by Quinn, Cari
I hope you’re okay. I know some people you could talk to, if you’re not doing well with what happened. If you’d like their contact info, give me a call. Take care of yourself, Carly.
Carly, not tesoro. Because he wouldn’t even throw me that bone after he’d boned me.
I didn’t care. We’d had a night together, and I wasn’t chasing after him.
Especially since that club flashback I’d had while going down on Gio had turned out to be the first of many.
I wasn’t doing well. Not at all. I jumped at shadows, and spun around every time I heard a creak. I’d gone from being a carefree teenager who tended to do stupid things to a girl who trembled when cars backfired and couldn’t watch a horror movie without every light blazing in the apartment.
It had only been days. Not even a week yet. I knew it would take time, so I was taking it. No one knew what had happened besides Gio, and he would keep it between us.
I could never, ever tell Fox or my sister. They’d want to kill me for being in the club in the first place, then Gio for his part. They’d probably go after Marco and the rest of the guys and likely get themselves killed. No way would I have their actions on my conscience.
The secret was locked inside me, where it would stay.
At least I had distractions. I had my culinary classes, and my regular shifts at the salad shop. And I had lunches with Jenna, and a workout or two at the gym—not The Cage, lest I be accused of trying to spy on Gio—plus studying. There was so much to learn. I’d thought I would be in good shape coming into the Institute, since I’d been preparing meals almost since I could talk. But nope. It was the second month of classes and I hadn’t scratched the surface at absorbing all there was to learn.
I was managing. Maybe not awesomely, and maybe a couple times I’d almost weakened enough to call Gio for the contact info for his supposedly “helpful people” just for the reassurance of hearing his deep voice. But I didn’t. I had some pride left, even if it had been dented and banged up lately.
Then my sister dropped the bomb that they were having people over for dinner Thursday night. And, oh, would I mind whipping something up quick? Nothing fancy.
Never mind I hadn’t even decided if I was going back to work at the club that night. I’d promised Nancy to take her shift, and I didn’t want to renege. I also didn’t want Marco and his buddies to think they’d sent me running with my tail tucked up where the good Lord had split me. I wasn’t a coward. They could bend me over a table and try to debase me, but they’d never break me.
In that way, I was very much my sister’s sibling. I’d fight to the death, then keep right on into the afterlife.
Even if I decided to work Nancy’s shift as promised, I’d have to come up with a good cover story for my sister. I could always use the old standby of spending the night with Jenna. She’d cover for me if for some reason Mia checked in with her, though there should be no reason for her to go that far. My sister wasn’t that overprotective. She knew I was eighteen. She didn’t like it, but she knew it.
By the time I was putting together a cheeseburger casserole and tossed salad for Thursday’s dinner—it wasn’t the French cuisine I was learning about in school, but my dinner guests weren’t exactly the French cuisine types—I still hadn’t reached a decision. I’d wait to see how the evening went. I’d have to leave by nine if I was going to get there in time for Nancy’s ten o’clock shift, and even that would be cutting it close.
And that was even if I still had a job after my no-show on Friday night. Being dragged into the back room had kind of killed my interest in dancing afterward.
“Slater’s not coming, but Jenna is.”
I nodded and kept chopping veggies. Good. I could just leave with her if necessary.
“Liam and Abby have plans, but they said they’d come next time.”
I glanced up at Mia’s dejected voice. She was still dressed in her Vinnie’s T-shirt and jeans. Why she still worked at the bar when she had all those zeroes in her bank account, I didn’t know.
She didn’t yet have all the money our Aunt Patty had gained in a secret settlement deal put together when Mia was a teenager. Mia’s dead kidnapper’s family had paid up, and handsomely. Supposedly, the suit had been brought for Mia’s benefit, though Aunt Patty had kept the money a secret all these years. And now she was taking forever to turn over the bulk of it to my sister, claiming there was red tape and she had to “liquidate holdings”.
