Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Her eyes are sharper than they should be for someone who almost died—green glass catching fire.
“Double or nothing,” she says. “I’d like to play again.”
The absolute fucking audacity.
“Are you insane?” My voice is ice. Even. Controlled. The kind of calm that precedes a kill shot. “You’re going to ruin everything.”
“Am I?” A challenge disguised as a question.
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
She doesn’t blink.
“You’re going to get me killed.”
Still nothing.
“You’re going to start a war that will—”
“You stole from me.”
The interruption hits harder than a slap. I stop mid-sentence, air slicing through my teeth. Not fear—recognition.
“Excuse me?”
“You disappeared into the night while I was still unconscious.” Her voice climbs, but not in volume—in conviction. “Left me with notebooks full of—what even? Sentiments? Feelings? Little scraps of your goddamn soul scrawled between demerits and points?” She taps the desk—once, twice, again—each word a precise strike. “And then you vanish. Like I was some… limited-edition experiment that expired.”
She straightens, shoulders back, chin lifted. The same stance she used the first day—back when she thought she could bluff me. The stance of someone who refuses to fold.
“Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Mob Boss,” she says, voice steady now, dangerous in its restraint. “I’ve lost everything in the past five years—”
“No.” My voice comes out harder than intended. Louder. The kind of loud that earns witnesses. I lower it fast. “You didn’t.”
“Oh really?”
“I just gave you—”
“You just paid me off!”
“That was the deal!”
“No!” she insists. “That was the deal before you left me this case filled with money and feelings. Before you cataloged my heath on a minute-by-minute basis. Before you wrote sarcastic notes in shaky but still perfect handwriting, about how scared you were when I was dying!”
“Oh,” I huff out a breath. “You wish.”
“I wish? You are deliberately trying to terrify me, Emmaleen. Selective hearing is not an attractive quality, Emmaleen. Breathing is not optional, Emmaleen! You like me. No. You more than like me. You…”
I shake my head at her. “Don’t even try it.”
“You—”
“Emmaleen,” I hold up a hand. “I’m fucking serious. Don’t say it.”
“You want to dress me.”
I crack a smile.
“You want to dress me up in your stupid clothes inside stupid color-coded garment bags and control me. You want to… make me get my hair done, and my nails done, and turn me into something… yours. And… and… well, it’s not up to you.” She lifts her chin up, folds her arms across her chest. Looks me straight in the eyes. “It’s up to me. My chains, my choice. Double or nothing. I want to play again.”
I sit down and lean back in my chair, creating distance between us. This woman with her ridiculous cardigan and unwashed hair is the single most dangerous thing in my life right now. More dangerous than Rico’s body buried on my family’s property in Bucks County. More dangerous than his father’s inevitable questions.
The mathematical part of my brain calculates outcomes, probabilities, risk factors. The emotional part—the part I’ve spent decades suppressing—whispers something else entirely.
I could keep her.
I could wake up to that messy hair on my pillow.
I could read her my mother’s poetry.
I could show her Venice in spring when the wisteria blooms.
I could have something real.
And then I’d get her killed.
If not by Luca LaRiccia’s men, then by someone else. Someone trying to get to me. Someone I’ve wronged. Someone looking for leverage.
In my world, love isn’t a strength. It’s a death sentence.
“Seven more days,” I agree. The words are businesslike. Precise. A match struck for expediency. “But only because it’s the quickest way to get rid of you. And when I win, you take the fucking money, you get on the fucking plane, and you never come back.”
She extends her hand across my desk, disrupting my papers further. “Deal.”
I shake it. “Deal. You start tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. And this time, if you’re one second late, I will ruin you.”
“We’ll see,” she says, turning away with a swing of her hair. “We’ll fucking see.”
She will lose this time. I’ll make it so.
I will lie, cheat, and steal the margins of the world to ensure she walks away.
This is how I save her.
By making her hate me enough to leave.