pacific Northwest. But then, what do I know about flora and fauna?
“I still can’t believe you didn’t give me a heads-up,” I murmur to Grey, wearing a sundress and a floppy hat that I hate. I don’t feel like myself, more like a piece of clay that Giulia’s been sculpting with her long witch-like fingers. She controls everything that I do, drags me around like a pet. She even keeps a diamond encrusted leash that she attaches to my wrist when she takes me around the compound.
It’s humiliating.
“I didn’t have many good options, Gidge,” Grey tells me, sipping an iced coffee, his new wristwatch gleaming in the sunlight. He looks every bit the mafia brat now. Looking at him the way he is, it’s hard for me to imagine that I actually felt sorry for him once upon a time. He fits in here in a way that’s disturbing. His gray eyes glance my way, and he smiles. It comes across as genuine. And his behavior and personality in private haven’t changed, even if his looks and public persona have. He sets the coffee down and turns to look at me, waving his hand to dismiss the guards waiting at the edges of the veranda.
They disappear inside the stone walls of the church, but they don’t go far. It’s a pretense, their pretending to listen to Grey. It’s all bullshit.
“This doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” he tells me, and I cock a brow. “What? It doesn’t.” His smile gets a little bigger and he reaches out to take my hand. I let him, because we are playing a chess game after all. We can’t very well be engaged and not show any sort of affection toward one another. “This is a chance to start over.”
I stare at him.
“Start over?” I query, lifting a brow and withdrawing my hand from his, like we’re having a lover’s quarrel or something. I down my mimosa and pour myself another before one of the servants runs up and starts doing it for me. I hate that. It just isn’t in my blood. I can take care of myself. “Explain, please.”
Grey has a habit of stating something like it’s fact, and then getting tangled up in whimsy. He stares up at the clouds a lot, lost in thought. Sometimes, when the light hits him just right, and I glance his way, I can see an internal struggle playing about on his features, like he’s at war inside his own brain, his own heart.
I snatch a macaron and stick it in my mouth whole, even as Grey cringes slightly. He’s urbane and polished, and I’m craggy and wild. We’re basically exact opposites in our mannerisms. On the inside, we’re the same person, just two birds trapped in a cage. I take another cookie and lean back in my seat. During that first dinner, I sampled everything carefully, prepared for poison. But then it occurred to me that the mafia could just put a goddamn bullet in my brain at any moment, so why bother?
Then again, they do enjoy a good performance.
“We’ll get married,” Grey says, like it’s a fact. Because, in spite of my own feelings, I know that it is. There is no getting out of this. If I don’t marry Grey, I’m signing my own death warrant. “And eventually, they’ll learn to trust us. Eventually, Gidge, this can all be ours.” He gestures with a hand in the direction of the rolling hills and the pine trees that trail down toward the ocean.
He doesn’t just mean this church-house-whatever-it-is, or the land surrounding it, or even the jewelry and the money and the clothes and the servants. He means the Grey Wolfe Mafia empire. Their crime rings, their drug and human trafficking, their weapons smuggling, their political machinations.
“Your family ordered my pregnant sister killed—even when they knew she was carrying their own flesh and blood.” I just stare at Grey because I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. “They raped my sister Posey and left her for dead beside our swimming pool.”
Grey cringes and sits back, ruffling up his perfect, burnished-gold hair.
“We could change things,” he says, looking at me with a sort of silent pleading in his gaze. If I fuck up, he’s done for. We’re both done for. His survival hinges on me and my behavior just as much as mine does on his. “Once my father hands over the reins, it’s our horse to run.” I just keep staring at him. “Goddamn it, Gidget.” He curses in Italian then French then something that sounds Eastern European. Grey scoots his chair toward me and takes my hands in his. “Please. What else do you plan on doing? Waiting for them to trust us enough to escape? And then what? We’ll be on the run from both of our families. As of right now, we’re only trying to escape the claws of one.”
