Page 118 of Savage Don

The weight of his grip is almost as heavy as his questions.

I don’t want to think about what happened with Sonia. But I don’t want to let Ray down either.

“They took it away,” I respond, my gaze drifting to the floor.

“Who did?”

“Sonia.”

Ray’s grip tightens around my shoulder and my knees shake as I struggle to keep upright.

“And your father didn’t stop her?”

“I don’t even think he knew about it…”

“He didn’t seem surprised when he led me to your room yesterday morning.”

Ray’s taking a flamethrower to all of my excuses, burning them away so that only the bare truth is left.

It’s painful, to dig this deep, to find the skeletons, but I don’t sense any malicious intent in Ray.

Hell, this almost feels therapeutic.

“Sonia is a parasite…” I mutter, hating that she’s even being brought up. The further she strays from my mind, the better. But she’s an invader in my life, one that I haven’t been able to repel.

Maybe Ray can help with that…

“Has she changed your father?” Ray asks, prodding me deeper.

“I… I don’t know.”

“They don’t care about you, Francesca,” he says.

“And you do?”

“Yes.”

The confidence in his assertion is so strong that it helps shock me out of the depths of my own self-pity.

There’s no hesitation in his voice, no wavering in his words.

He cares about me.

Ray Byrne. The Great Don. The devil who wants to use me for my womb.

He cares.

But how? Why?

“Don’t say that,” I mumble, trying to look away. But Ray lifts one of his hands off of my shoulder so that he can cup my chin and force me to look into his deep, dark eyes.

“I care about you more than you can know.”

“We barely even know each other,” I point out, running from the intensity of what I’m feeling.

If this is what being cared for feels like, does that mean I’ve never really been cared for in my entire life?

I’ve heard that Mother loved me with all of her heart, but my memories don’t go that far back. Or maybe it just hurts too much to remember.