by Nicole Fox
“Elaborate,” I order. Andre’s gaze flickers over toward me for a second, but he pretends to be occupied with the cocaine.
“She spent a fair amount of time at the library. That didn’t seem too strange. But she’s been going to people’s houses. I visited a couple of them after she left. She’s been asking about you—asking them about your money, about who you know, who you do business with. Snooping, boss.”
I look down at my cash. I’m not surprised, given Cassandra’s choice of career. A journalist is nosy by trade. But I can’t let Fedot or Andre see me as weak or forgiving.
“You’ve given her too long of a leash,” I snarl. “Threaten her. Don’t cause her any serious injury. But put some fear into her heart.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Put a stop to it, Fedot. Goodbye.”
I end the call and turn to Andre. His best quality is that he does what he’s told.
I zip up the suitcase he gave me. “It’s been good, Andre. The room is paid for one night, so if you’d like to stay, the restaurant food is considered some of the best in town and the room service girls are willing to do more if you tell them you’re interested in the Gold Star menu.”
I pick up the suitcase and walk out of the room. I give a housekeeper a quick smile as I pass by. Once I get inside the elevator and shut the doors, I check the smaller pockets in the suitcase. No stray electronic devices. I’ll end up getting rid of the suitcase regardless, but it’s good to know if another organization is trying to screw me over or not.
Andre’s loyalty will be noted.
I leave the elevator and cross through the lobby, quickly exiting the hotel. Outside, my driver is waiting for me. He opens the door to the back of the car and I get inside. I don’t like to use drivers, but I knew this meeting would be quick and I didn’t want to waste time checking for car bombs when I could have someone standing guard over it while I was gone.
As I pull my phone out to make some calls, Fedot’s number flashes across the screen again.
“Yes?” I answer. I hear coughing. My suspicions prick up at once.
“Boss,” Fedot rasps. He starts coughing again. I wait. The driver pulls out onto the road. “Boss …”
“Where’s Cassandra?” I ask, immediately wary.
“She …” He tries to suppress his coughs, which only makes it worse. “She, uh, she had pepper spray. She’s gone.”
“Gone?” I ask. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t … I’m sorry, boss, I don’t know where she is.”
I should be furious. Enraged. She’s insistent on behaving like a woman with choices—choices that she absolutely doesn’t have. I’ve made examples out of people for doing far less than what she’s doing. I will not hesitate to make an example out of her as well.
But I have to give her some credit—she’s managed to be remarkably resourceful. I’m not happy about what she’s done, but it would take a blind man not to recognize and appreciate her guile.
“Fedot,” I say, channeling my frustration into his name. “If I didn’t think you could handle watching a single woman, I would have sent one of the housekeepers.”
“Boss, I’m sorry. She was prepared. She must have seen me coming and—”
“I only asked that you scare her and yet somehow you managed to let her get the jump on you,” I say. “You’ve gotten complacent.”
“I’ll find her, boss. I’ll track her down. I just thought you’d want to know she was gone.”
“Don’t bother trying to find her. She knows what will happen if she doesn’t come back. The same will happen to you if you don’t get your shit together.”
I hang up and tap the corner of the phone against my mouth. I open my phone’s contacts and find the one I want.
“Hello, Esme,” I say when the woman answers. “I have some questions that I’m hoping you can answer.”
I walk through the hallway of the second floor. It must be a new moon because the hallway seems unusually dark tonight. I’ve walked these halls enough that I could navigate them blind, but as I make my way to Cassandra’s room, I can almost taste the fear that would press in on her from every shadowy corner.
That’s exactly how I want her to feel. Threatened. Vulnerable. A mouse who has survived this far only at the cat’s pleasure. Who might not yet survive the night.
Her door is closed, but a line of light is glowing from underneath it. I adjust the dress and bag in my hands, twist the doorknob, and push it open.
Cassandra glances up and sees me standing in her doorway. She is sitting cross-legged, phone in her hands, on the bed we fucked on the night before. Just the memory is enough to ignite a buzz beneath my skin. She is beautiful in the way that seeing stars away from the city lights is beautiful. She’s a fresh breath of air.
She eyes me, says nothing, then looks back down at the phone in her hand. It is a petty little act of defiance, one I should not let trouble me, and yet I can’t deny that I feel a flush of irritation. I step in closer, but I resist the urge to do what I really want to do: Slam the door shut, pin her to the bed, and fuck her like a rabid animal.
She sets the phone on the bed, the screen facing downward. She doesn’t want me to see what she’s doing. I know she hadn’t been in contact with her father before our agreement, so I doubt she’s trying to contact him now. She doesn’t seem to have any close friends. She’s either trying to find her daughter on her own or she’s doing more research for her job.
It’s endearing that she thinks I’d consider either of those to be a threat.
I lift my arm, showing her the dress and the plastic bag. She raises her eyebrow.
“I didn’t imagine that you were a man who would wear gold shirts,” she says. “Good for you. Women like a man with some self-confidence.”
“It’s a dress. For you.” I throw the dress and the bag on the bed. “Put it on. We’re going out tonight.”
