The Don Bows Only To His Curvy Crush Chapter 13
The Man Who Owns the Table
“Is she going to do something?” I murmur, watching her go.
Dante turns my face toward him and drops a kiss on my mouth.
“Worried about a rival?”
I pull back. “That’s not what I meant. Will she run to your mother? Try to sabotage your business? Mine?”
“No.”
He lights a cigarette, slow and unhurried.
Through the smoke, his face is as handsome as ever — but harder and colder.
It makes me remember something Marnie told me a while back.
“Six months in, and the Moretti is a bloodbath. Dante’s cleaned house — most of the old guard’s out.”
“Even his own father’s been pushed to the wall. The whole family answers to the son now.”
The ember flares. Something dark flickers in Dante’s eyes.
“If they wanted to keep me on a leash, they shouldn’t have let me sit at the table.”
“But they did. And now — nobody in that Family will ever hold a card over me again.”
I’ve never been built for the shark tank.
All I want is to act, to give my mother the quiet life she nearly didn’t live long enough to see.
“Then why didn’t you just tell Annabella I’m Bella Marino? Ashamed of me?”
Dante stubs out the cigarette, turns, and pinches my cheek.
“Ow —” I glare at him, rubbing my face.
“What is going on inside that head of yours?”
“You changed your name to Lena Rose for a reason. Whether you ever want to be Bella Marino again — that’s your choice.”
“I love you, I respect you.”
“I don’t want to intrude your privacy.”