by Leah Wilde
“Thanks,” Fiona said, saying a silent prayer of gratitude that she’d opted for a nice black dress rather than staying in her drab work clothes from earlier. It wasn’t like she cared about how she looked, but she would have felt awkward if she’d been underdressed, especially in such a nice apartment.
“Here, I’ll take your jacket,” Vince said, offering his hand forward to take the light coat that Fiona was wearing over her dress. He hung the jacket up in the closet just inside the apartment, then gestured for Fiona to follow him deeper inside.
The place was, in a word, ridiculous, in the best way possible. There was a giant crystal chandelier hanging down from the ceiling, casting an ethereal golden light over the entire den and kitchen area. Every surface was spotless, shining so brightly that Fiona could see her own reflection. Classic black furniture filled each room that she could see, and deep red curtains hung from every window, but they were pulled back to reveal a view of the stars. The apartment looked so extravagant that it was almost tacky, but somehow, it seemed to fit Vince’s personality. He was the type of person that seemed to buzz with energy even when sitting still, yet at the same time, there was something calming about him, too. He was like a great big glittering ocean—one minute he was a rush of energy, filling her with anxiety, and then the next minute, he soothed it all away, like the tide carrying away flecks of sand. Even though she’d just met him earlier that day, she felt like she’d known him for years. Now, as she watched him crack open a bottle of wine in the kitchen, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe there was more of Paulie in him than she originally thought.
“Do you like red wine?” Vince asked as he poured out a glass.
“Sure, as much as anybody does,” Fiona replied.
Vince chuckled lightly and poured out another glass before handing one over to Fiona. “There’s liking it and then there’s loving it, I suppose. As for me, I can’t talk business without it. It’s just how I was raised.”
After Fiona accepted her glass of wine, Vince gently tapped their glasses together. “What are you toasting?” Fiona asked. For some reason, that question must have seemed amusing to Vince, as he suddenly grinned, his teeth shining brightly under the lights hanging above them. “What?” she asked again, feeling a wave of heat rush up her back and lower neck, her nerves getting the best of her.
“Oh, nothing, it’s nothing,” Vince said, chuckling a little. But his eyes gleamed with something, some secret knowledge that Fiona was now desperate to uncover. “Just toast with me, come on.”
“Not until you tell me what we’re toasting,” Fiona said, her skin now prickling with some weird mixture of discomfort and anticipation. She needed to know what was so funny. She had a horrible feeling that he was mocking her somehow, that she’d made some horrible “poor person” mistake that betrayed her lowly upbringing.
“I promise to tell you after dinner,” Vince said. “But let’s eat first. It’ll be funnier after you get a few glasses of wine in you. Come on, toast with me.”
Fiona was tempted to chew on her upper lip, just to do something to exorcise some of the anxiety simmering on her skin, but she didn’t want to mess up her lipstick, so instead, she just nodded and pushed her glass together with Vince’s. “To…whatever,” she announced a little sarcastically.
“To whatever, indeed,” Vince said before tipping his glass back. As he lowered his glass again, Fiona thought she caught some glint of hunger in Vince’s eyes, something feral and primal and desperate. But she shook her head at herself, sipping at her wine and telling herself that it was just a trick of the light. He’s just a normal guy, she said to herself. Okay, a normal guy with a ludicrously nice apartment, but just a guy nonetheless.
For whatever reason, she couldn’t exactly convince herself that was true, but somehow, she didn’t feel scared. Her spine burned with something, but it wasn’t fear or anxiety or even regular-old nervousness anymore. It was desire, a deep, urgent need to know more about the man standing across from her.
She tried as hard as she could to play it cool, acting as disinterested as possible as she sipped at the wine, careful not to get too drunk too quickly. “So, tell me, why do you think your dad named you as his heir instead of Guido?”
Before answering her question, Vince drained the rest of his glass, immediately grabbing the bottle to fill it up again. “I don’t think I can answer that.”
“Why not?” Fiona asked
“Because I don’t know the answer,” Vince said with a wry smile. “I haven’t even talked to my dad in, like, six months, and even then, it was just a two-minute phone conversation. I’m just about the biggest disappointment in Romano family history.”
“Go on,” Fiona said, leaning against the counter behind her back.
Vince smiled again, but it was shyer this time, a little more guarded. “Well, you know. You saw it today. I can’t focus on anything. My mind wanders and goes…other places.” He took another drink of his wine, but he kept his eyes trained on Fiona’s, causing her to feel a little shiver go up her spine. She tried as hard as she could to stay still, not to squirm as a result of his penetrating gaze, but if the smile on his face was any indication, she failed in that endeavor.
“Like what other places? Where does your mind go?” Fiona asked, feeling her heart begin to pound lightly in her throat, a flutter of a heartbeat that she could almost taste against her tongue. She didn’t know why she felt so excited, so on-edge about knowing the private details of Vince Romano’s mind, but for whatever reason, it felt urgent to uncover them.
“Why does it matter?” Vince said flatly, shrugging a little. “They’re the wrong places. That’s the whole point.”
