But then I thought about the picture in my pocket. The one of me and my mother. The one that I’d found in his safe.
God, I didn't know what to think. I didn't know how to feel. Everything was so mixed up inside me, and I wished I'd never gone snooping around his fucking house. But I had. And there was no going back now.
And I was NOT going back into that fucking cell.
I must have made a noise, because Tristan's head snapped up and he turned around, his dark eyes finding mine across the room. For a moment, we just stared at each other, the air between us charged with everything we weren't saying.
Then he straightened, his expression shuttering, and I knew the moment was over.
Feeling around on the wall, I found the light switch and flicked one of them on. More lights came on behind him.
"I thought you'd be sleeping," he said, his voice low and rough.
I shook my head. "I was just looking for some tea."
He studied me for a long moment. “Have you eaten? Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m not hungry.”
Moving to the cabinets, he pulled out a box of herbal tea and showed it to me.
"That’ll be perfect," I told him, my voice barely above a whisper.
As he busied himself with the kettle, I glanced back toward Logan's room before I sank down onto one of the stools at the island, my legs suddenly feeling weak. Warily, I watched him. He was so at ease in the kitchen, his movements precise and efficient, and I wondered what he was thinking.
Did he regret saving me? Did he wish he'd never met me? Never gotten involved in my life? Or did he feel the same pull between us that I did? The same inexplicable connection that seemed to defy all logic and reason?
I didn't know. I didn't know anything anymore.
Except that, no matter what he'd done, no matter what secrets he was keeping...if I stayed here with Logan much longer, I didn't know if I'd be able to stay away from him.
And that terrified me more than anything else.
Because if he really was involved with the murder of my mother somehow, what did that say about me?
What kind of person was I, to be drawn to someone like that?
To feel things for him that I'd never felt for anyone else?
I stared down at my hands, my vision blurring with unshed tears. I felt so lost, so confused. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to reconcile the man who'd saved me with the man who might have destroyed my life.
But one thing I did know?
For my sake, and Logan's, I had to let him go.
Even if it destroyed me in the end.
CHAPTER8
Tristan
As I stood in the kitchen, my heart pounding hard in my chest, I couldn't take my eyes from Luna. Even with one side of her face scraped and swollen and the delicate skin beneath her eyes shadowed from worry and lack of sleep, she was utterly beautiful to me.
What disturbed me, however, was my recent revelation of the price I would pay to keep that beauty in my life.
I'd thrown myself to the wolves without a thought of what that would do to the other people in my life. I wasn't here to give in to dramatic whims over a woman. I was here to protect my boss. And Luca's life was so much more significant than mine. He was the head of the entire family. Me? I was nothing.
Yes, he had Enzo. And Enzo was a dangerous man. But he had a wife now. A family. Unlike me, he hadn't been created for one purpose and one purpose only—to keep the boss ofla Cosa Nostraalive.
