Chapter 17CANDI

Chapter 17

CANDI

Angelo goes still above me, the rage he just banked back to burning in his eyes like the infernos of hell.

Only now, I know it's not directed at me.

"That's what he was doing?" he asks in a deadly quiet tone.

"Uh, yeah." He couldn't tell? "Why did you come tearing across the club to rescue me if you didn't know he was doing that?"

"He was touching you. They're not allowed to touch."

They're not allowed to touch . They who? The punters. Who else could it be?

That should freak me out, right? Why don't those words freak me out?

Another question: why aren't I more scared?

Do I really believe a man who has been stalking me for a year and who has cut off men's hands for touching me won't ever turn that level of crazy on me?

The truth is this whole night, I should have been a lot more afraid than I have been. Yes, I had a few bad moments when Freddy was chasing me in the alley, but mostly? I've been frustrated and angry.

Angelo's guys kidnapped me. That, at the very least, should have terrified me. They taped me up, completely taking away my freedom.

It should have triggered memories I've spent every day since coming to live with Cookie and mom trying to forget. But it didn't. It just made me mad.

Once I got my gag off, I yelled at them like they were inept busboys spilling drinks on my stage.

Then he was there and instead of reacting in any kind of way that made sense, my ladybits, which apparently did not get the memo about being kidnapped, started dancing to a club techno beat.

He took me in his arms and the most ridiculous sense of peace washed over me. Go me for hiding it from him, but seriously? Even now, I'm lying here on the sofa, letting him cut my clothes off like a little lamb happy to be sheered for spring.

Okay, I really need to stop watching documentaries about rural America.

A little lamb? Really?

I can't even work up a real sense of dread as he slices through the fabric of my hoodie and the umpteen layers of duct tape Derian and Mario had to use to immobilize me.

I'm a little proud of that. Also? I don't mind how relieved they were when Angelo showed up.

That'll teach them to kidnap a former foster kid. We're tough.

But something's gone wonky with the instincts for survival honed in the foster care system. I don't feel threatened by Angelo. Him calling this place our home just feels too ridiculous to take seriously.

Whatever his plans are for tonight – and it's looking like some kind of weird role play where we actually have a relationship – come tomorrow, I'll be back in the small apartment I share with mom and Cookie.

One good thing will come from this unbelievable night. I'll get Angelo Caruso out of my system. Being kidnapped on his behalf is bound to curtail my fascination with him. Right?

If I'm lucky (and he is too), I'll finally punch my V card too. Yes, I am seriously considering having sex with the unhinged mafioso.

Not that I'm going to make it easy on him. Whatever weird fantasy he's got playing in his head, having his guys kidnap me is not okay. Even if they did save me from becoming collateral damage to my sperm donor's mafia business.

"This is so not okay," I say out loud both for his benefit and mine. "Listen Angelo, you can't go around kidnapping women."

"I am not attached to women. I am attached to you." He finishes the last cut on my hoodie with a flourish and pulls the now tattered garment from my body.

I push him away and surprisingly, he goes. Not far, but he sits on the sofa beside me instead of hovering over me.

Scooting into a sitting position, I roll my eyes with well-honed sarcasm. "Lucky me."

If part of my brain actually believes the words I just uttered and maybe even a little bit of my heart, I'm not about to admit it. That my inner romantic preens under the attention of this dangerous man says more about my psychopathy than his.

"You're going to have to let me go back home." Eventually.

After—my thoughts are interrupted by a jaw cracking yawn, tonight's adrenaline starting to wear off.

He leans forward, earnestness in every line of his superbly sculpted made man body. "This is your home."

"I'm pretty sure it's not. My home is an apartment in Queens with my mom and sister."

"That was your home," he dismisses. "Now you live here."

Does he really think it works like that? He can just say it is true and suddenly it is? Probably in his world stuff does work that way. Who is going to argue with Death?

But I'm not part of his world.

