At first, I refuse to talk.
I sit across from him at that massive dining table, eating in pointed silence, pretending he doesn’t exist.
It’s petty and childish and probably not accomplishing anything, but it makes me feel like I have some control over the situation.
But silence gets boring after three dinners in a row, and eventually my curiosity gets the better of me.
“Did you actually study architecture?” I ask one evening, breaking the silence that’s stretched between us for the last twenty minutes.
Leo looks up from his plate, surprise flickering across his face. “Huh?”
“Architecture,” I repeat, twirling my fork through my pasta and not looking at him. “You mentioned it before. That you studied it before your father pulled you into the family business.”
“I did.” He sets down his fork, studying me with those dark eyes. “Four years at NYU. I was two semesters away from my degree when my father had a heart attack and I had to take over.”
“NYU?” I set down my own fork. “I went to Sarah Lawrence.”
“Art history major?” Leo guesses, and there’s something almost teasing in his tone.
“How did you—” I stop, realizing how stupid that question is. “Right. You researched me before kidnapping me. Creepy, but thorough.”
“I prefer ‘diligent.’” His lips twitch. “And yes, art history. With a minor in studio art. You graduated two years ago, had a 3.7 GPA, and wrote your senior thesis on the intersection of trauma and creativity in contemporary female artists.”
I stare at him, unsure whether to be impressed or disturbed. “That’s…a lot of information,” I finally say.
“I’m very thorough when I kidnap someone,” Leo says dryly. “It helps to know what kind of books to stock in their prison cell.”
“You still got it wrong,” I point out. “The Hemingway was a disaster.”
“One mistake in an otherwise flawless kidnapping,” he counters, and I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “I’ll try to do better next time.”
“There better not be a next time,” I mutter but then change the subject. “What kind of architecture?” I’m genuinely curious despite myself and want to move past the weird moment where I almost found Leo’s stalking charming.
“Sustainable design.” There’s a wistfulness in his voice that makes me think he actually cared about it. “Buildings that work with their environment instead of against it. I wanted to design structures that would last, that would be beautiful and functional and not destroy the planet in the process.”
I blink. Well, that wasn’t what I expected. “That’s…” I search for the right word. “Actually noble. And kind of unexpected for someone in your line of work.”
“What, mobsters can’t care about the environment?” Leo raises an eyebrow, and there’sdefinitelyamusement in his eyes now. “We have to live on this planet too.”
“I just meant—” I fumble for words, my ears warming. What is the matter with me? “You’re what, thirty-three? I think? And you wanted to be an eco-friendly architect. That’s a pretty big shift to running a criminal empire.”
“Thirty-five,” he confirms, his gaze lingering on me in a way that makes my skin feel warm. “And you’re twenty-four. Which means when I was studying sustainable architecture at NYU, you were probably still in middle school wearing braces and worrying about your first dance.”
My cheeks flush. “I never had braces, actually. And I was more worried about my art portfolio than school dances.”
“Of course you were.” There’s something in his tone that’s definitely not mocking but might be…fond? “The serious artistic type. Too focused on charcoal drawings to care about boys.”
“I cared about boys,” I defend, even though he’s not entirely wrong. “I just also cared about my art. For the record, I stillamserious about it. Or I was, before someone kidnapped me and ruined my life,” I finish pointedly.
“You’re drawing every day,” Leo points out. “You’re still serious about it.”
The reminder that he watches me through cameras makes my stomach flip. “That’s because I’m bored and have literally nothing else to do,” I counter.
“Sure.” But he doesn’t sound convinced. “Nothing to do with the fact that you filled an entire sketchpad in a week.”
We fall into conversation after that, and it becomes a pattern.
Dinners where we talk about books and art and everything except the big elephant in the room which is my presence.