Just as I was about to pass the men’s room, the door opened, and I came face-to-face with Allister. Oddly, my heart stalled, stealing some oxygen from my lungs.
“Hello, Officer.”
He didn’t say a word as his gaze bit through my skin.
“Okay then,” I said. “You have a lovely night.”
I tried to pass him, but he stepped in front of me, blocking my path. It’d been a long time since we’d played any game, and anticipation buzzed in my veins.
“What are you doing with Knox?” His voice was low and smooth, and I could feel it in my toes.
I frowned. “Who’s Knox?”
“The man you’ve been flirting with for the last fifteen minutes,” he snapped.
“Well, you’ve just answered your own question, haven’t you, Officer? Flirting.”
My smile faltered as he took a sudden step forward, forcing my back to hit the wall. A breath of air escaped me. His arms came up on either side of me, caging me in. He was so close my entire body hummed beneath the surface.
“I’m sure the Bureau doesn’t approve of this kind of behavior,” I breathed.
He was distracted, his gaze beside my head, where a lock of my hair brushed his hand. He pulled it through his fingers, and the small amount of pressure on my scalp tightened between my legs.
The air sparked in the small space between us, and it made me so uncertain I opened my mouth again. “Or maybe harassing women is on the daily agenda—”
“Shut up.”
I glared at him.
My hair slipped through his fingers, and his gaze focused on my face. Something dark and lazy played in his eyes.
“You’re going to tell Knox it was not nice to meet him and then go join your group of friends.”
I laughed, realizing which game this was. It was the one where he pretended to be my keeper, and it was the most annoying one we’d ever played. “Tempting as that demand is, I’m going to have to pass.”
The intensity in his eyes was like staring directly into the sun, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I dropped my gaze to his tie. It was perfect, like always, and while I would usually adjust it anyway, I didn’t reach for it now. His presence radiated tension, and it sent a nervous tremor through me.
“You don’t know a single thing about him, Gianna.”
“You don’t need to know anything about someone to sleep with them.” I wasn’t even planning on having sex with the man with dull eyes, but Allister goaded the words straight from my mouth.
A small growl sounded low in his throat, and I stared at him, frozen. Someone was taking this game a little too seriously.
His palm slid from the wall, and his voice was calm and final. “You’re not going home with him.”
I stared at his hand running the length of his tie and knew my libido was completely out of control at the moment, because I imagined his hand on me—in my hair, on my throat, covering my mouth. Heat pulsed between my legs.
“I’ll leave with him if I want,” I finally managed.
“Try it.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“I just did.”
This was exactly why I hated this game. A small noise of frustration escaped me, and I ducked underneath his arm and headed toward the ladies’ room.
“You heard me, Gianna.”
I’d heard him, all right.
Didn’t mean I’d listen.
I had always tried not to do things out of spite, because every time, it only led me down a rabbit hole of regret. However, the moments after Allister’s stupid game pushed me straight into the underworld’s own version of Wonderland.
I washed my hands after using the restroom, and then halted at the end of the hall.
A bad taste filled my mouth.
The lighting was dim, but, as though they were the most perfect couple in the room, strobe lights danced across their forms.
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 touching her.
Why wouldn’t he? She was classy, composed, everything I was not. He wouldn’t touch me, not if he were hanging off a cliff and I was the only one who could pull him up.
I couldn’t keep it in—spite grabbed me in its electric embrace and wouldn’t let go.
Allister wasn’t going to win this game.
In the end, however, he won. He won everything.
I strode up to Charming, grabbed his tie, and gave him a tug toward the door. He smirked and followed me.
I turned my head in Allister’s direction. The brunette was still whispering something into his ear and his hand was still on her hip. But his gaze was on me. I swallowed as his eyes drifted to Charming, a lazy flicker passing through the blue before disappearing into vicious depths. Heartless. The look was full of the promise of retaliation. And then he dismissed me, giving all his attention to the brunette, as though I couldn’t be stupid enough not to listen to him.
Anger flared in my chest. I wasn’t going to let him scare me into losing. What could he possibly do, anyway? He was just a lackey of my family’s, and he wouldn’t even touch me.
“I’m not sleeping with you,” I told Charming. “I’m merely using you to make my ex-boyfriend jealous.” The truth would have been a little hard to explain.
“Whatever, baby.”
His slimy response grated on my nerves. Now, I could see this man’s charm was dropped in a vat of oil.
My apartment was only a couple blocks from the club, and I continued my trek, hoping Charming would just drift away. Unfortunately, he followed like a lost puppy.
I stopped in front of the lobby doors. “Well, it was lovely to meet you. Thanks for all your help.”
I turned to open the door, but he grabbed my wrist.
“Wait a minute. I think you owe me a drink, at least.” He grinned. “Or maybe a line or two. I’d like to know what kind of stuff the Russos are shipping out.”