I'm just a normal person and I don't live in a mansion with enough security to protect the president. "You can't make that decision for me. Where I live is my choice."

It has been since I turned eighteen and the state foster care system lost authority to tell me where I could live. No one, not even Death, can take me away from my family.

"We belong together. If you can't see that right now, I'll help you." Angelo's tone is so freaking complacent.

"That." I shake my finger at him. "That right there, Angelo. Saying that is not okay . You can't convince me that I belong with you as if it's a done deal."

"You are the soul that was ripped from me at birth."

"Don't say stuff like that." Because it touches my heart in places I was sure atrophied a long time ago.

He grabs my hand and pulls it to his lips, kissing my palm. "There's no light inside of me, but when I am with you, your luminance surrounds me."

"I might wear an angel costume to dance, but I'm not one." Not even close. My mafia assassin needs a reality check. "Angels don't shake their tits and ass for tips."

Angelo grins savagely. "When you are born to be a denizen of hell, you recognize someone who isn't. Call yourself what you want, amate , but your brilliance isn't tarnished by dancing on a stage."

"So, let's say I did agree to date you, you'd have no problem with my dancing?" I pull my knees to my chest, crossing my arms over my shins and wait for the inevitable hurtful answer.

"I would prefer you spend your time finishing college because that's important to you."

I knew it. No matter what he says, my job is a problem for him. Look how he reacted tonight…or last night rather. Whatever.

"You might have forgotten how you reacted to my private dance, but I haven't."

"I thought you didn't know who I was and were offering to let some stranger touch you."

"You thought I was high," I condemn. "And anyway, what business is it of yours if I do start offering extra curriculars?"

"Keeping you safe, even from yourself, is my job." He runs his glove-covered fingertip along the line of where my forearms touch.

Ignoring the pleasure sparking along my nerve endings, I frown. "I'm pretty sure it's not."

"It is and if you want to keep dancing at Pitiful Princess, I won't try to stop you, but I will keep watching over you."

"Stalking me you mean?" Does he mean it?

If I were to agree to his ridiculous idea that we should be dating, would he really be okay with me continuing to dance?

You didn't think dating him was such a ridiculous idea before , my inner voice singsongs. Which was also before he had his guys kidnap me, I remind myself.

Self is not impressed.

"Call it what you want." The shrug in his voice says it doesn't bother him even a little to be called a stalker. "We were born to be together."

"That's more of that love-at-first-sight crap. I already told you, I don't believe in it." My fascination with him may have reached the point of obsession, but that's not love. "I can't believe you do either. You have to know that there's no such thing as soulmates."

"Before I saw you for the first time, I would have agreed with you. But before I met you, I believed I would never bring a woman into my life. Now I know we were both wrong. Because you are my soulmate."

I shove my tender heart into my shoes. "Angelo, it doesn't work that way."

"It does if we say it does," he assures me.

Why are those words so tempting?

"We implies both of us, right?" I ask.

Brows furrowed, his gray gaze fills with wariness. "Yes."

"We implies I agree with you and I don't." I ignore the constriction in my chest at those words.

Okay, I'm stupidly reluctant to steal his phone and call the police to tell them I have been kidnapped. Maybe I do trust him not to harm me in a way that makes no logical sense.

But no way am I in love with him. I didn't even know he was watching me for most of the year.

And no way do I believe he loves me. He can't. "You stayed in the shadows, how was I supposed to get to know you? How could you think you know me well enough to love me?"

"The connection of two souls does not require the kind of surface knowledge that will inevitably come with time."

What is he, the Cosa Nostra's love guru?

I don't think so. "Can't you hear how bizarre that sounds? Angelo, that's not the way relationships work."

"My parents married less than a month after their first meeting."

"So, I have them to blame for your belief in love at first sight?" My own parents were anything but poster children for the idea.

My mom fell in love with my sperm donor, but he never saw her as anything but his side piece, if that.

Angelo grimaces. "Not exactly."

My interest piqued despite the exhaustion dragging more heavily at me with every passing second, I ask, "Why not exactly?"

