Page 55 of It Kills Me
She looked away, withdrawing her affection. “I don’t need a man to look after me, Axel. Your concern is unnecessary and unwelcome.”
“I know you don’t want this.”
“Why?” She looked at me, her eyes hard. “Why do you think that?”
“Because you’re too…good.”
“Good?” she asked incredulously. “I’m sleeping with my father’s partner. I don’t know where I earned this good-girl reputation.”
“That’s not how I mean it. I just think you have too good of a heart to do what’s necessary to maintain your position in a violent industry. Your father threatened to kill the families of cops to get them to comply. You think you could ever do that?”
She was silent, her eyes immediately dropping.
“Exactly.”
“What about you?” Her eyes lifted again. “You must make threats like that all the time.”
“I’ve never threatened a cop or their family. I’ve never threatened or hurt an innocent person. Now, a player in the game…totally different story. Anyone in my world is fair game, but the people who choose to live outside the game are spared my wrath. I know we don’t know each other very well, but I can’t see you being ruthless the way your father is. You have too good of a heart.”
She looked away again.
“I know this isn’t what you want. You just want your father’s approval because you think you owe him—when you don’t owe him shit. Yes, he’s a good father, but that doesn’t mean you need to meet his expectations?—”
“What does it matter to you?”
“It matters because I fucking care about you,” I snapped. “Jesus Christ, why else would it matter to me? If I had a daughter, she would be nowhere near this shit. She wouldn’t have been downstairs in the basement around men your father barely knows, smoking cigars and shit.”
She left the bed altogether, yanking open a drawer to her dresser to pull out a t-shirt. She shoved it over her naked body and hid her curves from view. “I think you should go, Axel.”
“Because I said what you don’t want to hear? Get used to it, baby. That’s life.”
She turned her venomous stare on me. “No, that’s not how relationships work?—”
“When you’re in a relationship with a real man, he’s going to say what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.” I got out of bed and faced off with her. “And the only reason you’re reacting this way is because it’s hitting too close to home, and you don’t like the way that feels.”
Her eyes remained furious. “Leave?—”
“No.”
“I’ll pull out a gun and shoot you.”
“Do it, baby. It’ll just turn me on.”
Her anger mixed with shock. “You’re fucking crazy?—”
“You make me crazy.”
She turned away.
I grabbed her by the arm and shoved her against the wall, harder than I meant to. I pushed into her and grabbed her by the neck, forcing her gaze on me.
She breathed hard but didn’t fight.
“You know how easy it would be to snap your neck right now?”
She breathed harder.
“I don’t want that to ever happen to you, baby.” I relaxed my hold on her throat. “I don’t want anything to happen to you…ever.”