“The last time I put on a dress for you, you were playing a game with me—one I didn’t appreciate, especially when …” She lets her voice drift off, but I know she’s remembering how she woke up. She takes a deep breath, her hand crumpling the blanket underneath her before slowly releasing it. “But feel free to leave without me. Have a great night.”
I step closer to the bed. Her foot twitches, but she stares defiantly at me.
“This isn’t negotiable.”
She gives me a smirk, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You haven’t given me any information on my daughter. Why should I do anything you want?”
I pounce around the bed, quickly enough that she barely has time to inch closer to the headboard. I put my hand on the side of her neck, my thumb pressing up against the bottom of her chin, soft enough not to leave any mark, but hard enough that she knows she is fully at my mercy. I lean down, our faces so close that I can see the alternating shades of dark brown in her eyes.
“Balducci, let me tell you something you might not yet realize: you don’t have a goddamn choice.” I stroke the curve down from her chin to her neck with my thumb. She doesn’t break eye contact. An irritatingly brave woman. “You know what I’m capable of. You know that you have no leverage. I tracked down your daughter just to show you I could. If you want to actually turn her into a pawn, that’s on your conscience. It won’t bother me in the slightest to get her involved.”
Tick. Tock.
I can hear nothing but the sweeping second hand of the clock in the corner and the pounding of Cassandra’s heart.
The tension in her arms slowly loosens. The fire starts to fade from her face. Her left hand settles over mine as her right hand touches my wrist. She carefully lifts my fingers from her neck, one by one, until I am no longer grasping her neck and my hand falls softly onto her shoulder.
“Who are you?” she whispers. “It would be nice to know something about the man holding me captive.”
The change in her tone and the tenderness in her touch is disorienting. She’s switching personas—trying
to be the investigative journalist, easing her way into my private thoughts.
I can always give her enough rope to hang herself.
“If I can check your phone, you can ask whatever the fuck you want,” I say.
She hands me her phone with a shrug. I check it for any recording apps. I scan through her messages too—nothing incriminating. Anything she’s keeping on here is well-hidden. I glance up at her. She hasn’t brought up the incident with Fedot and the pepper spray yet. She may not know I sent him to follow her. There’s another advantage I have over her.
I toss the phone back on the bed. “All clear. The floor is yours, princess. What do you want to know?”
She tilts her head, an affect that strikes me as cute before I smother that thought dead in its tracks. “What’s the scar on your neck from?” she asks.
I run my fingers over it. “It was a minor incident. A man didn’t like how I spoke to him.”
“You? Piss someone off? I never would have guessed,” she drawls. “Still, it couldn’t have been so minor if it left a mark like that.”
“You haven’t seen my other scars.”
Her head tilts, her eyes drifting down my body. I can still feel the ghosts of where her hands were pressed against my chest while she was fucking me. When her eyes rise up to my face, heat adds a nice blush to her cheeks.
She pulls her knee up toward her chest, a barrier between the two of us.
“What about your tattoos?” she asks. “I noticed some near your wrists.”
I unbutton the cuffs of my shirt, pulling them back to show some of my tattoo sleeve. “Those are mostly hidden as well.”
“But do they have any meaning behind them?”
The consummate journalist, constantly digging. I’ll force her to find the right hole. “Some of them do.”
“What about the snakehead?” She points to my left wrist, where the head of the black mamba is exposed.
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s only meant to cover up a scar.”
Her knee starts to lower and she leans forward the slightest bit.
“You don’t seem like the type to cover up a scar,” she says. I roll down the sleeve. I might as well give her this one. It’s not worthwhile information, but if she’s half the bleeding heart she pretends to be, she’ll sink her teeth into it.
“One of my foster mothers had issues,” I say. “She started raging against one of the younger kids. I intervened.”
Her forehead furrows. “That’s … sad. I didn’t … I just never saw you as the type to take the hit for someone else.”
“How do you think I became what I am?”
“Guns,” she says. “Lots of guns.”
“I’m not your father,” I say. “I earned my title the right way.”
She looks down at her hands. When she looks back up, there’s no trace of anger over my insult.
“So, you grew up in foster care?” she asks.
“Until I was fourteen.”
She leans forward, hugging her knees. “And then?”
“Then I lived on my own,” I say.
“I mean, what exactly did you do to become the boss of—”
“That’s enough about me,” I cut her off. “Tell me about you. How the fuck did you give up your child and not try to find out what happened to her?”
She flushes. “That was my father’s decision. He didn’t want anyone to be able to blackmail our family over it. Clearly, that didn’t work.”
“I can’t imagine you rolling over for anyone. So, you abandoned your child—”
“I didn’t abandon my child. I gave her up for adoption.”
“—And you went skipping off to Cleavers College,” I continue. “You spent six years there. You returned. And you still didn’t look for her.”
“You know what?” she says, folding her legs underneath her ass, making herself seem taller. Even as she sits up as straight as she can, I’m still much taller as I stand right beside the bed. “I don’t need you to guilt me. I know what I did. I spent years regretting it and several years wondering if I did the right thing. And I didn’t go ‘skipping off to college’ right after that. I moved out of my father’s house and—”
“Started working at Bulbs, Blooms, and Blossoms,” I say. “During the winter, you worked at Lionel’s Diner. During the other three seasons, you worked at both places for the next three years. I know what you’ve done, Cassandra. I did my research.”
