Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dav

She’d erased herself from my apartment before she’d left. And, honestly, that was almost as bad as her absence. At least if I’d found traces of her somewhere—hair ties on the coffee table, her toothbrush or deodorant in the bathroom, even one piece of forgotten clothing—it wouldn’t feel like the last month had never happened.

But she’d taken absolutely everything. Granted, she hadn’t had much to begin with. And she’d clearly left in the outfit she’d been wearing when she’d shown up all beaten and bloody.

Still, fuck, I hadn’t anticipated the way her cold farewell would gut me.

Enough so that now, three full weeks later, I still felt like someone kicked me in the stomach when I thought about it.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I even found myself over in her neighborhood a time or two, doing shit that any one of my fucking associates or soldiers could handle, just on the offshoot that I might come across her in a way that wouldn’t make her feel like I was trying to push my way into her life.

But no luck.

I knew she was around.

The guys talked about seeing her all the time, about how she never seemed to be sleeping anymore, about how she claimed she ‘twisted’ her wrist when she’d tripped and tried to catch herself. Like Cinna was some clumsy lead in a fucking romantic comedy.

I mean, I was glad she was still wearing the brace, though. I figured her stubborn ass would have taken it off the second she got home.

I couldn’t stop from wondering about her ribs. Were they better? Had I screwed up their progress by fucking her too hard?

“Did I lose you?” Elian asked, making me jolt back to the moment, finding him looking at me, brows scrunched.

“For a second, yeah,” I admitted, since there was no way to claim I’d been paying attention. “What were you saying?”

“I was asking if you’d heard anything about the Russians making some big moves lately,” he said.

We weren’t the only organized crime in the city. The Italian mafia might be, you know, the most notorious. All those flashy movies about us. All the documentaries where some washed-up cops and prosecutors claimed they’d chased us all out of the city. Someone was always running their mouth about the Cosa Nostra.

But we were just one example.

You had the Japanese Yakuza. The Chinese Triad. The Irish mob. Eastern European crews. And, of course, the Russian Bratva.

We’d been dealing with a pesky Irish crew for a while in our area. It was something Renzo was always keeping an eye on, always checking the pulse of.

But so far, the Russians seemed to stay off of our turf.

“No, I haven’t heard anything,” I admitted. “But I haven’t been doing much listening either,” I added. “They still doing the massage parlor shit?” I asked, thinking of the buildings with their innocent-looking spa pictures on the windows. But if you looked at their website, it was full of “massage therapists” who all looked like they could be contestants on some Russian beauty pageant.

As a whole, I had no problem with the world’s oldest profession, with modern day variations of sex work. You know, where women are in control and shit is safe. I just didn’t like the predatory shit with abusive pimps that beat and drugged up their girls.

I had no idea what kind of operation the Bratva ran, since they were every bit—if not more so—tight-lipped as the mafia was about their dealings.

But if they were getting bigger and more powerful around here, I could only hope that they weren’t doing all the harmful shit.

“What kind of moves?” I asked. “Into other lines of work?”

“That’s the thing. I can’t get a read on it. And Renzo wants me to look into it. But if I start sticking my nose in their business…”

“They’ll be quick to cut it off for you,” I finished.

“Exactly,” he agreed, nodding to the guy behind the counter, who was bringing over some of the order he’d placed before we’d gotten there. He’d probably bought the place out of chicken, meatball, and eggplant parm hot subs.

It was the first get-together at Renzo’s since the last one I’d been to, lying to everyone I was supposed to be honest with. For a woman who wanted nothing to do with me.

The fucked up part of it was, though, the main reason I wanted to go was to see her.

“Can I get you anything else?” a woman asked, appearing out of nowhere behind the counter, flashing a megawatt smile at me.

“That’s it,” I said, taking one of the boxes as Elian passed the cash to the man, then grabbed the other. “What?” I asked, feeling Elian’s gaze on my profile as we moved out onto the street.

“That woman was eye-fucking you, and you didn’t even notice, let alone get her number,” he said, brows scrunched.

