A flash of guilt crossed Dante’s face, but I think I must have imagined it because the next thing I knew, he was rushing to me in panic and he gripped my arms with both his hands and peered into my eyes. “Did he mention which family he’d promised you to?”
I shook my head. “No, just that they were ‘getting impatient.’ And that I was the only thing that would satisfy their demand.”
“Jesus, Alisa.” He stepped toward me, his hands coming up to cup my face. “I meant it when I said I won’t let anything happen to you. Now, don’t you worry about a thing, okay?”
Chapter 15 - Dante
I told her not to worry and made her some tea, because that was the right thing to do. I watched her calm down as she sipped on the chamomile, but her face still had a distant, faraway expression.
While she thought, I did too.
She hadn’t trusted me with what she’d learned until I pried, and yeah, it stung.
“Alisa,” I asked when I walked her back to her room after the night turned late. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
She shrugged and turned to me, her hand on the doorknob. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey Dante, turns out my father’s trying to pimp me out to the mob’? I could barely admit it to myself.”
Fair point. I’d been the one to break her heart four years ago. Why would she trust me with something this devastating?
“How could he do this?” she mumbled, more to herself than me, as she opened the door to her bedroom. “He’s my father.”
My jaw clenched. “Some men don’t deserve the title.”
I meant what I said. Marc should never have used her and sold her off into a world she’d never even been a part of. His actions stole her innocence. How could he even call himself a father after pulling off a stunt like that?
She whipped her head back at me, and her eyes were anguished. “You don’t understand. He’s my father. He…he raised me. There has to be something happening in his life.”
I bit back what I wanted to say: that monsters often wore the mask of normalcy and the same hands that tucked her in at night had signed her away to God knows who.
Instead, I just took a step back.
“You should get some rest,” I said. “We’ll figure this out tomorrow.”
She nodded and turned her back to me. “Goodnight, Dante.”
I watched her close the door, but didn’t move for quite some time. My mind was racing with rage, and all I could think of was how to get my hands on that bastard. Marc Montes had made a grave mistake, and I’d make him pay for this absurd situation he put Alisa in.
***
Morning came with a decision that surprised even me. I watched Alisa push eggs around her plate, lost in thought. It became clear to me, from the circles under her eyes, that she hadn’t slept well last night.
I hadn’t either. I’d stayed up and let the anger turn from a tiny little thing to a massive, roaring fire. Marc Montes was an asshole. Whatever his reason was to do what he did, he should never have bartered up his daughter for an exchange.
No decent man would do that.
All night, I thought of what Alisa must have mistook for love. Her father ran through the motions of parenting, alright, but maybe she confused it for a real bond because she never had a solid example to compare her family to. In a real family, we put each other first.
All her life, she thought of her father before she did of herself, and I needed to do something to change that. I needed to put a smile back on that face, to show her normal, or some semblance of it, and let her hope that things could be better.
I knew what I had to do for her to see that, and I blurted it out before I could even rethink my plan.
“We’re going out tonight.”
She quirked an eyebrow in my direction. “Out where?”
“For dinner,” I shrugged. “My brother’s having a scene.”
She dropped her fork at the same time she dropped her mouth. “You mean… we’re going out for dinner with your family?”
