Destined For The Mafia (18+) (3 of 3)

Chapter 39 - Crossed

[The next day]

Ace and I walk through the new warehouse he helped me secure the purchase of. The walls are tall and cement, only two points of entry or exit, one hidden - it was a decent purchase for storing shipments when needed.

"What are you going to do with the locker?" Ace asks me as I look up around the ceiling. I glance down and find him looking at me already.

"I don't know," I reply before turning and walking towards the hidden exit. I hear him follow.

"Why don't you just bring the stuff home? You have plenty of space for it."

"And tell my husband what?" I almost laugh out loud picturing Enzo's reaction to the mess of yesterday.

"So you haven't told him."

I ignore him. "This exit needs new locks. Different ones than the front door. One set."

He nods, but he doesn't seem like he cares at all about the door as he steps closer.

"Ace," I say as I take a step back, my heel hitting the wall behind me.

He smiles and both my chest tightens and my stomach flips at the same time. He really has a handsome smile. A handsome everything. He's hard to look at sometimes. Especially when he is looking at me like that. Less like a boss and more like a...

"Caterina," he says my name and I'm not sure what to do or how to breathe. He stops walking a foot from me, looking in my eyes. "I respect you too much to cross a line here, but if you want it crossed, you only have to say the word."

We may flirt once and awhile but he has never said these words to me. Nothing close. We never discussed a line... there just was one. We understood. I thought we did. I thought he did.

"I'm married," I say and I wish that my voice came out more steady than it did.

"But unhappy."

My chest tightens. "That isn't his fault."

And it isn't. It never was. Everything we fought over the last few weeks, everything wrong between us - none of it was his fault. I pushed him away. I lied or kept things from him. I made him doubt himself and me and us. Because of my own mistakes that I was too cowardice to tell him. Enzo wasn't to blame for me being unhappy. I was. And I wish I could look him in the eye for long enough to tell him that.

But I couldn't. Maybe I never will be able to again. Maybe things are too far gone.

Ace takes the smallest step toward me and my arms cross across my stomach instinctively. His eyes are soft and light and new. They don't look at me with pain and regrets. They don't see my past.

"There is a reason you haven't told him yet," Ace says. "You know that's true. If he made you happy and was your person, you would tell him."

It isn't that simple. It isn't love that is the issue between us.

"You don't know what I have done for him - for us - in the past," I tell him and push off the wall to walk past him. I have to go. I need to leave this.

"I do know," he says, catching my arm with his hand. I stop and turn back to him. He's close now. Too close. "It doesn't have to be that way with us," he says, his hand sliding down my arm to my wrist.

"Because I have already killed all our enemies," I remind him.

He stares at me for a moment. A moment where I should just pull away and walk out the door. One single moment where I think he is giving me an out. But I think about it too long and his next words come, flooring me.