Even so, Mia was fucking rich. She didn’t need to sling beers anymore. Fox still worked there too and he wasn’t hurting for cash, so maybe they were both masochists.
Considering their penchant for beating up on each other—in and out of bed—I figured that was a decent assessment.
“What’s wrong?” I pushed a tomato toward Mia on the cutting board. Though my sister’s broken arm was still in a cast, she was just about to get it off. Mia being Mia, she’d been pushing the limits of what she could do with that arm for weeks.
Besides, there were no idle hands in my kitchen.
Thinking better of it, I pulled back the tomato and gave her a carrot. She didn’t quite have the dexterity to slice it thin, and I didn’t trust her with my tomatoes. I also didn’t trust just any low grade slicer. When I had the funds for commercial grade stuff, that’d be a different story.
“What? I can’t do a tomato?” she asked, indignant. She’d been my veggie prep cook since I’d first started preparing meals. At least during the years we’d lived under the same roof.
“You can do a carrot.”
“Pfft.” One-handed, she started washing the carrot in the small sink in the island with all the care of a bear slapping a salmon to death on a rock. “I can do tomatoes,” she muttered. “I have this one-armed shiz down. Mostly. And besides, I’m practically healed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I am,” she insisted. “It’s almost time to get the cast off. Thank God, because it freaking itches.”
All at once, I realized why she was so testy. It wasn’t because she was tired of her cast either. Well, not entirely. “Slater still won’t talk to you?”
“Talk? Ha.” She scrubbed with my veggie brush and nearly peeled off the outer layer of skin. “We’re dead to him. He won’t even get on the damn phone. Every message gets passed through Jenna or Liam.”
“He just needs time—”
“Time to what? He’s dating the daughter of the man who raped me. She stalked me and who knows what else while she was working with Gio’s crew—”
“They aren’t Gio’s crew,” I said too quickly, dumping thin slices of cucumber into the salad. Every one of them was the same size, as good as any slicer. Catching Mia staring out of the corner of my eye, I shrugged and set the tomato in the center of my cutting board. “Just saying.”
“Oh, yeah? What do you know about it?”
“I know he’s become a friend to you and Fox, or else you wouldn’t be hanging out with him all the time. Or else your judgement is seriously whacked, because those guys aren’t the kind you should take lightly.”
“No kidding. And he still associates with them. Fox keeps telling me it’s Gio’s business, that he trusts him, but something’s off there.”
“Off enough you didn’t invite him to dinner?” There was no hiding the note of hope in my voice. I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to see him or not.
So that wasn’t exactly true. I knew I did. I just didn’t want to pretend around him, and it seemed to be the only way we could operate around each other. The chances he’d come in and wrap his arms around me and kiss me on the mouth were exactly none.
“Fuck.” I cursed as the knife slipped and bounced off the pinkie I’d cut open in class while preparing julienned potatoes. It had bled enough that I’d gone to the emergency room. I’d just finished the antibiotics last week, dammit.
The buzzer rang and Mia gave me a worried look. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Go ahead.” I wrapped a dishtowel ar
ound my hand and waved her on with the other.
While she was busy answering the door, I peeled back the dishtowel and gasped. It was a bloody mess. I was fine with knives until they made me bleed.
“What did you do?”
I looked up as Gio rounded the island, making a beeline for me. I swallowed hard and flashed a look at my sister.
Thanks for telling me he’d be here, sis.
“Fox invited him.” She took my other side as I moved to the sink.
“I’m fine. It’s fine.” I turned on the faucet with a shaking hand, letting out a sound of protest when Gio gripped my wrist and held my hand directly under the water.
“What did I tell you about that,” he said close to my ear while he directed the spray of cool water on the bleeding wound.
Since I didn’t know what he was referring to, I stayed silent. And shut my eyes so I wouldn’t nearly pass out from the sight of blood as I had the last time I’d cut my finger.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Mia offered.
