I’d never been so happy to see someone as I was to see Bella. And yet I knew our situation just got ten times more complicated. Bella could be a grade-A bitch. Stubborn, pretentious, and confrontational were her usual moods and she moved through them like a revolving door. I loved her, but once she got pissed off, I knew to get out of her way.

She reminded me a lot of my father in that way.

So, my dad had come out of his self-imposed isolation, huh? He did that often, locking himself away somewhere until whatever storm was brewing ‘took care of itself’. We all knew what that meant, but we never asked questions. If a body turned up floating in the East River, we still didn’t ask questions. Those lucky breaks were chalked up to answered prayers and coincidence and then never mentioned again.

Our house was full of unspoken rules. Asking why Dad hadn’t left the house in six weeks was one of those rules.

Which meant he must be really upset if he was out searching for me. I was a hundred percent sure my Ma made him do it. She was the only person who made him do anything, and most of the time he hated it, even though he went along with whatever she wanted. Which also meant he was going to be majorly pissed off at me. Both of those things made me happy that I was here, but if Gino had found us, then surely my angry father wasn’t far behind.

And once my father found me, he would do what he always did. Lock me in a room at his house, with his men standing guard to make sure I didn’t leave. He always did want me to be more like him. Isolated from real people. He called it protected. Or cautious. Trusting people to be good to you was naive and weak. If you didn’t expect anything from anyone, you would never be disappointed, he would say.

I called it imprisonment.

We disagreed strongly on this subject and I’d spent years wrestling myself out of his protective grip. It took an act of God just to get him to agree to let me live with Bella. It would take years to get him to that point again, once he saw the mess I’d gotten myself into now.

But what am I thinking? I killed someone. I’m going to go to prison for the rest of my life. There will be no more freedom, no more Bella, no more apartment…no more Dante.

I looked over at Dante, his soft hair framing his determined face, and even with the angry set of his jaw, he was breathtakingly beautiful. A vision of him hovering over me in the dark, his massive hardness smoothly transporting me to heaven last night flashed in my head. It had been magical.

But was that really all it was meant to be?

How could that be possible? How could fate be that cruel?

Was I doomed to spend the rest of my life behind bars, remembering such a brief moment in time, torturously yearning for a man that I could never touch again?

I just couldn’t accept it. This kind of thing couldn’t happen to me. I was a fucking Loprinzi, for fuck’s sake, and no matter how entitled it made me sound, this kind of thing didn’t happen to our family.

I always got my way, dammit!

“I really need to talk to my father,” I said to Dante again. “I know you don’t think it’s a good idea. But if Gino found us, then my father will find us, too.”

“How is he going to help?” Dante asked again. I’d never really answered him the first time. We’d ended up in bed, because talking about it was too hard, too painful, too confusing.

“He knows people. Cops. DA’s. Prosecutors. Judges.”

“What about the Feds that are looking for him?”

“The Feds are always looking for him. That doesn’t mean he can’t help us.”

“I’d imagine helping me is the last thing your father wants to do. In his mind, I’ve tainted his precious daughter,” he said, lowering his voice, a slow smile spreading across his face, “and more.” He reached up, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear and brushing his lips across mine.

“Hey, Romeo and Juliet - how about we get back to the matter at hand?” Bella’s voice cut through the moment like a butcher knife. “Call your father, Gabby!” she pushed her cell phone into my hand.

I stared down at it like it was a gun. It was either going to save me, or it was going to be my demise. I looked up at Dante, his eyes questioning, kind, gentle, his hand on my back so warm and comforting, that I couldn’t help but lean into him.

I put Bella’s phone in my back pocket and shook my head slowly.

“Not yet,” I said, ignoring the incredulous look on Bella’s face. “I need to think.”