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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.
The fire in my chest burned hotter, stealing my goddamn breath. Where pain usually hit me like the high of a drug, whenever Gianna Russo—or, sorry, now Marino—was involved, it felt like the comedown. Nauseating. It felt fucking bitter.
My response held the slightest clench of my teeth. “I fix it.” Standing, I buttoned my jacket and headed to the door. “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.”
“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.” The corner of his lips tipped up. “Glad to hear there’s some hope for me.”
“Your stepson is older than you,” he commented. “Must be strange.” “Not really.” “I imagine you have more in common with him than his father.” “You imagine wrong,” I responded, bored of this conversation and bored of this man. This was the worst punishment. I’d never touch coke again. “You lived under the same roof as him for a year. You’re close to the same age. If you don’t have more in common mentally, then surely physically.” I laughed. Nico and me? Not in a million years. Unfortunately, at the time, I hadn’t known it would only take one.
His parting words were short and apathetic. “If you get caught with blow on you again, I won’t save you. I’ll let you rot in a jail cell.” He wasn’t lying. Next time, he didn’t save me.
I turned to him, expecting to see triumph, but as I met his gaze, my heart stilled before tugging in an unnatural way. There was something dark and genuine behind his eyes, and I didn’t realize until later that he was letting me see it. The steady drip, drip, drip of blood. The clanks of metal and fire that forged him. He was up to his neck in blood.
“What is it, Gianna?” he bit out. “Birth control pills.” “Why do you have them?” “Birth control.” Antonio’s eyes blazed with anger, like two flames in the dark. We were devotedly Catholic, and birth control was frowned upon by the Church. But I knew what bothered him even more was that he wanted another child. Another son to rule his empire. “How long?” I looked him straight in the eye. “Since the day we were married.”
I grasped the railing and looked to the sky. My breath came out steady. The knot in my chest loosened. The tremor in my veins became the hot buzz of an electric line. And then I did it for everyone who couldn’t. I did it for every bruise. Every scar. Every slap against my face. Most of all, I did it because I wanted to. I screamed.
I shook off a shiver. “Will you avenge my honor, Officer?” “Not sure I see a point when you don’t have much left.” I pouted. “And just when I was beginning to think you cared.” “Don’t hold your breath, sweetheart.”
He took his glass back. He would always turn it to drink from a different spot other than where my lips had touched, but tonight, he drank straight from where my pink lipstick left a mark. It sent a strange rush of heat to my stomach.
I’d climbed my way out of hell, had seen it, tasted it, felt it, and the only thing that got me through had been dreaming about revenge and everything I would have on the other side. I’d planned my future out, from the kind of woman I’d marry to the type of hardwood in my apartment. Nowhere in those dreams had I ever planned for a Gianna Marino.
“Why no kissing?” Her uneasy movements had paused, her curiosity unwilling to let it go. She thought she’d found something, a piece of the puzzle that made me. In truth, she was probably close. If she pulled at this thread hard enough, she might free another. “Lipstick,” I said. “I hate it.” Specifically, red. A heart-shaped stain on my cheek. The red imprint left on the edge of a dirty glass or a lit cigarette lying on cracked pavement. The twisting of a little black container. I fucking hated all of it.
“We’re at the end of our meeting, but I have one more question. What is your earliest memory of the number three?” Knock, knock, knock. The knocking reverberated in my mind, three heavy thumps I’d still have been able to hear even if I placed my hands over my ears. “They always knocked three times,” I said. “Who?” “The men who made me.”
The roll of my hips, the glide of my hands in my hair—they moved to a different rhythm than the beat. Slower. Sexier. Like a caress of silk sheets against naked skin. Holding his stare, I lip-synced a line of the song. The words poured from my red-painted mouth, sensual exhales between parted lips. His eyes darkened. I’d only been messing with him, but somewhere in the middle of it, my body had grown confused. The blood in my veins heated. My nipples tightened. Sweat glistened like drops of oil on my skin, tickling as it ran between my breasts. His gaze drifted to my photo on the wall behind
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However, betrayal still stung, and Allister was cutting that wound open to bleed. I choked on my fury. “I hate you.” “I think about you.” Those four rough words filled the air between us, settling to the floor with a stillness that rocked me to my core. My blood cooled as silence came out to touch me with cold fingers.
“There’s your fucking secret.” Downing his drink, he dropped it on the bar before heading to the door. He stopped with a hand on the knob and turned to me. “You want to know why I don’t touch you?” I shook my head. “Because if I did, I wouldn’t stop. Not until I’d snuffed out that pretty fire in your eyes.” His gaze flashed. “Don’t shut yourself in a room with me again, Gianna.” He left, but his warning stayed behind.
