“I told you,” she laughed at him.
When he sat down, smiling in front of her, her stomach did a somersault from happiness. She was certain she was supposed to like it, but it scared her instead. Lake didn’t want to like him; he was crazy and a terrible person. Right? She had never thought she would say it, but she actually preferred the evil Vincent. When he was evil, she didn’t want to freaking kiss him.
“Why are you being so nice?” It might have come out harsher than she intended.
“So you get mad at me for being mean, and now that I’m nice, you don’t like it?” he snapped at her.
Nope, nope. I like the nice one better. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I’m just not used to it.” She felt bad for saying it. “Thank you for making me the food.”
“You’re welcome.”
She was thankful the nice one had come back.
She was shocked when she actually ate all her food, unaware of the last time she had eaten a full meal and enjoyed every bite. Then again, her body was practically starved. At that point, anything besides John’s Chinese food would have tasted good.
When Lake drank the last bit of her water, Vincent put her dishes in the sink. “Good. Now we can fucking talk.”
Oh, God. She knew Nice Vincent was finally over. Nothing pretty was going to come out of the conversation he wanted to have.
“Why didn’t we talk while I ate, at least? That way, you could’ve left me alone already.”
Vincent flexed his jaw. “Because you don’t eat when you’re upset, and you would have only eaten a few bites. Do you even remember the last time you sat down for a fucking meal you actually ate?”
Shit, someone just save me…
Chapter Thirty-Five
You Don’t Have To Worry; I Wouldn’t Fuck You In Your Dad’s House
…from this psychopath.
“I just ate, didn’t I?”
Vincent shook his head. “You wouldn’t have if I didn’t make you.”
Lake bobbed her head back at him.
He was about to lose his mind. “Why does everything have to be so hard with you? In one day”—he holds one finger up—“I find out about you working for Dante by me having to watch you fucking work down there.” Another finger goes up. “The numerous times you have almost gotten yourself killed in the span of a week.” Another finger. “Then to top the whole damn thing off, I go to your mom’s to find out she’s a piece of shit who’s letting an even bigger piece of shit hurt you. So, if you don’t fucking mind, could you please just put yourself in my shoes at the moment and quit being so damn difficult?”
She took a deep breath, realizing he was a little right. “He never hurt me.”
“What?”
Lake had to avert her eyes down to the table while she talked. “He never hurt me, because he was too scared to. He knew he would have crossed a line if he touched me. If a mark was left, then my dad would have killed him.”
“Lake, you can hurt people without laying a hand on them. Don’t sit there and tell me he never hurt you.” He kept his voice between calm and strong. “What did he do to you?”
There’s no out.
Picking at the paint on the table, she bit her lip. She really didn’t want to tell him, but she was sure he pretty much had everything figured out and only wanted to hear it from her.
“Ever since he met me, I knew he didn’t like me. He would always ignore me or give me dirty looks behind my mom’s back, so I started to spend more days with my dad and less with my mom. I remember her being depressed and crying before she met him, and she finally seemed really happy, so I was happy. I didn’t think it was important if John liked me or not because I only had to see him on the weekends, and he had mostly ignored me till one day my mom went out.
“It was as if he had waited for that day. Finally, he was free to call me what he wanted and make me do what he wanted. He would send her out to do something more and more while I stayed there to clean, cook, and wait on him hand and foot. I did everything he ordered and never said anything to my father because John told me if I did, Dad would not only kill him and Ashley, but my mom, too. I was young and terrified enough to listen to him yet old enough to understand what my dad did for a living. The more I cleaned and heard him call me names, the more I knew John was right; he would kill them.”
Vincent flexed his jaw. “How has your dad not figured it out? You’re telling me he doesn’t know?”
“No, never.” She looked at him like he was crazy.
“How am I supposed to believe that, Lake?”
She was not going to let him think about her father that way. He could say what he wanted about her mom because God knew she wasn’t perfect, but Lake wasn’t going to let him blame her father when he had always done the best he could for her despite his weakness. My father is all I have left. And she wasn’t going to let Vincent take that away from her.
Lake stared into his blue depths, knowing what she said next was going to hurt him. “The same way Adalyn and you didn’t know. There was no way to know unless you were there to experience it, just how you did tonight. My father could never stomach to go over there in that huge house and face why my mother left him—for money. When I asked to spend only the weekends with my mom, I told him it was because she wasn’t alone and I didn’t want him to be. The same thing I told you months ago, and you thought nothing of it.
“My mother was a good mother before John, regardless whether you believe me or not. I never would have believed John and his money would have changed her, but it did. I knew it would be hard for my father to believe, as well, which was why I never gave him any reason to think otherwise.”
Seeing the rage behind his eyes as he began squeezing the table, she felt bad for saying what she had, but she hadn’t been left with a choice—she had seen him considering killing her father. Still, she needed to make it better. She didn’t want him to blame himself.
“Vincent, you couldn’t have known what happened, just how Adalyn and my father didn’t. There is no one to blame—”
He jumped up from the table, practically flipping the whole thing over. “There is fucking someone to blame! Those fuckers need to die for how they treated you tonight alone!”