"They were promised to each other for 10 years as a political alliance. They were not soulmates like us."

"Then why use them as an example?"

"Because in my world, arranged marriages between virtual strangers is commonplace. Some couples fall in love. Others don't."

"Okay, that's weird." Though I bet my sperm donor's wife is the other half of a strategic alliance.

If he loved her, he wouldn't have cheated on her.

"Not in our world."

"There is no our world," I remind him.

"We both live in it. That makes it ours."

I shake my head. "You can't decide that for me."

"It was decided for you when Stefano Bianchi fucked your mother and got her pregnant. You are a daughter of the Cosa Nostra."

"Yeah, no. My sperm donor and his random affiliations have nothing to do with my life."

Angelo smiles at me. Again. This guy. Shouldn't Death be the cynical one between us?

"There's nothing random about his connection to la famiglia or yours either," he explains patiently. "Cosa Nostra blood runs in your veins. You are under our protection."

"It didn't feel like protection tonight when my sperm donor told Freddy to off me." It was such a cruel thing to do, which only increases my disdain for Stefano Bianchi.

What if it had been another dancer who came into the alley when I did? What if it had been Piper? Would Freddy's crush on her have saved her? What if it was one of the dancers that didn't have a connection to any of the guys in that alley? Would she be dead right now?

The very thought nauseates me.

Knowing about how Angelo exacted retribution against Ronnie and Gino, not to mention that guy whose hand he skewered, and really who knows how many more men tried to touch me over the year that Angelo was watching me?

None of that bothers me like knowing my sperm donor would have ordered the death of an innocent woman. Someone who, even if she's not my friend is someone who didn't deserve to die tonight.

"Do you want me to kill him?" Angelo asks with a little too much enthusiasm.

"No. I'm not Stefano. I don't order people's deaths without a care to the people they leave behind." Okay, I did do that earlier, but not on purpose.

How was I supposed to know Mario would take my words literally, much less act on them?

I'm not riddled with guilt about it though. Not after Gino was so intent on killing me. He dismissed my life as worthless because I saw something I shouldn't. And whose fault was that? I wasn't the one doing criminal business in an alley used by more than one business open until the wee hours.

But Gino decided I would pay the price for his poor planning. Just like Stefano Bianchi before he found out who the witness was.

Not that I trust him to have given up on the idea of offing me. It would take care of two problems for him. My existence as his biological child and as a witness to criminal dealings related to him.

Regardless, whatever this is going on between me and Angelo, I have no doubt that if I said, yes, Death would claim another soul. Unlike my ignorance with Mario, I know that and I'm not about to act on it.

I might not feel any real guilt about Gino's death, either of the Gino's deaths if I'm honest with myself, but that doesn't mean I'm going to order another execution.

Their own predatory actions cost both men their lives. That's not on me.

I guess that viewpoint is evidence of Stefano's DNA showing in my character. Mommy was never that pragmatic about hurting others. She was the true romantic, believing Stefano Bianchi was Richard Gere to her Julia Roberts.

But Mommy's life wasn't a scene out of Pretty Woman . Not ever.

"You sure?" Angelo presses.

"Positive." I might carry Stefano's DNA but that doesn't make me a carbon copy of him.

If I put Stefano in Angelo's crosshairs, that is on me. And it's not a reality I'm willing to live with.

"I had a feeling you'd say that." His disappointment is real.

"Wouldn't you get in trouble if you killed a capo?" There's got to be a rule against that kind of thing.

Angelo shrugs. "I'm an assassin. I know how to make it look like an accident."

"You're too arrogant to hide it from your boss and you can't tell me the godfather would be okay with you killing one of his capos."

"Although technically, every member of the Cosa Nostra belongs to the godfather, Miceli De Luca is Stefano's don," Angelo informs me apropos of nothing.

"Why take the risk though?" I ask, smothering another yawn.

"You know why."