“So, you’re a raging jerk because you had a shitty childhood and you wanted to get under my skin like I’ve gotten under yours?”
“That’s not quite how I remember last night,” I counter.
She scowls. “It’s just like a man to have a selective memory,” she says, moving to the edge of the bed to stand beside me. “For the record, the reason I didn’t leave the diner is because I needed the money. I wasn’t a damsel in distress or whatever you want to see me as. I worked my ass off and I didn’t need anybody but myself to keep myself from drowning.”
“I never said that you did.” There’s no reason for me to believe her—deceit is in her DNA, if my history with her father is anything to go by—but I imagine some version of it is true. It takes character for someone to leave their wealthy family behind and work two jobs to get by and I’ve already taken note of her tenacity and intensity. I have to, because it marks her as a possible threat in the future. I need to get control of her before she figures out how to use it against the Bratva.
She rubs her thighs. I can imagine how sore they are after last night. When she started, it passed through my mind that she’d burn out quickly, but she surprised me.
I don’t like surprises.
“The Q&A is over. Time for you to get ready. Our evening awaits us.”
“Is this the part where I click my heels together and salute you?”
I suppress a laugh. “This is simply the part where you do what you’re told. Now, go shower.”
She opens her mouth to say something, then stops and tilts her head to the side, like she did before. Once again, I feel the same flush of warmth. It really is a cute quirk of hers. So innocent. So inquisitive. Like a small animal dropped into foreign territory, trying to figure out how this new world works before it eats her alive. “Shower—sir, yes, sir. This is definitely the part where you give me some privacy, then.”
I offer her a thin smile. “No, princess, I don’t think I will.” I sit down on her bed.
The hatred in her eyes flares, but there’s another source of heat there, too. Something she doesn’t want me to see just yet. Lust, perhaps. Desire.
“Oh, you don’t think you will?” she echoes.
“Your hearing is in fine form tonight, Cassandra.”
She laughs bitterly. “So you’ll be staying, then. Front row seats to the show.”
“It is my lucky day.”
“So be it,” she snarls. “I’m not afraid of you.”
She starts to unbutton her shirt, waiting for me to look away. I don’t. Each button loosed reveals another few inches of pale skin slicing down the front of her torso. I want to stroke it with my fingers, run my tongue from the base of her throat down to the lacy edge of her panties, peeking just above the edge of her pants.
She whips off the shirt, letting it fall onto the bed. Her bra pushes her breasts up, soft and tempting. I watch her hands on her pants as she undoes the clasp and zipper and pushes them down to her feet.
As she steps out, I drink in the sight. Her legs are flawless, though I notice a mottled bruise on one thigh from where I seized onto her the night before. Once again, the memory races through me, and despite myself, I shudder.
Clad only in her black bra and matching panties, she walks into the bathroom, but she doesn’t close the door. I watch her pull her underwear down to her ankles and step out of it, her ass firm enough to ensure a handful would be worth the squeeze.
Her movements are crispy and military. There isn’t an ounce of sexuality in them, and yet, I am
hard as a fucking rock as she turns on the water for the shower. The water cascades to the tile floor and steam begins to swirl out of the bathroom. She unclips her bra, dropping it beside her underwear. I note with wandering eyes the red indentations that the underwire left on her rib cage. Those, too, I feel myself longing to touch, to run a finger along, to rub away.
She disappears into the shower. I don’t move an inch, instead just watching the steam cover the mirror. My erection is surging up against my zipper. I consider joining her, fulfilling the fantasy I had before she came, but still, I refuse to let myself move.
Her game seems to be to control me through sex. I might string her along for a little bit, ensure that I get as much of that ass as possible before she realizes she never had any control over me, that I have always had all the power.
I close my eyes and let my thoughts drift away, strolling down the paths my plan might yet take. It has been what I expected so far, and yet also not at all. Cassandra has surprised me at every turn, though I have not let her see that. Most surprising of everything is the feeling that keeps bubbling up when she tilts her head and looks at me. It’s not rage. It’s not a desire to break, to mold, to punish. It’s something else. Something I’m not yet ready to let myself confront.
The stream of water stops. Cassandra emerges, wraps a towel around herself, and peers around the corner to check if I’m still in her room. When she sees me, her shoulders drop, but from the expression on her face, that could be either disappointment or relief.
Her body hypnotizes me as she combs out her hair, putting it into a messy bun. She pulls the towel off, laying it on the sink, then walks over to me—eyes up, chin thrust out, body taut with disdainful pride. Fuck you, her posture says. Fuck you all the way to hell.
She leans close before turning her body enough to riffle through the plastic bag I brought. Her breasts almost graze my thigh. I grit my teeth and say nothing, though my cock longs for more. Before I can give in to temptation, she stands up with the various makeup tools, grabs her dress, and walks back into the bathroom.
Goddamn.
Her body is pure fucking art.