Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 82847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
He pulled onto the road and drove in silence.
I kept my eyes on the road and wondered how we’d survive the most awkward drive of all time.
He reached for the radio and turned on music, the first time he’d ever done that.
But it didn’t help. Still awkward as fuck.
At least for me. I couldn’t tell how he felt.
It was a thirty-minute drive to Lombardi’s sauce factory, the sun bright on a cloudless day in Sicily. Anticipation was in the air as everyone waited for the summer season to officially start, when the sun didn’t go down until almost nine in the evening every night.
That short drive felt longer than a flight from Rome to New York. We drove through the city until he approached the open gates to the factory that still had Lombardi’s name plastered everywhere.
Wolfe drove his Range Rover to one of the buildings—I assumed the very one where Luigi had died. He parked the car outside, steam absent from the machinery because production seemed to have come to a halt with the handover.
He wordlessly hopped out and didn’t wait for me as he walked to the main door.
I got my bag from the back then headed inside.
Wolfe was already up the stairs to the gallery overhead, his t-shirt tight on his arms and across his shoulders. He was dressed in a gray shirt and black jeans, always looking good in the color because of his ink.
I took a breath before I followed him upstairs then stepped into an office that was cluttered with loose paperwork everywhere, stacks of it on the desk, the filing cabinet wide open like someone had recently rummaged inside it. It was a complete shitshow.
Wolfe stayed by the door. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.” He walked out and shut the door behind him.
I set my bag on a nearby chair and sighed as I looked at the mess. The last thing I wanted to do was sift through disorganized clutter as I tried to make sense of his business and profit margins and their supplies and all that bullshit. But it was my job.
Though I was more deflated by the indifferent man downstairs.
Hours later, Wolfe walked back into the office. “Gotta get going. I’m needed elsewhere.”
I’d barely scratched the surface of the chaos here. “Pick me up on your way back—”
“I’m not leaving you here alone.” He walked out of the office again, leaving the door ajar as he disappeared down the stairs.
If this were a week ago, he would have christened the place by fucking me on the desk. Now he treated me like we’d never kissed.
I packed up my things and left the mess before I headed back downstairs.
He was a short distance away, talking on the phone. “I’ll meet you there after I drop off Frankie.”
Frankie? I’d never heard him call me that once.
He hung up and turned to me, indifference in his eyes. “Ready?”
“Um, yeah.”
He didn’t open the car door for me like he had in the past. Just hopped into the driver’s seat and started the engine while he waited for me to get settled in the passenger seat. Then he took off and headed back to Caltanissetta to get me home.
It was another awkward drive, somehow more awkward than the first one.
After he’d told me there was no escape from him and I asked the real estate agent to take me home, I’d thought he would unleash a storm of rage, a wrath so fiery he would scorch the earth. Thought he would tie me up and not let me go until I apologized. I wasn’t sure exactly what he would do, but this cold facade had not been on my bingo card.
Thirty minutes later, he returned to the winery and pulled up in front of the house. He left the engine on and didn’t unbuckle his safety belt. He kept one hand on the wheel like he intended to get out of there the second I stepped out of the car.
I grabbed my bag from the back seat, and as soon as I shut the door, he took off.
Leaving a cloud of dust behind him.
I sat alone at my dining table with my dirty dinner plate in front of me. I enjoyed half a bottle of wine for company and stared at the empty seat across from me. I’d been so scared of Wolfe a couple days ago, but now…I missed him.
He acted like I hardly existed. Treated me like we didn’t have a past. I was just his boss’s daughter and nothing more. He somehow rewrote history without saying a single word. I still remembered the look in his eyes when he told me he would never stop hunting me if I tried to leave him. And then he dropped me.
Acted like I’d never meant anything to him.