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“TELL ME ONE FACT ABOUT yourself.” The clock’s ticks and tocks filled the space between us. With warm colors and a variety of seating, the room was supposed to be comfortable. Too bad the atmosphere hadn’t gotten the memo; the air was thick and cloying, as though every lie told here had been trapped for eternity.
“I have an addictive personality.” Sasha Taylor Ph.D. couldn’t stop a spark of surprise from lighting in her eyes, and to hide the human reaction, she dropped her attention to my file resting on her lap.
“Alcohol?” she asked. I gave my head a shake. “Drugs?” Might’ve been easier. “Women?” Woman. Another shake, but, this time, I smiled.
I wasn’t a good man, and I worked for even worse. However, I’d learned at too young of an age that the world wasn’t made up of black and white. Sometimes, one became so tainted they couldn’t get back to the light, and other times, the dark just felt right. Even if the latter didn’t apply to me, I would never jeopardize what I had built. I’d worked too hard to get here to ever give it up for a woman. Especially one who dressed like Britney Spears’ and Kurt Cobain’s love child.
She was right—in the usual case, anyway—but there was nothing usual about the irritating situation that had put me here. I had a close relationship with the cold, in the most literal sense; now, however, I felt the furthest from it. A fire burned in my chest, licking at the edges of what soul I had left.
I hated the woman for making my life hell for years, but damn, if I didn’t want to touch her, to fuck the memory of every other man out of her mind until she was half as obsessed as I was, until she’d never forget my name again for the rest of her life.
“And when disorder comes into your life?” A vision of thick hair—sometimes dark, sometimes blond—smooth olive skin, bare feet, and everything forbidden flashed before my eyes. The fire in my chest burned hotter, stealing my goddamn breath.
“But what if it’s not fixable?” she pushed, jumping to her feet, my file in a loose grip by her side. I paused with one hand on the doorknob and glanced at my wrist, at the elastic tie hidden beneath my cuff. A sardonic feeling pulled in my chest. “That, Sasha, is when I obsess.”
I’D FOUND BLISS IN A rolled-up dollar bill and white powder. Sometimes, it was euphoric—blood-pumping, heart-racing, top-of-the-world euphoria. Like sex, without the emptiness. Sometimes, it was a means to an end. One line, and every insecurity, every bruise, faded to memory. One line, and I’d be free.
His voice was professional and disinterested, though an elusive timbre intertwined each word: an abrasive edge, like a deep, dark sin one kept locked in the pits of their soul. His next word—Gianna—touched the back of my neck, a brush of steel wings against sensitive skin. I wiped the feeling away with a hand, pulling my hair over one shoulder.
Steel bars trailed his image as he passed each cell, his eyes averted. His stride was effortless. The set of his shoulders, the relaxed carriage of his arms at his sides—the stance oozed confidence and devastation, as though brick and mortar and female hearts could turn to ash at his single command. His gaze flicked up and caught mine, heavy and emotionless, as if he was looking straight through me.
Nevertheless, the first place he looked as he reached my cell was straight into my eyes. Heartless. Invasive. Blue. His gaze burned, as if I was standing in front of an open freezer on a summer day, hot and cold air meeting like tendrils of vapor around me.
His dark hair was shaved short on the sides, faded with an expert hand. Broad shoulders and crisp black lines, his suit molded his toned body. Control. Precision. He exuded it, like the colorful stripes on a venomous snake.
Symmetrical, and flawlessly proportioned, not even his cold expression cut from stone could mar it. The second look showed the type of body women groaned over, and the third revealed intellect in every move he made, as though everyone else was a chess piece, and he was musing over how to play each one of us.
My skin felt soft to the touch, but twenty-one years had hardened it beneath the surface. Their words, jeers, and whistles bounced off into the abyss, where bruises went to die.
“It would be nice to know where I’m going ahead of time, stronzo.” “I didn’t realize you needed time to process a simple direction,” he responded, and then that deep, dark timbre came to the surface. “Call me an asshole again, Russo, and I promise, you won’t like it.”
The bite of his words touched my back, and just then, I hated the man a little for knowing Italian.
“Why am I not handcuffed?” I asked, watching two officers escort a shackled prisoner out the front doors. He tapped a finger on the counter in a rhythm of three—tap, tap, tap—and side-eyed me, his stare filling with a trace of dry amusement. “Did you want to be?” His words were laced with deep insinuation and intimacy, and I suddenly knew two things: He was an asshole, and he had handcuffed a woman in bed.
“I could run, you know,” I said, planning to do no such thing. “Try it.” It was a dare and a warning.
“Would you feel good about yourself? Catching a girl half your size?” “Yes.” There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in his reply.
He side-eyed me. “Nervous?” “Feds don’t make me nervous, Allister. They give me a rash.”
“If you dressed a little less like a hooker, the cop who pulled you over might not have searched you.” I pulled the bubblegum off my finger with my teeth and gave him a smile. “If you looked a little less like an anal-retentive asshole, you might get laid every once in a while.”