Sydney got her wish. She didn’t have to live without him. On my twenty-third birthday, I became a widow of one.
A brunette had a hand on Allister’s chest as she stood on her tiptoes to say something in his ear. It wasn’t an odd scene—women were always all over him—but it was rare when he acknowledged them, unless they were one of his socialite dates. The sight that sent an odd sensation tightening in my stomach was his hand coming up to rest on her hip, in the most natural way, like he’d done it before. He was
“If you fuck my relationship with Allister, Gianna . . .” I frowned. “What do you mean? I thought he was just one of your men?” He laughed. “He’s his own man. It took my father a long time to convince him to work with us, and if you’ve fucked it up I’m gonna strangle the shit out of you.”
His gaze met mine. Blue. Cool silk sheets beneath a darkening sky. Although, there was something else. A flicker of something bright and full of life. Like the reflection in a neurotic person’s eyes. It was madness. It was obsession.
His grip on my wrists tightened, and my eyes grew half-lidded from the pressure. So, this was what it felt like to be touched by him . . . Addictive.
I wasn’t like any of the women I’d seen him with. He preferred classy, composed, and docile. I was the opposite. He wanted me, and he hated it. I was his own little game. If he touched me, he’d lose. I suddenly knew, this was a game I wanted to play with everything in me.
I stepped on each of his shoes and then rose to my tiptoes. With a shot of vodka on my tongue, my lips hovered close to his. Close enough to kiss. Close enough to bite and lick. My breasts brushed his chest and heat shot straight to my core. When his lips parted, I let the liquor trickle from my mouth to his. Pure lust erupted inside me so violently I grew dizzy. I ran my hands up his abs, curled my fingers into his chest, as if I could claw my way through his shirt. He was so hard and warm, and smelled so good I could get lost in him.
“You’re playing with fire, sweetheart.” His voice was black velvet set out to freeze.
His gaze was so cold it gave me chills, and in some careless, terrifying manner I’d never seen from the strait-laced fed, he dropped his tumbler to the floor. It shattered across the tile, sending a tremor through me. I eyed the shards of glass and muttered, “That’s going to be a mess to clean up.” “You couldn’t survive me, Gianna.” It was just a statement of fact. “Nothing fragile ever does.”
My eyes must have conveyed my thoughts, because his gaze darkened. “I’m not one of your admirers. I’m not going to hold my dick and pine over you, just waiting for the day you might choose me. If I fuck you, Gianna, nobody else ever will.” My stomach dropped, and I almost choked on my next breath. “If you don’t get your ass out of my apartment while you still can”—his voice drifted to a dark rasp—“there’s no going back from this.”
My blood was on fire. He’d never looked at me this way, with such a soft, consuming desire in his eyes, like he’d never seen a woman before. Like I was everything. It terrified me.
I gasped as he pulled my head back by my hair, pressed his lips to my neck, and made a wild, rough sound of anger, like he’d just been forced to surrender a hard-fought fight. “Play with fire, sweetheart,” he rasped, “you’re gonna get burned.”
But then he dropped to his haunches in front of me, ran a hand across my cheek, and kissed me. Shock and warmth erupted in my chest. I moaned, wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and climbed onto him until I sat on his thighs. He tasted so good, so addictive. And I savored every lick and dip, every press of our lips. He kissed me without any reservation, like he had a right to, like I was his
“Allister,” I begged. “I just had my tongue inside you,” he said, annoyed. “You can start calling me by my first name.” I opened my mouth. Closed it. His eyes darkened as he took in my expression. “You forgot my name.”
He stopped in front of me. “We’ll talk about this when I get back.” “This?” “Us.”
He ran a thumb across my cheek. “You won’t forget me.” It was an order, but a tiny amount of vulnerability showed through. It warmed my chest. My hair was a mess, the hair tie slipping halfway down my ponytail. He pulled it from the messy locks and then put it in his pocket. “How could someone ever forget your face?” I said.
He slipped a business card into my hand. “Call this number if you need anything.” “Sure thing, Officer.” He smacked me lightly on the ass and walked out of the room. I later did my homework. His name was Christian. But it didn’t matter. It would be three more years before I’d ever see him again.
“She loved you so very much.” Tears and a smile touched the nurse’s voice. “You were everything to her.” Pink church dress. Her smile. A hand on my heart. “Dance to this . . . whenever and however you want.” Pain, raw and angry, escaped from its cage deep inside and grabbed me by the throat.