Eyes still closed, I scowled. One thing I didn’t share with my sister was her ability to tolerate blood, her own or someone else’s. Forget tolerating. Actually, I think she enjoyed making people bleed.
Me, I got nauseated and dizzy and every other wussy female thing I hated the minute I saw the first drop.
“There now, does that feel better?”
I tried to nod in response to Gio’s question, but my knees were threatening to give out.
“Ah, Christ. We’re losing her.” Mia’s voice drifted away then returned as I felt hands on my shoulders, guiding me down. “There, sit. That’s a girl.”
“Put your head between your knees if you need to.” Gio crouched beside me, still cupping my hand. The wet dishtowel had bunched around my wrist, but I couldn’t find the strength to push it off my arm.
I was still bleeding. The sticky warmth pooled between my fingers and made my head swirl harder.
“Head between your knees,” Gio commanded. “Do it.”
Since I was headed in that general direction anyway, I tried to do as he asked. My limbs felt loose and uncoordinated, and when I dipped forward…
“Jesus, Carly.” Gio. So close. “Look at me.”
“It’s the blood,” Mia said. “I forgot she saw our mother when she—”
“Where can I take her?” Gio asked, then we were moving.
I wasn’t conscious of anything after that.
When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on Mrs. Knox’s bed. I blinked and leaned up on one shoulder as Gio headed into the room with a wet washcloth.
“You’re awake.”
“Of course I’m awake. I have to make dinner.” I started to swing my legs over the side of the bed, grimacing at the flash of pain in my pinkie. Such a tiny thing. How could it hurt so much?
“Oh, no, you aren’t. Dinner is cooking. Mia took over on the salad.”
“My tomato!” I started to lurch to my feet, but he caught me neatly around the waist and set me right back down.
“Your tomato is fine. Let’s see the finger.”
I held it out because I wanted to get back to my meal prep. I also wanted to get this awkwardness over with as fast as possible.
Turned out I didn’t want to see him after all. It was too soon. Or too long. Too something, and I wasn’t ready in any sort of way.
“That’s better.” He patted the cut with the washcloth. “It’s barely bleeding now. I found some bandages and an ointment you had in the cupboard. Looks like it’s antibiotic.”
Before I could comment on that, he produced a bottle of peroxide and liberally poured it into the cut.
I yelped and drew back. “Holy shitballs. You trying to kill me?”
“You need to disinfect the wound.” The mildness of his tone made me want to punch him.
I didn’t really get where the violence was coming from, as all and all, I was a rather even-tempered woman. But right now, I wanted to slug him in his fat, gorgeous head.
“Your hair’s messed up. Did you forget to comb it tonight or something?” The snark was all new too. Toward him, anyway. He wasn’t my usual target.
He ignored me and kept dabbing the washcloth over my cut.
“Or did some girl run her hands through it when you kissed her?”
Because you damn sure never kissed me.
A first, that. Having sex with a guy three times without getting one single kiss—on the mouth, or anywhere else.
Not that I was bitter or anything. Nope. It was just a fact that needed mentioning.
“How does your finger feel?” It was as if I’d never spoken. “Can you bend it?”
“It’s not broken.”
“Flex it a little, see if it starts bleeding again.”
It did, but just a little. He dabbed it with the washcloth again, put on the ointment, then dressed it with a bandage like an old pro. “There. All fixed now. Be careful with the knife next time.” He rose, started to walk out.
“That’s it?” I popped to my feet and only swayed slightly. Progress. “You’re just leaving?”
He stopped, but he didn’t glance back. “I’m not leaving. I’m here for dinner.”
“I meant the room. You’re just going to walk out there like we didn’t…” I trailed off as my voice wobbled and his shoulders went stiff.
“Are you okay?”
When I didn’t reply, he shifted toward me, his face cast in the moonlight coming through the slats of the blinds. “When you didn’t return my call, I thought that meant you wished for no contact.”
