Page 54 of Mafia Scars

She held my gaze and gave me a sassy smile. “Be careful. I might get the wrong idea about you and think you’re in love with me.”

I focused on her, giving her a long, hard stare. Did she really not know?

Or was it me? Maybe I hadn’t made my intentions clear enough.

It was that. Had to be if she didn’t know.

“Go figure, doll.”

Her expression went blank, numb looking, and she looked away from me.

“How is this going to work?” she asked. Fear was evident in her voice.

Fear which threw me. “Maybe now’s not the time to talk about us. Your father wants to see us at ten.”

She snapped her gaze back to me.

“He… wants to see you first. Only you. He wants to talk to you first.” I’d been holding off on talking about Raphael. I didn’t want to burst this bubble of happiness we had going on.

“Okay.” She raised her shoulder into a shrug. “But back to us. If we keep putting of talking, we may never get the chance. I swore I was going to die yesterday.”

“No.” Just the thought made my soul ache.

“You don’t know that, neither of us does. That psycho, Victor, he thinksunharmedhas loopholes. I saw the crazed look in his eyes. He’d pick my eyes out and think I was unharmed if I could still talk. Or walk.”

She was scarily right about that.

“Okay, let’s talk. You want me to change. Is that it? You’re a cop, and I’m a criminal.”

I tugged on my bottom lip, watching her, assessing her reaction.

“Are you?”

“Am I a criminal? Yes. I’m not going to lie to you. It was hard for me to lie to you all that time you thought I was Detective Smith. Lies are not me, goddess.”

Her bottom lip trembled, and she pressed it together tightly, so tight the blood thinned in that the area.

“Is that what you want? You want to be a criminal for the rest of your life?”

“No.” I made sure she could see how serious I was when I said that.

“But… if you hadn’t met me, would you still want to change?”

“Amelia, I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m telling you I want to change. Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing?” My mind raced, searching through thoughts that bounced off each other.

“Of course, it’s a great thing, but what I’m saying is, it’s only good if that’s what you want. Not just for me.”

A weight pressed on my chest, and tingles rippled through every nerve in my body. Was this it? Was this where she was going to tell me she didn’t want to be with me?

“Why not? Why can’t that be enough?”

“Because that’s me changing who you are. For my own selfish reasons.”

“Okay, so should I continue being a criminal?”

“That’s not what I mean. You know it. I want you to change for you.”

For me?