Numbness had spread through my veins and settled in my heart. I sat with my arms around my knees, staring ahead. I somehow knew Allister wouldn’t come, but I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want anyone to save me. Maybe this was where I needed to be. Nonetheless, I was escorted out of the precinct thirty minutes later and straight to Ace’s club.
“I’d fucking leave you there if I didn’t think you’d crack like an egg the first time someone interrogates you. You need a damn therapist, Gianna,” he bit out, running a hand through his hair. “The shit you went through . . . Your papà makes me fucking sick. I wanted to end him when I was ten years old.”
Our fathers had been family friends. I’d known Nico since I was five, and he six. Maybe it was the perfect romantic story—Nico had seen most of my twisted little pieces. But I could never love Nico. He hadn’t saved me. “I know what you’re going to say, but I have to ask it: Would you like to go home to Chicago?” I shook my head. “Then your single life is over.” His gaze met mine. “Pick one of my men, Gianna, or I will do it for you.” One week later, I became Mrs. Richard Marino.
Sasha opened her mouth, closed it. “You want something you can’t have.” The words poured from her lips in thought and disbelief, like she didn’t believe I couldn’t have whatever I wanted. Her and me both. I rolled the agitation off my shoulders. “I wanted something I could have.” “Interesting use of past tense. Maybe you don’t want it because you’ve always known you could never obtain it.” I let out a sardonic breath, hating that Sasha was fucking right.
I’d always set Gianna on an unreachable shelf, and not even because she was newly married to Antonio and oblivious to me when I first met her, but because there was something genuine and astute about her. She’d see me for what I was really was. Dirty. Stained. She’d see everything I’d tried to obliterate about my childhood. And I fought hard to escape my past. I refused to be dragged back.
I should be relieved she was out of reach once again, but, with the recent memory of her lying on my bed, finally staring up at me with sweet, submissive eyes, I didn’t feel any form of respite. It...
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My business overseas had taken longer than I thought, but one month shouldn’t be long enough to come home and find Gianna fucking married. Hearing the news, nonchalantly, from Ace on the phone had felt like a blow to the stomach. It stole my fucking breath, turned my blood to fire. I’d lost it. I’d destroyed every goddamn computer in that room.
She hadn’t called me when she was in trouble. I bet I hadn’t even crossed her mind. She’d been under my skin for years, I knew more about her than I ever should, and I wasn’t even on her radar.
“They have a word for what you’ve described, Christian.” I paused, my hand on the doorknob. “Obsession.” A corner of my lips lifted as I stepped out of the room and shut the door behind me.
“What?” Luca answered. I swallowed. “My light bulb burnt out.” He was quiet for a moment. “I thought you were over that shit.” “No, I was just high.” “So save me the trouble and do a line.” “My therapist says drugs don’t fix problems, they only prolong them.” Now, I only used blow when the loneliness seemed darker than the guilt of a high.
“Ames Clinical Center,” a deep voice read from the leaflet. “Why do I feel like you’d be right at home there?” My heart hitched, stopping my breath. The sun was heavy and hot, but it wasn’t why my skin suddenly ignited from the inside. He had my full attention, but I didn’t look at him yet. Simply because I didn’t think I could handle the shock of hearing him and seeing him at the same time.
“You know me so well, Officer. We should play The Newlywed Game.” I began to apply some lip gloss just because I needed to do something with my hands. “You’d think they’d have a requirement for contestants to at least know each other’s names,” he said dryly. “You always were a stickler for the rules, weren’t you, Christian
“No ring?” he drawled, glancing at my bare finger. “And here I was, sure this marriage would be the one to last.” He was mocking me. I wouldn’t be married now if he hadn’t disappeared while I was still naked in his bed. I knew it deep inside. Things would’ve been different if he had stayed. But he didn’t. He didn’t care enough. And over the years, I’d begun to resent him for it. He didn’t want me—he’d made that abundantly clear—yet he had to torment me about my relationship, as nonexistent and embarrassing as it was.
“I have an idea—why don’t you save us both the trouble and not pretend to care?” “Someone has to. Can’t say I’m surprised, though, that your husband turns out to be one of Ace’s richest men. Must make the marriage bed easier to stomach.” A bitter laugh escaped me, and I turned my head to look out the window. “Go to hell, Allister.”
It wasn’t like I was proud of the relapse—especially because I’d been worrying about how I would break this to Dr. Rosamund on Monday—but I certainly didn’t care for Allister’s opinion on the matter. I guessed I should’ve known he’d give it anyway. He grabbed my chin, looked into my eyes, and then shoved my face away in disgust. And now, here I was, stewing in the anger and spite he easily brought out in me.