“Please listen to me. I’m begging you, don’t hurt them.” Once again, she couldn’t dare look at him, putting her gaze back down on the table.
Vincent reached out and grabbed her chin, tilting her head up to meet his eyes. “You will never see them again. If you do and they so much as look at you the wrong way, I will kill them slowly and painfully. Do you understand me?”
Lake swallowed the lump in her throat then nodded in understanding. Arguing with him when he was like that wasn’t an option. She was simply lucky to have him agree not to hurt them.
He released her chin and calmly sat back down after he pushed his hair back.
“Don’t tell my dad, and please don’t blame him. There was no way for him to know. He does the best he can for me, but you know he’s not made and only makes so much. He works hard for Dante to make as much as he can to support us. There’s a roof over my head, food in my belly, and clothes to wear. If there’s anything extra after that, he gambles it away. He just can’t help it; he’s a gambling addict.
“Everyone has their downfall, and his is a poker table. That’s his enjoyment in life. It never bothered me, nor do I care if we don’t have a lot of money. My father is the best person I know. He loves walking through that door to tell me he hit. Every time, he would take me out to eat, and then we would go to the grocery store where he’d let me fill up the cart. After that, he gave me money to buy whatever I wanted. That’s more than I can say a lot of parents give to their kids. If you go and tell him about my mom and John, he will never forgive himself, and he doesn’t deserve that.” She couldn’t help crying as she pleaded with him.
Getting up from the table, she ran into her bedroom, unable to stop the sobs escaping her body.
After a few seconds, she felt Vincent’s arms wrap around her. “I won’t tell him if you don’t want me to.”
Lake removed her hands from her face and cried into his chest. “I-I don’t want you to.”
“Then I won’t.” He began stroking her back as he held her closer to him.
“H-he’s not coming home again, is he? He’s ashamed of me working in the casino,” she whispered to him though her tears.
He can’t talk to or look at me anymore. Those thoughts had swirled around her mind all week.
“No, baby, he’s not. He’s ashamed of himself. It’s going to be hard for him to forgive himself for putting you in danger and having you work off his debt. You’re going to have to give him some time to be able to face you again.”
Another cry escaped her throat as she realized she really missed her father and needed him.
“Baby, shh…” He backed her up to her bed and sat her down on the edge of the mattress. “You are worn out and will feel better when you wake up tomorrow.” He bent down on his knee and began unlacing her old tennis shoes.
Ow-ow-ow. She tried not to wince when he removed them from her feet. Then, when she was unsuccessful in doing so, he went for her sock to see what had caused it. She was unsuccessful again as she tried to keep him from taking it off.
Vincent slowly removed her sock and carefully examined her blistered foot before he did the same with the other. He rose from the ground.
“Lie down.”
Lake scooted up on the bed and lay down as she watched him leave the room. She wiped away her remaining tears, wondering what he was doing.
She was so exhausted she had almost fallen asleep before he appeared in her room, wearing gym shorts and a shirt. Looking at his changed clothes, she realized she might have dozed off.
“Where did you get those from? Wait, why did you change?”
He sat down on the end of the bed and placed her feet in his lap. “I always keep a couple changes of clothes in my car, and I’m going to spend the night here.”
“No, you’re not.” She went to sit up and pull her feet out of his lap, but he held onto her legs.
“You’re not staying alone in this neighborhood all night, especially with no car out front if I leave.” He squirted some clear gel into his hands and began rubbing it into her feet.
Her foot jerked at the coldness, but it started to feel good as he massaged it in. “What’s that?”
“Aloe Vera.”
Lake merely looked at him, stunned.
“I called Maria and asked her what helped. Then I walked to the store down the street real quick to get you the things on the list she gave me,” he explained.
Walked? “Why did you walk?”
“I told you that you can’t be left alone in this neighborhood without a car out front. No one would try to come in with my Cadillac there. Now lie back.”
She apprehensively rested her head back on the pillow and watched him care for her feet. His touch was light and soothing, and he was careful around the blisters. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he took his time tending to her. He was being incredibly sweet and kind. It tore at her heart strings that he would think to call Maria and walk down to the store to make something as silly as her feet better. She didn’t want him to stay the night, but she didn’t have the heart to argue against him after what he had done.
By the time he had wrapped her blisters in a strange brown tape and put on some type of special super-soft socks, her eyes had started to drift close. She felt the covers envelope her as a body slid in beside her.
“You can’t sleep in here, Vincent,” she drowsily told him as she rolled over to give him her back.
“Why not?” he asked, pulling her to his chest and wrapping his arm around her.
“Because you’re going to try something on me, and I’m not going to have sex with you.” She tried to wiggle out from under his arm.
Vincent simply pulled Lake into his body tighter. “You don’t have to worry; I wouldn’t fuck you in your dad’s house.”
Oh, good. That makes me feel better.
