Don't go.
Please.
But as the waves of pleasure faded, what she feared the worst still happened.
He was pulling away, and this time, the rest of her words came out in a rush.
"I f-fell in love with you from the start," Sarica choked out. "That day you saved me...I didn't know it then, but my heart did. You walked into that restaurant and heard those men talking about hurting me, and you didn't even know me, but you—" She had to pause, memories threatening to overwhelm her. "You were everything my father wasn't. Everything I'd been taught not to believe in."
She waited for him to speak. But she also dreaded that he would because she feared he would ask her to go.
"Iloveyou, Giancarlo. A-Always. Even when I was trying so hard to prove I didn't need anyone. Even when I was pushing you away with ridiculous hair colors and outrageous clothes. Even when I pretended your kindness meant nothing a-and the world said you were gone."
GIANCARLO'S HEART THUNDEREDagainst his ribs as he listened to her words.
"I'm s-sorry for only saying it now."
His Sarica was crying.
"I'm so sorry for waiting until I almost lost you forever."
Everything in him wanted to believe her. And that her actions in the past three months had been nothing but a terrible misunderstanding. He wanted to believe it was all a lie. But how could he...when she also turned out to be Seijcut?
Why say she loved him when she had also used his own money to place a bounty on his head?
"At least tell me," Sarica was asking him brokenly. "Tell me why didn't you come back?"
The question struck too close to secrets he couldn't reveal, and Giancarlo could feel her hope fading as silence stretched between them.
"Why didn't you at least let us know that you're alive?"
He knew what she wanted him to say.
But because he also knew what was at stake—-
"Because that part of my life is over."
Giancarlo could only give her the truth she needed to hear.
Chapter Five
FOUR DAYS.
He had forced himself to stay away for four days, each hour a test of will he wasn't sure he was passing. The security feeds taunted him with glimpses of Sarica, and it didn't matter what she was doing; anything she did, he wanted to do with her. For her. Or to her.
He would catch her having lunch, and he would remember the years when mealtimes were the only moments he had allowed himself to sit close to her, talking, and having a world of their own even though the rest of theirfamigliasurrounded them.
He would see her enter the en-suite to shower and he wanted to be the one soaping her body. He would see her asleep in bed, and it was all he could do not to join her and have her curl up next to him.
It was insanity to watch her all the time. But it was an addiction he could not control.
It killed him to keep his distance, but Giancarlo also knew the more often he visited her, the closer he could succumb to playing with fire.
In their world, all it would take was one spark.
One moment of weakness.
And everything he'd sacrificed these past sixteen months would burn to ashes.