“No contact?” Hearing how shrill my voice had become—and remembering the closed bedroom door didn’t offer much privacy from the rest of the apartment—I dialed it back. “I didn’t contact you, because you told me to call if I needed help. I don’t need help, Gio. But maybe I needed you.”
Once the hateful, embarrassing words were out, I pushed past him and fumbled with the doorknob. But the bandage made me clumsy, and I couldn’t get it open fast enough.
His hand came down above my head, holding the door closed. For a moment, he didn’t speak, and I stared at the peeling cream paint on the wood, trying not to react to his heavy, hard body pressing against me.
“Need me for what, tesoro?” he murmured against my hair.
Goddamn him, I trembled. Like a fucking ring card girl who’d been granted a smile from her favorite fighter.
Like a foolish chick who was cruising for a bruising.
Or maybe a…pounding.
“I don’t know. Maybe a conversation? Would that be too much to ask for?”
“No, it wouldn’t be, if you didn’t fuck me with your eyes every time we speak.” He trailed a finger along my curls. “Now that I’ve been inside you, that’s not fair.”
I nearly trembled again at inside you before I got a hold of myself. “You want to know what’s not fair? Having the kind of sex we did then walking away. That’s not fair.”
“So you want more.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t want more.”
I definitely didn’t say that.
I turned to face him in the small space he’d allotted for me between him and the door and slapped a hand on his chest. Luckily, I picked the one without the Daffy Duck bandage on the pinkie.
I frowned at it. He’d picked out Daffy Duck?
“I can see how you’d be confused, with that other clean-cut guy in your life. I bet he doesn’t have any tattoos or a prison record. I bet he doesn’t fuck you so hard you need help getting into the shower either.” His mouth skimmed my hair, so quickly I didn’t register the gesture until his mouth again hovered near my ear. “Must be a real hard choice.”
He didn’t rock his hard dick into my pelvis when he said the words hard choice. Nah, not smooth enough for him. Instead, he pulled his hips away, so that I throbbed to have that heat and pressure right back where I needed it.
The bastard.
“A prison reco
rd?” I bit my lip as I stared up at him. “For what?”
His mouth curved grimly. “Attempted murder.”
I gasped—I couldn’t help it. He simply reached up, closed my lips with his fingers and spoke against my ear.
“I bet that tight pussy got even hotter and wetter hearing that, didn’t it? You like danger. That’s why you like hanging around the club.”
It was an effort to find my voice, and once found, not to let it wobble. “I don’t hang around there. I have a job. I earn a living.”
“I told you I’d take care of that.”
“Yeah, why? So I can pay you back in a way you decree? Hell no. I won’t be beholden to anyone.”
That included my sister, and the money she wanted to use for my education. The dynamics were much different there of course, but I wanted to pave my own trail. I didn’t want to owe anyone anything.
“You’d rather tempt that danger, even when it hurt you the other night?”
“I’m fine.” I shoved at his shoulders, but he didn’t budge.
He had a prison record for attempted murder, and he was chastising me for courting danger? He hung around with men like Marco and the others, pretending he liked them when hatred gleamed in his eyes as it had the other night in the back room, and I was the foolish one?
Maybe so, but I wasn’t alone.
“You won’t be beholden to me. I’ll give you the check, and it’ll be yours to do with as you wish.”
“How can you have that much money to throw around? You don’t even have a real job. Unless being a thug counts as one.”
His eyes glinted in the near darkness. “You’d be surprised.”
“I don’t even believe you went to prison,” I continued, trying to brazen my way through. Maybe I’d find out something real. Maybe even something I could use to begin to put together the puzzle of Giovanni Costas. “I bet that’s a lie.”
“Oh, it’s no lie. I was booked on attempted murder in Las Vegas. Look it up if you don’t believe me. Giovanni Vincente Costas. Age 19 at the time.” He stroked my cheek with the side of his thumb, another of those fleeting touches that made me yearn for so much more. “Scarcely older than you are now.”