She relaxed against him, too tired to fight. “We’re only friends, Vincent. I could lose my job if Sadie thought otherwise.”
“Fine, we’re friends. Now go to sleep,” he murmured.
She let exhaustion take over her body with one last thought of what Vincent had said to John earlier. Lake is mine.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Put Her Back Together One Piece At A Time
Vincent hushed Lake back to sleep when she woke up in the middle of the night. For a girl who had said she didn’t want him to sleep next to her, she sure liked to be held pretty tightly.
He couldn’t find sleep as thoughts of how fucked-up the whole day had been filled his brain. He had never wanted to wring someone’s neck as much as he did John’s. That fucker had been torturing her for God knew how long, and that bitch Pam hadn’t given two shits that she flirted with him in front of Lake. He might have fucked a lot of mothers, but not one had blatantly displayed she liked him in front of their daughters like she had. They had always tried their fucking best to hide it.
That was the hardest dinner he’d had to sit through, watching Lake too scared to eat a bite of that asshole’s damn food. Then when he had gone upstairs and found out her bedroom was the attic, he had lost his shit. The motherfucking attic? In a motherfucking mansion?
He had watched her try to jump up and get the string, making him sick at the thought that they enjoyed watching her struggle and fail to retrieve it. He had felt the end of the fucking string and knew they had cut it. Considering their heights, he knew one of them would have needed a ladder and some work ethic, which meant that bitch Ashley had done it.
When Lake had said ‘it’s cool’ to him, he had sincerely believed a part of her actually thought that, as if she had forced herself to believe it. He knew there was no way in Hell he was going to leave her there for even five more minutes.
Taking her to her father’s home was a whole different experience. The house was old and small. The neighborhood was complete shit and dangerous for a girl like Lake, but he saw her change. He could sense that she felt like she was home and safe, which was all that mattered to him. He didn’t judge her—or her father, for that matter—for not having much money.
It was hard for a man to be in the family yet not be in the family. All the good jobs and high-paying ones went to the men who were made—that was how it worked. The others bore a curse to be soldiers for life based solely upon the fact that they weren’t born with Italian blood. It was a harsh rule of the family as old as time, and the rules were hardly ever broken. Vincent’s whole existence was for the family; however, he wouldn’t ever want to be in Lake’s father’s shoes. To know he always wanted to be a family man but was forced to be at the bottom of the ranks would be Vincent’s worst nightmare.
Lake had been right. He couldn’t blame her father any more than he blamed himself for leaving her there that day months before and never once noticing through the years that something might have been wrong. He hadn’t a single clue until his gut had screamed at him that something was wrong that day. But I fucking left her, anyway.
She didn’t have to worry about him telling her father; he wasn’t going to. If he did, her father would have the pleasure of killing them, and he was going to make sure that satisfaction was all his.
Vincent looked down at Lake’s sleeping face. “He’s not coming home again, is he? He’s ashamed of me working in the casino.” A part of him had broken the moment those words had passed her lips. He had been so worried he would break her if they got together, but the thing was she was already broken. He was going to put her back together one piece at a time, and he was starting it by shoving away the darkness inside of him.
Lake needed his conscience to come back out. He couldn’t take her looking at him with fear ever again. She had been scared for too long, and he was going to do whatever it took from that mome
nt on to make her happy, even if it meant losing a part of himself. He had cleared his memory of her months before, but right then he told himself it was time to start a new game.
‘We’re only friends, Vincent.’ He understood she needed a friend at that moment, so that was what he would be. Right up until that red-headed freak left, or he killed him first. Then he was going to make sure she understood they were no longer going to be just friends.
He wasn’t going to tell her about the fact that he had paid off her debt. It would only scare her to know she had to work because that creepy fucker had a thing for her. At least, that was what he was telling himself. The truth was she planned to not go off to college anymore, and a sick part of his mind didn’t want her to; therefore, he was afraid to tell her she didn’t have to work any longer, thinking she might leave him. He had a month to make her want to stay, and he was going to make damn sure she did.
He groaned when Lake wiggled closer to him, her ass rubbing against his dick.
Fuck, it’s going to be a long month.
* * *
Lake frowned when she woke up the next day to an empty bed, just as she had for the past month. She would never admit it, but she always hated how he was never there in the morning.
Going out of her bedroom and into the hall to go to the bathroom, she smelled something delicious. Mmmmm…
She quickly went into the small bathroom to refresh as fast as she could. Leaving after she spit out the last bit of toothpaste-laden water, she went into the tiny kitchen.
“Yes, my favorite—bacon and pancakes!” Her mouth practically watered when she saw the huge stack of jacks.
She went to grab some plates out of the cabinet to set on the table, but a hand reached out and grabbed her waist before she was brought against a hard, shirtless body.
“Go sit down. I’ll bring it to you.” He placed a kiss on top of her head.
Lake pushed back at his naked chest. “Stop it, Vincent. How many times have I told you I can help, too? I’m not a baby. And how many freaking times have I told you to put a shirt on?”
Vincent (Made Men Book 2) Page 17