Fiona stared at him a minute before coming up with an excuse for why she needed to know where his mind wandered. “I think maybe I took the wrong approach with you,” Fiona said, scratching her chin in thought. “I should have found out what areas of the business you were interested in first and then taken it from there. It’s really my fault, not yours.”
Vince looked at her skeptically, rolling his eyes a little as he took another sip of his wine. “Women always do that.”
“Do what?” Fiona asked.
“Make excuses for men. Blame themselves. Act like they didn’t do the right thing. Come on, you know that’s bullshit. I wasn’t paying attention. It was disrespectful to you when you were devoting your time trying to help me.”
Fiona laughed a little, then, surprising herself at the loud noise that left her own throat. She recovered quickly, though, clearing her throat and refocusing her attention back down on her wine glass. “Fair enough,” she said. “Still, though, I’d like to know what you find most interesting about the business. Unless you don’t find anything interesting about it, in which case maybe the best course of action would be to turn things over to Guido.”
Vince physically flinched a little at that, his eyebrows furrowing together for a moment before he relaxed his face again, shrugging again like he didn’t care about the family business at all. “Maybe,” he said, but before either of them could say anything else, the door rang again. “Ah, that’ll be Yuri with dinner.”
“Yuri?” Fiona asked.
“My chef,” Vince explained as he headed toward the front door again, ushering his chef inside along with a tray full of food. “You can set up on the dining room table, Yuri, thank you.”
Fiona watched as Vince’s chef set up in the dining room, which was just beyond the kitchen and den. She’d expected a long, thin dining room table, but instead, there was just a small circular one, only fit for two people. Fiona wondered if Vince ever entertained anyone other than dates here, feeling a little thrill of fear and anticipation go up her spine.
“Thank you, Yuri,” Vince said to his chef as he handed him a handful of bills. “I’ll see you later.” The chef left without saying a single word to Fiona, and Vince locked the door after him, making the lump in Fiona’s throat grow. She wasn’t scared, exactly. She knew, in a
kind of instinctive way, that Vince wasn’t going to hurt her. But she still had no way of predicting what he was going to do or say. He was such a mystery, so different from his mother and brother, who were both so easy to read.
“What’s for dinner?” Fiona asked, stepping closer to the food, which smelled amazing. Her stomach growled a little, but if Vince heard the noise, he was too polite to mention it.
“The works,” Vince said with another mischievous grin. “Filet mignon, asparagus, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, dessert…” He trailed off, walking past Fiona to the dining room table and pulling out one chair. “Here, come sit. I’ll bring the bottle of wine over.”
Fiona did as she was instructed, folding her hands neatly in her lap, even though, at this point, her stomach was clawing at its own insides, desperate to dig into something hearty and filling.
A moment later, Vince returned with the bottle of wine, pouring more into Fiona’s glass, even though it was still half-full. He set a plate down in front of her and opened the packages of steaming hot food, placing healthy portions of each option on Fiona’s plate before serving himself and finally sitting down across from her.
Fiona stared down at the food for a long moment, wanting to take a mental picture of this meal before her mouth totally demolished it. She was so excited, her feet started kicking forward like she was a little girl, but then she reared back a second later after she accidentally kicked Vince’s foot, unaware of how close together they were at the small table. “Fuck, sorry,” Fiona said softly, feeling herself blush hotly in embarrassment.
“No worries,” Vince said. “A tiny bit of pain never killed anyone.”
Fiona felt herself smiling, despite the fact that she didn’t even understand what he meant by that. There was just something so charming and reassuring about his warm smile. She couldn’t keep herself from returning the favor, until she was practically grinning at him as she finally dug into her food.
They ate in relative silence for a few minutes, both of them evidently hungry enough to focus on the food for a little while instead of each other, but as time went by and Fiona became gradually looser as a result of the wine, a question from earlier pestered at her, picking away at her brain until she finally opened her mouth to ask it out loud.
“It seemed to bother you earlier when I said Guido might be the better fit for your dad’s position. Why?” Fiona asked.
Vince’s fork froze in midair, suspended between his plate and his mouth. He stared at her for a long moment before answering. “Because it’s not true,” he finally said, clearing his throat before taking another bite.
“Explain,” Fiona said, even though she had a feeling she already knew the answer. After all, she’d spent the last year with Guido breathing down her neck, making disgusting comments whenever she wore anything more revealing than a burlap sack. He clearly wanted to fuck her, which would never happen as long as she lived. At the same time, he was a brutish, cruel bully that liked to torture the servants of the Romano compound, making them do pointless tasks just for his own amusement. Any of these reasons should have been enough by themselves to justify passing Guido over for the don position, but she still wanted Vince’s opinion on the matter.
“Because,” Vince began, chewing slowly in between words, “he’s an idiot. He’s simple-minded.”
That wasn’t exactly the answer she was expecting to hear. “Go on,” Fiona prompted Vince, her curiosity piqued beyond the point of no return. She simply had to know what he meant now.