I’d barely even clocked her existence, to be honest.

“We have to get the food to Renzo’s place while it’s still hot,” I said, shrugging it off.

“I once saw you jump out of a moving cab to talk to a woman sitting in an outdoor cafe.”

She’d been a fun weekend.

I likely still had her number somewhere.

And what I should have been doing was finding it, calling her, and getting lost in another woman.

Somehow, though, the idea held absolutely no appeal.

I don’t think I’d ever in my adult life gone this long without spending a night with a woman. Maybe that explained how restless and unfocused I’d been.

“Just wasn’t interested,” I said. “She wasn’t my type.”

“First, she was beautiful,” Elian said, rolling his eyes. “Second, woman is your type.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. All shapes, sizes, ages, I wasn’t picky. I’d always been more drawn to energy than just looks anyway.

“Are you… seeing someone?” Elian asked as I started walking, hoping he would take the hint and let it drop.

“Me?” I asked, shooting him a raised brow.

“I know. I normally wouldn’t even consider asking you that,” he said. “But something is… off. Even thought so at the last gathering.”

“I’m not seeing anyone,” I said, glad when we got to Renzo’s building, knowing there would be others inside to talk to who wouldn’t be asking me questions I didn’t want to answer.

My gaze scanned the crowd as we moved into the apartment, telling myself I was just getting a feel for who was around, but I knew I was looking for Cinna.

But she wasn’t there.

Not as the music started and most of the food was eaten. Not even when it seemed every other capo had arrived.

Panic was something that slithered up my spine, then wrapped around my throat, tightening with each passing moment.

Had something else happened to her?

Had she gone after these fucks and gotten hurt again?

Or worse?

All because my fucking pride wouldn’t let me reach out first, wouldn’t allow me to show up at her place and check on her?

I was twenty minutes deep in berating myself when suddenly the door opened, and there she was.

Just seeing her was a punch to the gut, my gaze helpless but to scan over her. First, looking to make sure she was okay. Second, of course, just to linger, my mind flashing with memories of her under me, of her over me.

She was dressed like she usually was—black jeans that hugged her curves, her scuffed black boots, the ones without the heels, and some sort of simple black shirt under her bomber jacket.

Unlike me, her gaze didn’t move around the crowd. And I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she didn’t want to see me, didn’t want to lock eyes, to be forced to make her way over toward me, to try to force our way through a conversation that didn’t give us away.

She shrugged off her jacket, hanging it on the overflowing rack by the door, before making a beeline for the bar.

“I’ll be back. Need a refill,” I said to the small circle I was standing in. None of whom I’d been paying attention to, so they wouldn’t even miss me when I didn’t show back up.

“Lore, you magnificent creature,” I said, moving in at her side as she also made her way to the bar. “Can I make you something to drink?” I asked, knowing our boss’s wife liked her drinks fruity enough to mask the taste of the alcohol.

“Sure,” she said, shooting me a smile as I moved behind the bar where Cinna was finishing a big pour of whiskey.

Which was how I saw them at first because her hand was wrapped around the bottle.

Her knuckles were all busted up.

I mean, it wasn’t rare to see a capo with some minor injuries on them. We still got our hands dirty when a situation called for it. Even Renzo himself partook in violence on occasion, even though he could easily outsource that. But hers were particularly gnarly. Like she’d been working someone over for a long time.

“Someone dare to call you pretty again?” I asked, glancing down at her hand pointedly, but trying to keep things light.

I wished the light was better in the apartment. I wanted to inspect her face, to see if she was covering up any other injuries with makeup.

“Oh, geez. Do you need some first aid supplies?” Lore asked as she noticed her knuckles as Cinna raised her glass to drink.

“I cleaned them earlier,” Cinna said, and it was fucking pathetic how I felt myself lean toward the sound of her voice.

“Oh, good,” Lore said as I finished making her drink. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages,” she went on. “I texted you,” she added, the tone a bit pointed for someone as shy as Lore.

