didn't want to. I wanted to unload all the rage, all the frustration, all the utter helplessness I had been feeling for years for him, on him. Where it belonged. I'd been carrying the burden of his shitty decisions around for too long.
"Why should I? You know I'm right. You took a shitty deal with shady people, and then continued to let them walk all over you for decades, dragging our family further and further into debt because you didn't have the balls to stand up to them, because you were too enamored with them to even want to? Newsflash, Daddy, they don't want you in their organization. They think you are a pawn to be used, nothing else. You are embarrassing yourself by kissing their rings like you have been doing all this time."
"You know what, Gigi? Fuck you," he snapped, hanging up.
Tossing my phone onto the table, I stood there in the middle of the kitchen with shaking hands, anger an uncomfortable, bubbling sensation inside, something that couldn't be denied, something I had no outlet for.
So I gave up on dinner, reaching instead for the bottle of whiskey.
If nothing else, it would ensure I would finally get a full night of sleep for a change.
Or so I thought.
I was down the hall, curled up in the king-sized bed in the master bedroom I never got to stay in before, finding the mattress lumpy and hell on my hips and shoulders when I tried to sleep on my side, so I ended up halfway on my stomach, my leg cocked up, face buried in a pillow. My body was damp with sweat since I refused to put the air cold enough to actually cool me off, seeing as it simply cost too much to do so, and no one was typically around to have it matter anyway.
Sleep was restless, marred by dreams that had been plaguing me since I was fifteen—not dreams at all, but awful memories, ones that made me wake up gasping, panicked, unsure of my surroundings for a moment before falling back to sleep.
It was the fourth time I woke up that I realized it wasn't a bad dream that woke me.
Oh, no.
It was the harsh reality.
Where I was alone in a house.
And a man was looming in the shadows.
My heart flew upward, lodging in my throat as a choked gasp escaped me. Why I didn't scream was beyond me. Maybe because of that pesky heart-in-throat situation. I felt it bubble up but get trapped, letting only a whimpering animal sound escape me as I flew upward in the bed, whacking my head against the wooden headboard. I tried to shake off the traces of sleep, think straight enough to figure out how I could get away, what weapons might be nearby to use against him.
There were no guns here. I had one at home. We had them at the bakery. Both legal and not-so-legal thanks to the nature of my father's connection to the mafia. But I would never leave a gun in a house that was rarely occupied. And the place was sparsely decorated after my father sold off a lot of the collectibles his parents had once filled the space with.
There was nothing.
Except...
Oh, thank God for drinking yourself to sleep, I decided as I realized the clunky, thick, glass whiskey bottle was on the floor beside the bed. Likely just out of sight. If he got close, I could reach down, grab it, bash him with it, then get away.
"Don't scream," a deep, gravelly voice commanded. It shouldn't have sounded sexy given the circumstances, but it did somehow.
"Fuck you," I said with a scoff, opening my mouth to suck in some air, deciding that this was the perfect time for a horror movie scream queen impersonation. The houses were practically stacked on top of each other this close to the shore. Someone would hear me. Someone would call the cops or come running. Something.
But before I could even finish pulling in that breath, this giant of a man was across the small space, his hand grabbing my ankles, yanking me down onto the mattress, allowing his other hand to clamp down over my mouth. I'd never really had the occasion to notice the size of a man's hands before, but with one covering damn near all of my face, I was noticing his. As well as his dark eyes, and the juts of his cheekbones. And what looked like maybe a scar down