At those words, she relaxed against him. Perhaps some part of her believed in him. Though he was frustrated to have a beautiful captive he couldn’t bring himself to defile, he’d begun to feel oddly protective of her. He might need her to believe he’d kill her if she tried to get help from his family, but holding her in his arms, he knew he’d never be able to do it or let anybody else do it, for that matter.

In his mind, he imagined smoothing things over so they would accept him keeping her . Surely they would approve of that outcome more than they would her murder. He could convince them he’d be kind to her. She had no bruises or marks. Such an idea was believable, especially with the way he always took care of everyone and shied from the uglier sides of the family business.

Leo thought back to a couple of nights ago when he’d asked her what she usually did for the holidays. The look she’d given him had been blank. She’d mumbled something about going out for drinks with her friends on Christmas Eve. And then something about an office Christmas party with a store-bought cake and a game that involved gag gifts.

And that was her Christmas experience. When he’d pressed her on her childhood, it hadn’t been much better. She’d said her family hadn’t had very much and she didn’t always get a Christmas present. Some years they didn’t have a tree. Sometimes a local charity would see to it that she got a doll or a game and a decent meal for the holidays, but it wasn’t anything like his own memories of the season. Such sharp contrast between the memories they had made him feel guilt for all he’d enjoyed while she’d suffered or barely scraped by.

From the moment she’d told him all that, he’d become determined to give her a nice holiday. If she must be his prisoner, he would make it easy on her.

The more he’d learned, the more he’d come to admire her, not just for the way she looked and the way she made his dick hard, but the way she’d fought for what she had. As young as she was, if she’d been left to her own devices, she would have made something of herself.

Though her apartment and financial power might be paltry by Leo’s standards, she’d pulled herself up from the gutter to have something resembling a life, with food on her table, clothes in her closet, and her bills all paid.

The doorbell rang. He pulled away from Faith, but she clung to him. It was a strange turn of events. Leo gently took her hands off his shoulders, linked one of his hands with hers, and took her to face the firing squad.

The first person to arrive was his mother. He’d had no doubt it would be her, though she was coming all the way from Vegas. Gina Raspallo was absolutely punctual in everything, as if she had an internal mechanism that forced her body to be at the proper place at the proper time without deviation. Leo’s father had died of a heart attack three years before, and his mother had become more punctual in the intervening time.