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“Sometimes the cheapest things are the most valuable.”
Nicolas opened his car door, calling out, “By the way, it’s Nico. Nobody fucking calls me Nicolas.” As he backed out of the drive, I reminded myself to keep calling him Nicolas.
“Don’t you look as beautiful as always,” he told me, giving me a kiss on each cheek and lingering too long. “Demasiado hermosa para las palabras.”
I was a moth moving toward the flame, until I stood close enough for my wings to ignite. I held my breath when his hand
And, honestly, I never was that great at sharing. I’d have to kill all of them and I already had enough on my plate.
I’d imagined those little pink fingernails around a specific part of my body, rather than holding a smoke.
History, facts, they made me feel better in a time of doubt, because someday I would be nothing but a memory, just like them.
The kind of laugh the walls don’t forget.
I played Death.
I had always appreciated sad endings. I was a realist, not a romantic.
“Usually, when someone wants something, they appease the one they’re trying to persuade. A basis of negotiating.” He told me this like I was stupid, and I flushed in irritation.
She was supposed to be wallpaper, but I couldn’t stop my gaze from finding her whenever she was in the room.
“Which hand did he use?”
However, now it had become a promise to myself to make restitution for my mistake. And I wouldn’t take it off until I had.
If I ever cursed—really cursed—it would be to describe how handsome he was.
With a small tug on my ponytail, my head tilted to the side and his lips brushed the hollow behind my ear. “Tell me what to fucking do again.”
Zippo lighter with an ace of spades on the side,
The soft clicks of my heels in tune with the saxophone’s lilt was hypnotic.
I took it as easily as he took my sanity.
gray suit, white undershirt, and black tie. He looked like a million bucks, just as he always did.
I glanced at Christian’s face and then paused. Because holy handsome. Dark hair, piercing blue eyes, with soft yet angled features that were the epitome of masculine magnetism. But there was something cold about him. Maybe it was how
watch fit his wrist, how straight his tie was, how his suit was pressed, and how confident his stance was. The man was a perfectionist—I’d bet money on it. When he smiled, the cold look transformed into charm, if not a bit indifferent. He was so unbelievably handsome I found a blush warming my cheeks.
“I swear to God, Elena, if I find out you’ve let some man touch you, I will deliver his hands to you in a box.” I swallowed. “And I do not. Fucking. Bluff.”
With Christian, the darkness lingered under the cold, whereas Nicolas wore his on his sleeve. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
This probably wasn’t doing anything for the women’s movement, but there really wasn’t one of those in the Cosa Nostra.
“First man I killed, I shoved an ace of spades down his throat.” I swallowed as he took a step back and walked away from me. “Name’s been with me ever since.”
I didn’t look at her, but I felt her sad smile. “Because you’ll fall in love with her,” she said. “And she won’t love you back.”
The soft lighting sparkled off the glass view of the city, and Nicolas’s black-suited form only highlighted it as he stood near the bar.
Nicolas glanced at me with a half-lidded amber gaze that always sent my pulse racing.
“Every time you’ve assumed, you’ve been wrong.”
He even laughed like an Adonis.
I seemed to be a popular subject, and I didn’t believe it was for any good reason.
“Haven’t you heard? Assuming will only get you killed.”
Her hesitant gaze ran to Nicolas and Christian, who were the two most ungentlemanly men I’d ever met—the former for pushing me into the pool, and the latter for not helping me out.
“Does he usually push girls into pools?” She laughed, sitting up. “No, definitely not. He would have to care to do that.”
“Hit a woman in front of me and you won’t be alive to do it again,” Nico growled.
I had never stood up to my papà before. However, I knew my sister; she was tough but gullible. She wanted to believe in her fairy-tale, so she would. And it would be the death of her prince.
My jaw ticked. I did not like being told what I couldn’t fucking have. “I don’t think you get to tell me what’s on the table, Salvatore. You fucked me over.”
“Elena isn’t a possibility, even if I wanted to give her to you.” His gaze came to me, showing me that he didn’t. “She’s engaged.”
I had never wanted a husband like him. He was everything my body thought it needed and everything my brain knew it didn’t. I would lose myself in Nicolas Russo, and I wouldn’t know where to come up for air. My heart would fall for him and he would crush it beneath his feet. I could live a loveless life. I couldn’t survive a broken one.
This man had changed roles from a tempting someone I couldn’t have, to owner, lover, and fiancé. The whiplash had given me no time to act but on instinct alone. I wanted him, but at the unknown, a cool breath of fear dripped into my subconscious.
There was only one way to protect myself in this situation. I couldn’t lose myself in this man, when I could already feel the pull of how easy it would be. I needed to maintain my autonomy, my distance. My heart didn’t need any more incentive to fall into his clutches. I knew I couldn’t keep sex from him, knew I wasn’t that strong, but I didn’t have to make love to him.
So I could only give him a part of me—the only one he would want—and hope I would survive.
You can only sink or swim. You can’t swim in the underworld, but I’d always heard drowning was the best way to go.
“I said I’ll never hurt you, Elena, but if I find out you’ve touched another man, there is nothing in this world that could save him.”
She tasted better than hustling.
Because innocent or not, if that man wasn’t dead and he crossed my path, his lifeless body would be unrecognizable.
THE TOUCH WAS INNOCENT. HIS hands were braced beside mine on the countertop, grazing my own, yet the warmth that flooded me felt like the letting of sunlight into a dusty, dark room.
“I’m not going to run away.” I did that once and it wasn’t liberating; it was the biggest mistake I’d ever made. His gaze was a lit match in a pitch-black room. “There’s nowhere you could go that I couldn’t find you.”