“You know what I mean,” Vince said, washing down his words with another huge gulp of wine. “He sees what he wants, and he grabs it without thinking. That’s a bad way to do business in the long-term.”
“And you don’t do that?” Fiona asked. She was a little skeptical, honestly, knowing what she did about Vince’s reputation as a playboy in New York. He definitely seemed like the type of man who wouldn’t hesitate to fuck a girl the second he met her.
But Vince shook his head, swallowing heavily to clear his mouth before speaking again. “Not when I have a choice. It’s like…say you have a really cheap, kind of mediocre meal. You might eat it right away, just to fill your stomach and get it over with. And then you forget about it. But with a meal like this…” He paused, gesturing to the food around them, which still made Fiona’s mouth water. “With something like this, it takes time to prepare, and it takes time to appreciate. You don’t rush through it. That way, you can appreciate as much of it as you possibly can. Me? I like to take my time. Do things right. You know what I mean?”
Fiona wasn’t sure that she did know what he meant, except that for some reason, she was finding it hard to breathe. Her heartbeat had traveled up to her ears, now pounding against her temples. She didn’t know if her body was telling her to run away, to get as far away from this man as possible, or if it was saying that she should get closer. All she knew was that her fingers were now trembling, powerfully enough that Vince could probably see her knife shake, despite how tightly she was clutching it.
After a long pause where neither of them spoke, Vince broke the silence again. “What about you? Do you like to go quick…or slow?”
Fiona forced out a chuckle and gave herself a tiny reprieve by taking a long sip of wine, giving her brain enough time to come up with a semi-appropriate response. “With food? It depends on how hungry I am.”
“How hungry are you now?” Vince asked, smiling at her with that hunger in his eyes again, that sharp desire that made him look like his entire face was made out of perfect, unbreakable glass.
“Starving,” Fiona said, her tongue moving of its own accord, speaking that one word without her brain’s consent. Immediately after the word left her mouth, she felt her whole body got hot with fear and shock. It was like some demon had possessed her, telling her what to say and do, responding to some equally devious demon inside of Vince.
Except deep down, she knew that wasn’t true. If there was something inside of her, directing her like a puppet, it was only her soul.
Vince stopped grinning at her, his face turning serious, all of his features turning to stone. “Are you?” he whispered, reaching his hand across the table in Fiona’s direction.
She stared down at it for a long moment, unsure what he was asking her to do. “I—I don’t know,” she stuttered out in response, feeling tiny beads of sweat appear at the base of her neck, right under her hairline.
“I think you do,” Vince said, slowly pulling his hand back and then getting to his feet. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
Fiona felt like she was standing at the edge of a precipice. One wrong move and she could hurtle downward towards the abyss, losing total control over herself. She didn’t know what he wanted to do specifically, but she knew it had nothing to do with the business. If she was smart, if she cared about her job, if she was really the good career-focused, family-centered girl that she claimed to be, she would have already pulled her napkin out of her lap, thanked him for dinner, and walked out. But she didn’t.
Slowly, feeling her entire body shake more intensely with each passing second, she got to her feet. She swallowed around the dryness in her mouth and looked up to face Vince, staring him directly in the eyes. Somehow, that did the trick. His eyes seemed to suck all of the fear out of her body, leaving her buzzing with anticipation. She walked around the table to get closer to him, bending her neck up so she could maintain intense eye contact the whole time. And then she said it—two words, powerful enough to destroy her whole world.
“Show me.”
Chapter Six
Vince felt like his whole body was vibrating, every single skin cell standing on edge, waiting to see what would happen next. Staring down into Fiona’s wide, honest eyes, he was so tempted to reach out and touch her, to grab her hand and tug her along to his playroom, to toss her in headfirst and see how she would react. But no, he had to smart about this. He couldn’t afford to fuck this up. For one thing, he needed Fiona ar
ound to show him the ropes of his father’s business. Nobody else knew the ins and outs of all of the drug and gun deals except her, and it also wasn’t like he could trust anybody else in the inner circle either. She was essential. She was irreplaceable.
But if he was being honest with himself, he knew that wasn’t the real reason he was so nervous about showing her the playroom. There was something he could sense under her skin, like her very blood sang to him, telling him what she really wanted. She was a Sub. He just knew it. He could feel it the same way he felt the wind in his hair or the sun on his skin. There was an animal in her that responded to the call of the beast within his chest, and he wasn’t going to rest until he claimed it.
“Come with me,” he said softly to Fiona, careful not to brush up against her body as he walked past her. When he touched her, he wanted it to be deliberate. Calculated. Controlled. He wasn’t going to do it carelessly.
As he led her down to the hallway behind the dining room, towards the door of his playroom, he felt a huge lump start to form at the base of his throat, right under his pulse. Was he really doing this? After so many months searching for his Sub, did he finally find the right person? Or was he just so desperate, so goddamn hungry for it that he tricked himself into believing it was safe to share his true self with this person he’d just met? Vince knew he was being reckless. Idiotic, really. But he just couldn’t stop himself. His body knew what it wanted, and it was going to see this through to the very end, even if it meant destroying his life in the process.