Page 11 of Mafia Scars

The doorbell rang, and I frowned knowing who it was. Gigi frowned too.

Sinclaire had been coming by every damn day since Luc left. He was the one who’d found out about Luc and raised the alarms about him.

He knew I was pissed off about that. I wasn’t sure if his daily visits were attempts to gain my forgiveness, or if he was still trying to convince me that I should be with him.

“What are you going to do abouthim?” Gigi raised a sharp brow.

She didn’t like Sinclaire. Gigi thought he was an arrogant bastard who thought he owned the world.

“He’s just checking on me.”

“Right, I’m supposed to believe that. The man wants to get in your pants. It’s very obvious. Andnodoesn’t seem to be a strong enough word for him.” She twisted her jaw when the bell rang again and got up. “I’ll get it. Maybe I can fend him off with a curse. I’ll threaten to give him warts on his dick or something.”

I chuckled at that. Gigi was serious though. True to her Romani heritage, Gigi had followed her Wiccan traditions and believed in spells and curses.

Mostly, the whole thing annoyed the heck out of me, but sometimes it was entertaining. Sinclaire, however, didn’t deserve warts on his dick.

I knew he was just doing the right thing, something I couldn’t have done. I was mainly pissed at him for his motives in doing it. He saw Luc as his competition and a threat.

Gigi went to answer the door but never came back into the breakfast room to finish off her food. Sinclaire came in instead with that hopeful look on his face.

“Hi, I came by to see if you needed anything before work,” he began.

Like every other day when I saw him, I felt hurt by what he had done. And my mind saw him as the person who made Luc go away.

“I don’t need anything. Thanks.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and looked away from him.

He came closer, pulled up Gigi’s chair, and sat down right in front of me. Our knees touched, and he reached out to take my hand.

I didn’t pull back.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, holding my gaze.

“What are you sorry for?”

“About Luc.” It looked like it pained him to say that.

“What exactly are you sorry for in regard to Luc? The part where seconds after you found out that he wasn’t really Luc Smith, you went and told Roose? Or is it the part where you didn’t consider that I could be hurt by what happened? Hurt by the truth.” I pulled my hand away from his and moved to the kitchen window.

I looked outside to the back garden of my neighbors on the other street.

Sinclaire joined me and placed his hand on my waist, turning me to face him.

“All of it. I just want us to at the very least go back to how we used to be. Can we do that?”

I gazed up into his sea-green eyes. Seeing the wealth of his feelings for me, I didn’t know how I could agree to that. How we used to be was this.

We were friends, really good friends, but he wanted more. More than I could give him even before I’d met Luc. And worse now that I had.

Months ago, when Luc first arrived, the day Luc arrived, Sinclaire had been shot. It nearly killed me when I thought I’d lost him. Another person I would have lost to gun violence.

To say that I felt nothing for him would be a lie, but what I felt was the depth of that friendship and the extent to which I cared for him.

When he looked at me like he was now, it made me wonder if I was completely crazy. We’d known each other forever, worked together on the same team for years, trusted each other. I knew him. Knew he wasn’t a bad person, knew he wasn’t a mobster and would always do the right thing, no matter what. So why didn’t I want him the way he wanted me?

His eyes dropped from mine to my lips, then to the exposed flesh of my chest, and to my breasts. That was when he looked back up quickly and planted a kiss on my forehead.

He released the light hold he had on me and backed away, turning to go.