Page 43

My little baker.
“Sounds delicious.” I mean it.
“I hope so.”
Before I can tell her that I’d like to try some, that I can’t wait to come home and find her baking in my kitchen, I’m saved by the bell. The fight resumes, and she respectfully puts her phone away and goes back to going through the motions, back to ignoring me, back to grimacing and clapping when appropriate.Can she feel me watching her? Every movement she makes?? I try to tear my eyes away from her, but it feels impossible. I’ve never been so fixated on a woman in my life. Have never been transfixed on the way her top lip is only slightly smaller than her bottom lip, the way her hair glows pink under the flash of the red lights every now and then. On the way when she gets a little too close to me, I get a faint whiff of her perfume, and I just want to take her in my arms and inhale it deeper.
Christ what the fuck is happening to me?
It ends, and I get back into the ring with the winning fighter, Marcello, who was once a teen that used these profits from donations to get off the streets and go on to open his own boxing club. He raises his fist into the air as he sways slightly, announcing that once again, due to their generous donations, we have gathered enough to award each boxing club around New York City fifteen grand each. Which is enough to train thirty children at each establishment.
This is a charity my father began over twenty years ago, and I continued it, (seeing as that's how I met Niko) and I will resume to uphold it until the day my child - my eyes crash with Sabrina's…
“I won't be giving you heirs…”
My heart drops. Our legacy will die with me.
The ride back to Brooklyn Heights is quiet.
I choose to break the silence. “How did you know so much about them?”
“You have your ways, I have mine.” She replies coolly, unattached, still gazing out of the window as we come to a lurching stop in front of her row mansion that's lit up from the inside.
I really gotta tell Niko to stop braking so goddamn hard.
She doesn’t wait for either me or him to get out and open her door, doing it herself and hopping out as fast as she can. “Have a good evening, Mr. Giordano. I'll see you on April sixteenth.”
Like hell she will.
For the next three weeks I insert myself in her routine, disrupting the shit out of it.
I want to ruin her peace.
I want to invade her thoughts.
I want to her dream about me fucking up her entire world.
I want to be her sweetest nightmare.
She glares at me over her coffee mug, across from the table when I take her out to lunch. She gives me the bare minimum, that fake fucking smile plastered on her face. If I show up unannounced, she has to make time for me becauseisn't herMaksiso romantic? Isn’t her Maksi justso charmingto show up out ofnowhere, uninvited, to take her out to lunch? To pick her up for dinner?
I don't know why I need to insert myself so much where I'm not wanted so badly. And just when I think I'm wearingher down, her walls slam back up. If I ask personal questions, she fills her mouth with food or shuts down completely or tells me she needs towork. And that's when she realizes she thinks she has a new excuse - to have lunch in her office. She's ‘too busy to eat.’
Lies. I’ve been consistently watching her on the cameras I had Niko install in her office, so I hear every conversation she has. I hear when and where she’s going out to lunch and what time.
So I bring lunch to her. I bring dinner to her. Along with roses… until her assistant Lily kindly tells me she’s been taking home the roses because Sabrina prefers chrysanthemums and orchids, so I bring her those instead. But again, those walls slam higher the closer we get to the wedding. If I have an outing we need to show up to, shemakes me call Jonathan while I sit in front of herso he can call Lily, her assistant, topencil me inon her calendar. Once the ping comes through on her phone, she actively looks at it while pursuing her lips andtsks. She then calls Lily, who calls Jonathan, who calls me, toconfirm.
She's the most fucking infuriating woman I've ever met in my life.I may as well be one lone soldier catapulting nothing but goddamn cupcakes and butterflies into a castle wall.
And yet, that insatiable, gnawing feeling wants her to be worth it.
Chapter Eleven
Parker.
There's a crash from upstairs.
Even though there’s no scream yet, I run up there anyway, taking the stairs two at a time. We're supposed to be leaving for England in three hours, and something tells me she's not ready.