A muscle in his jaw tightened, and a small amount of satisfaction filled me. “Is that why you married your husband?” His gaze met mine. “Money?”
“Are you at least a faithful gold-digger?” Gold-digger? “Like I ever had a choice in the matter! Vaffanculo a chi t’è morto!” The look he gave me seared, dark and hot.
His finger tap, tap, tapped on the steering wheel. “Who taught you to drive? Doesn’t the Cosa Nostra like to keep their women dumb and docile?” “Obviously not, because my husband taught me.”
Venom coated each sweetly-spoken word like candy. “Tell me, Agent Allister, when did you realize you weren’t human?” The subtle glow of amusement lit in his eyes. “The day I was born, sweetheart.”
“Go to hell, Allister.” “Been there, Russo, and I’m not impressed.”
BLACKNESS. INKY AND STAGNANT, IT dripped into my subconscious. It was often an escape from reality; a comfort in the madness. But this time, it whispered to me—telling me not to wake up now, not to wake up ever.
I viewed it in snapshots. My dress on the floor. A slit of light through the blinds. Naked skin. Mine. His. I pulled the sheets closer as a deep sickness churned in my stomach.
Whore. It didn’t happen. Lie, the blackness whispered. I felt the imprints all over me—hands, teeth, lips—crawling over my skin and into my soul with claws made of heartbreak and metal. Opening my eyes, I stared at a used condom on the floor.
The images from yesterday came back with a vengeance. Our room. My husband. Her. Someone I had considered family. I’d always known there were other women . . . but why her? Betrayal cut through my chest, a fresh and burning wound. Tears ran over my lips, tasting salty on my tongue. “It wasn’t enough,” I whispered. I’m never enough.
I was in love with my husband, a man who didn’t love me. Maybe I could blame Agent Allister for putting the idea in my head one year ago, but somehow, the pain had led me here. To my husband’s son.
“How did this happen?” “Really? You need me to explain it to you?” “This isn’t a joke, Ace.” “Not laughing, Gianna.”
“Did my papà do that to you?” I licked the cut on my bottom lip. “I threw a vase at his head and called him a cheating pig.” Ace made a small noise of amusement. “Of course you did.”
Agent Allister was right now. Hit had become hits, and for some reason, I despised the man, as if he’d set all this in motion. It’d been one year since I’d seen him, but the hatred I felt for him still lay close to the surface.
“You look like your papà.” The words escaped me, soft, yet also so harsh in the sunlit room. The sins of the night never did sound so good in the day. He blew out a breath of smoke, his eyes lighting with a flicker of dry humor. “Jesus.” He shook his head. “Is that what brought you here last night?”
A box of chocolates tied with an apologetic red bow sat on our bed when I got home that morning. The same bed my husband had fucked my best friend on from behind. I climbed into the sheets and ate every one of them.
Under different circumstances, such as a benefit for sea turtles—my second favorite charity—I would tell him to go fuck himself. But, the truth was, I loathed cancer, and my husband had a lot of money.
“I do not clean.” “Exactly,” I muttered, walking past her with a loose black top cut off at the midriff and a matching high-waisted skirt I’d made from an old Nirvana t-shirt. With thigh-high boots, it would be perfect.
Ashy-blond hair straight from a bottle dripped water down olive skin. I met my reflection’s gaze, my soul staring back. You can always tell by the eyes.
I was numb in the heart, but trepidation flickered to life in the center.
I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to feel. And those two always came together.
My glass halted at my lips. Broad shoulders. Black suit. Smooth lines. Blue. Something in my chest crackled and sparked, like a firecracker on hot pavement. Agent Allister stood inside the doorway with a blonde by his side. She held onto his elbow, and he held my gaze. You can always tell by the eyes.
His were an ocean beneath ice, where nothing but the darkest creatures could thrive, while mine were a wide open plain. He saw everything. Every bruise. Every scar. Every slap against my face.
“Of course I do. You bet against my horse and lost, naturally.” “That, I did.” He dropped his gaze to the floor, clearing his throat with a smile. “But I’m talking about me getting tossed and then asking you to run away with me to Tahiti. And you saying no because you’d already been there, and Bora Bora was next on your list.” On cue, everyone laughed.
As if to prove something to myself, I waltzed up to the table and stopped close enough beside him my arm brushed his jacket. He glanced down at me before looking back to the middle-aged woman he spoke with like I was merely a part of the décor.
He shoved the clipboard in my direction. “Fill out the form and shut your mouth before I have to arrest you for tax evasion.” “Seems a little counterproductive, considering you’d have to let me out as soon as my husband finds out.”
“He’s my husband,” I replied, as if that said everything, when, really, it said nothing at all.
“You look like you got lost on your way to a grunge concert.” “Fortunately, no,” I said, filling out the form. “I would be pissed if I missed it.”
“What did you do to your hair?” “What?” My lips formed a pout. “You don’t like it? I did it for you. I heard you like blondes.” “You been thinking about me?” he drawled. “Every day, every hour. You’re always there, like a fungus, or an incessant bug swarming around my head.”
Oooop
