I shake my head. “I’m grateful. Before I thought you were a psychopath? Or maybe had some type of personality disorder? But now it’s making sense.”
He chuckles. “Maybe I am a psychopath with a personality disorder.”
“No, you’re not. I can tell you’re a softie deep down. You don’t take any of your own rules seriously. Even when I tried to escape—”
I feel his strong hands grip my shoulders, and then my back is pressed to the couch. I can feel his body lying over me, and I realize that I’m instinctively squeezing my eyes shut. Before I open them, I expect him to be angry with me, but there’s a smirk on his face after I look.
“Take it back,” he says.
I try to shove him off, but he only pins me down harder—just what I was hoping for.
“No.”
He leans in closer, and I close my eyes, expecting him to kiss me. I want him to kiss me.
I can sense him moving closer to my lips, but he’s taking forever to actually do it. Or maybe my sense of time is warped.
A violent knock sounds at the door. My eyes snap open to see him equally annoyed as I am.
“What is it?” he growls.
“Marco is calling a meeting.” I don’t recognize the voice on the other side of the door.
“Is it urgent?”
“It’s Marco.”
Alessandro swears under his breath and gets off of me. He runs his hands through his hair, looking down at me, looking unsure.
I feel the same way; that couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
“Hopefully, I won’t be gone long,” he says before leaving.
When the door closes, I lean back against the couch, angry. What was that? I wasn’t eventryingto flirt with him right there. I legitimately wanted him to kiss me.
I unmute the TV to distract myself. My mind going in a million different directions.
I had a plan to seduce him, hoping it would help me escape. But now? After telling me all of that? That seems borderlinepsychopathic, and I don’t know if I can go through with being that fake or not.
But I can’t deny that there is a genuine part of me that wants to get closer to him. To connect on a deeper level.
A sexual level.
And yet I still want to desperately get out of this place.
I let out a groan and fall so that I’m lying down—desperately wishing I had Bianca or someone to talk to about this.
Chapter 18
Alessandro
OnceMarco’smeetingisover, I make my way to the hospital to pay a visit to Vincenzo. It’s been days since I’ve gotten a dopamine hit from seeing him near death.
And I also want to delay going back to Sofia.
I’m embarrassed with myself at how much I lost control, telling her all of those things about my past. There’s a reason I close myself off to everyone—I hate feeling vulnerable like that. It makes me sick. Then I was so close to kissing her, and part of me still wants to do that, obviously. But it would only complicate things further.
And I’m sure she’s just messing with my head on purpose and doesn’t actually want me in that way.