The two women were as polar opposite as you could get. Where the boss’s wife was all sweet, unsure of herself, and shy, Cinna was all hardness and confidence, and I’d never seen her struggle to assert herself. But, somehow, at the beginning of Lore and Renzo’s marriage, she and Cinna had formed a sort of older-sister, younger-sister bond.

That was clearly strained recently.

It was one thing for Cinna to be avoiding me. It felt like a complete other for her to pull away from Lore.

“You did. Sorry. I’ve been… busy,” Cinna said. “We can get coffee this week,” she added.

“I promise I won’t make you order for me,” Lore said, liking her coffee sweet and full of shit that Cinna would find embarrassing to order.

“Sure you will,” Cinna said, this time shooting her friend a small smile.

“Are the girls having a meeting?” Saff asked, moving up between the other two women.

“Yep. Just the girls,” I agreed, getting an eye roll from Saff.

“Did you like the book?” Lore asked Saff, making my brows raise. That was something I didn’t know about the young, fiery capo. She liked to read?

“Look, Lore,” Saff started, sucking in a breath. “While I appreciated all of the many vivid sex scenes,” she went on, making Lore’s cheeks go scarlet, “it needed a lot more violence. I mean, I’m sorry, these are warring clans doing constant battle, and no one got beheaded? Get real.”

Lore let out a tinkering little laugh. “Well, I will keep an eye out for books with a lot more torture for you.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Saff agreed. “I mean, if the main characters still want to have many detailed sexcapades, maybe while covered in the blood of their enemies… oh, who are you raising a brow at?” Saff asked, looking at me. “Like you’re not the biggest whore in this room.”

I wanted to look at Cinna when Saff said that, but I didn’t dare. Not when Saff was clearly a lot better at reading me than she had any right to be.

“I heard he ignored a beautiful woman flirting with him at the pizza place tonight,” Lore said, excited to be privy to some gossip.

Fucking Elian.

He and the boss’s wife were close.

“You?” Saff asked, eyes going wide.

“We had to get the food back here,” I said, waving it off.

“Um, didn’t I hear a story about you being three hours late to an important meeting because you were banging two women in an alley?” Saff asked.

Christ.

The last thing I wanted right that moment was to be talking about the women in my past with Cinna standing right there. Not that she didn’t already know. But I don’t know, it felt different now.

The problem was, I leaned into those stories when someone brought them up. That was what people expected of me. So I couldn’t just shrug it off.

“It was the back of a van in an alley,” I clarified.

But as soon as I started speaking, Cinna turned and wandered off.

Some part of me wanted to believe it was because she didn’t want to hear me talk about other women. The other part, though, was worried she didn’t want to hear my voice at all.

I was trapped there with Saff and Lore for a while. Maybe that was for the best. It kept me from following after Cinna like a lost fucking puppy.

But when I saw her pull her phone out of her pocket and dip into Renzo’s office for some quiet, I went ahead and excused myself from the women who were in a debate about some TV show, the two of them disagreeing about the love interest, Lore loving them, and Saff insisting that the heroine belonged with someone as equally as badass as she was… like the villain of the show.

They didn’t even know I’d left.

I tried not to look suspicious as I made a beeline for the office, pushing the door the rest of the way open, then closing and locking it before Cinna could even look up from her phone and notice me.

I moved in on her, grabbing her phone, setting it on the desk, then reaching behind her to grab a handful of her hair at the base of her neck, angling her head up at me.

Up this close, there was no way for her to hide the way her eyes blazed.

“What are you doing?” she said, trying for snippy, but her voice already sounded thick with desire.

My lips crashed on hers in response, hard and hungry and as desperate as I’d been feeling for weeks, thanks to her.

My teeth nipped her lower lip, dragging a low moan out of her as I backed her up until she slammed into the wall.

My free hand moved out, pressing between her thighs.

“There are people ten feet away,” she insisted, breathless, needy.

“Then you’ll have to be quiet,” I said, sealing my lips over hers again.