#2 Chapter 56
“O-oh!”
My face heats up. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
Elena’s anxious face breaks into a smile. “No, it’s okay. Are you-ah-excited?”
Everyone keeps asking that, and I don’t know how to feign excitement. I am nervous about it, but everyone expects me to scream about how lucky I am to marry Johnny Cravotta, the boss of the family. The king of Montreal.
“I don’t know.”
Elena’s voice lowers so that I can barely hear her. “You don’t have to marry him.”
Well, that’s a first.
My skin crawls and I look around for Johnny, but he’s still playing with the baby. No one is within earshot.
“I don’t have much of a choice,” I say in an undertone.
But I find it bothers me less than it did a couple weeks ago. He’s not a horrible man. I’ll be treated well, far better than any of the guys in the MC would have treated me. It’s just not every girl’s dream, you know? Marrying the guy who knocks you up-who dreams about that?
“You don’t have to be with him if you don’t want to.”
I look at her, wondering who this woman is and why she has the courage to say such things to me. Johnny would go nuts if he knew one of the guests at his engagement party was trying to convince me not to marry him.
“Maya, I know you don’t know me, but you don’t know him.”
“You do?”
She drags her arms across the table and raps on the wood with her fingers, debating whether to tell me or not.
“My husband used to work for Johnny. He almost got both of us killed. He’s a self-righteous, arrogant, cold bas-person,” she amends quickly, turning a brief shade of red.
Cold bastard. Even I’ve called him that.
My heart rattles against my chest, and my gaze flickers toward him. “He’s been okay to me so far.”
Her deep-brown eyes bore into mine. “You barely know him.”
“Yeah, but-”
“You have to get out of this Mafia shit. It won’t end well for you or your baby.”
My heart thuds against my chest. I don’t want to hear this kind of crap-not now, when I’m already in too deep.
“Ladies, having fun?”
The scream catches in my throat as Johnny’s voice cuts through the tension. He leans with one hand on the table, clutching the edge as his eyes smolder with an indeterminate amount of cool rage.
“We’re fine,” Elena says, standing up without speaking to him and walking back to her husband.
Johnny watches her leave. “Bitch.”
What just fucking happened?
The bench creaks as Johnny sits down beside me and lays his hand on my leg. “What did she say to you?”
I don’t know why I’m so unnerved by that woman, who is already hanging by her husband’s side.
“She doesn’t like you very much.”
He sneers in her direction and gives her a little wave. Elena tugs her husband’s arm, giving him a frightened glance.
Jesus.
“What the fuck is that all about?”
Johnny gives my concern a dismissive gesture.
“She’s just trying to start trouble because she hates me.”
“Why does she hate you?”
“I made a mistake and put her husband’s life at risk. It’s a long story.”
Well, that explains her hostility, but it still doesn’t explain why she was practically begging me to get away from him.
His eyes follow the direction of my gaze. “She’s not the first person you’ll come across who won’t care for me.”
“Well, Jesus.”C0pyright © 2024 Nôv)(elDrama.Org.
“People don’t like the man in charge. You should know that better than anyone.”
My mouth twists. “I don’t like him because he’s a bastard, not because he’s in charge.”
He looks around the small courtyard, at the men milling with drinks in their hands and guns strapped to their waists. “I don’t care if they don’t like me. They just need to respect me.”
“What about me?”
A heart-stopping smirk reappears at his mouth and he grabs my chin between his fingers. “You like me.”
“Yeah, but what if I didn’t?”
His head turns suddenly so that he whispers right into my ear. “I can live with you hating me so long as I have your pussy available to me whenever I want.”
A violent shudder runs through my body when his lips kiss the shell of my ear.
“Carlos!”
“Get out of my way, asshole.”