"That love at first sight and you're the soul I never had schmaltz might work on another woman." Especially when a guy as sexy as Angelo says it.

Even I want to melt into a silly puddle of goo around him. But I've seen too much. Been through too much. I'm not swallowing his claim to love me when I'm still all but a stranger to him.

Strangers hop into bed together all the time. They don't fall in love across a crowded strip club.

"You can't love me if you don't know me," I continue. "People might get married without love in your world but they don't fall in love at the altar."

"We know each other, amate ."

"You don't know the important things about me. I don't know the important stuff about you." And I'm going to keep reminding him of that until he gets it through his gorgeous, thick head.

"Don't we?" The look he gives me sends an arrow of want straight to my core.

I shake my head, trying to dislodge the thoughts and feelings I should be too exhausted to experience right now. "If you knew me, you'd know that I don't like being threatened. Or held down. I especially hate being trapped."

Just because I didn't react to the whole duct taping thing like I would have expected doesn't change that truth about me. Or that he allowed it to happen to me without knowing the risk he was taking with my mental wellbeing.

"And yet you're not hysterical." He brushes his fingertip down my cheek. "Not a single tear has fallen from your beautiful brown eyes."

"I'm not a crier." My first foster placement taught me that crying was a weakness that, at best, got you sent out of the room and taunted by the other kids.

You learn early to protect yourself in the system, or it eats you alive. I didn't get eaten. Not even by my last foster father.

"You will cry when you need to when you are with me," he says, like it's a rule. "You will always be safe to show your emotions when I am there."

How can he know what I'm thinking? Or has Angelo had his own experience of learning to hide vulnerability? I can't imagine Death was ever helpless. But little Angelo? Maybe his vulnerability is where Death came from.

"Whatever. Me not crying tonight doesn't change what happened, or your part in it."

"I would not change my part in it. You are alive because of the protection order I put on you."

I can't argue that point because deep down, I know he's right. "Still doesn't mean you really know me, or that we're somehow meant for each other."

"You demanded to be let go, but you didn't beg for your life," Angelo says with undisguised admiration.

"You didn't hear me in the alley. I begged for Derian and Mario to let me go." And I'm not ashamed of that.

If the choice is death or begging? I'm going to plead for my life. I can't leave my mom and Cookie unprotected.

"They didn't listen." And I'll make them regret the duct tape and gag someday.

Somehow.

"They were under orders."

Unimpressed, I rolled my eyes. "I care because?"

Angelo laughs. "You give me joy, Candi Brigliano."

"My name is Kathleen." Not that I want him to use it, but Candi is the name my family calls me.

Angelo is not my family. Besides, right now, I'm seriously annoyed by the mafia assassin.

"Which you never use. The only person who calls you Kath is the social worker."

"It's creepy that you know that."

"Is it? I should know everything about you—"

I put my hand up, stopping him. "Don't start with the soulmate stuff again. And if you knew as much as you think you do about me, you never would have had your men tie me up."

Which was the point I was trying to make before he derailed me.

"I did not tell them to tie you up."

"Right. You just told them to bring me to you and since I wasn't going to come along like a dog on a leash, they trussed me up like a Thanksgiving turkey."

"You should not stuff the turkey," he informs me like that's the important thing he got out of my rant. "It increases the risk of food poisoning."

"So not what we are talking about right now."

"What are we talking about?" he asks, lifting me into his lap.

I let him.

Just kill me now because clearly, I have joined the ranks of too stupid to live characters in every horror novel ever. But a big part of me wants to curl up against Angelo's broad chest and forget the stress of the night and my life.

Deep inside, I know he'll keep me safe. Which is probably why getting taped up didn't bother me like it would have if someone else had done it. Derian and Mario are under Angelo's orders and their boss would cut off their hands for hurting me.

They even said so.

"Knowing the important stuff about each other," I remind him.

"The most important thing about you is that you are mine." His hand slides between my long sleeved t-shirt and my bodysuit, pressing against my back. "I will always protect you."