A line of blow was like a glass of champagne in my world. Unless we were at a family dinner—then you didn’t even know what the stuff was. But I couldn’t stop an eyeroll. He’d have known what my name was if he was familiar with my family.
But I did upend his night, and he was obviously more interested in getting his hands on my family’s drugs than me, so I opened the door and let him in.
“Gianna,” greeted the concierge. The seventyish Irishman had called me Ms. Russo until I’d nipped that in the bud.
“Hello, Niall,” I responded. “This is Charming.” I patted the man’s chest beside me.
Niall sized him up. “Charming,” he murmured, but I couldn’t tell if he was greeting him or mocking him. I loved Niall.
“He’s not very deferential, is he?” Charming asked, an edge of disgust in his voice.
Charming was a total loser.
“He’s Irish,” I responded, like that explained everything.
I let us into my apartment, leaving the door open a few inches so he wouldn’t get any ideas about staying. Heading to my room, I grabbed a baggie off my dresser. When I returned to the living room, it was to find him touching my things. “Here,” I said, tossing the 8-ball to him. “For all your trouble.”
He practically rubbed his hands together. “Let’s find out if it’s as good as I hear.”
“It is.”
I groaned internally when he dumped some powder on the marble counter.
Under the bright lights in the kitchen, it was clear his suit was worn, his shoes scuffed. He didn’t have any money and was hard-up for blow. Ugh, why had I let this idiot into my apartment?
His eyes were bright when he lifted his head.
“Told you,” I said, slipping my heels off. “Now, take it and go. A rerun of my show is on in five.”
“Where’s the rest?”
“You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”
His eyes narrowed, but I wasn’t too worried. If he touched me, he’d be found skinned alive in an alleyway by six a.m. tomorrow. And he knew it.
“Fine.” He tried to scoop every last fleck of powder off the counter, and I grimaced at the unattractive show.
My gaze caught on someone walking down the hall through the crack of the door. Black suit. Broad shoulders. Straight lines. My heart cooled before icing over. His gaze was lowered as his hands twisted a silencer onto the barrel of a gun.
My throat tightened, and panic bit at my veins.
He looked up. His eyes were cold enough to give me frostbite.
“No,” I breathed.
But it was too late.
He pushed the door open, and his lazy, heartless gaze found Charming. A muffled pop hit my ears. Blood splattered across the counter and cupboards. White powder dusted into the air as Charming hit the floor, cloudy blue eyes wide open, a bullet hole in his forehead.
Bile rose in my throat, and I hunched over, covering my mouth.
I looked at the door to see a stare of dark indifference as Allister twisted the silencer off and put it in his pocket.
His apathy filled me with an anger so deep I saw red.
“Figlio di puttana!” I spat. You son of a bitch.
As he turned to the door, cold panic flared in my chest.
“Wait,” I pleaded. “Please don’t leave me with this! Allister!”
He didn’t even look back.
“Ace . . . he’s dead.” My hand shook around the burner phone I was supposed to use for issues like this. “Really dead.”
“Who?”
“Charming,” I mumbled, eyeing the body on the floor. I wasn’t making any sense, but the blood was about to soak into my area rug.
“Where are you?”
“My apartment.”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “What the fuck did you do?”
I paced the living room. “I didn’t do anything! Allister shot him and then just left!”
A long pause. “For fuck’s sake.”
“There’s blood all over my kitchen,” I whined. I heard Nico talking to someone, and while he did, the blood reached my vintage area rug. “I’m going to kill him,” I admitted calmly.
“You’re going to tell him thank you, and then shut your damn mouth.”
“I’d rather throw myself from my balcony.”
“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.”
Oh. No wonder Allister always looked at me like I was simple-minded when I’d talk to him like he was the help. I swallowed. “I’m one measly girl. What could I have done to ruin your relations with the dirty fed?”
He grunted. “You’re only ‘measly’ when it’s convenient to you. Do not go anywhere. Do you understand me?”
“But his eyes are open—”
“Nowhere, Gianna.”
“Fine.”
I hung up and tossed the phone on the couch.
Twenty minutes later, Lorenzo and Luca entered the apartment. Lorenzo whistled, giving Charming’s leg a kick. “He’s dead, all right.”
I grimaced. “Could you not kick a dead man?”
Luca dropped to his haunches beside the body. “Gianna, do I want to know why this douchebag was in your apartment?”
I was trying to win a game . . . and lost so hard.
“No,” I sighed.
Lorenzo rubbed some blow from the kitchen island onto his gums. “I know this guy,” he said. “Knox, I think. Real slimy dude, been visited by our enforcers a couple times for gambling debt. Still owes some money.”
“I don’t think you’re going to get it from him now,” I muttered, heading into my room. I took a shower and then blow-dried my hair and pulled it up. I dressed in Daisy Dukes and an off-the-shoulder top that showed a few inches of my midriff. When I came back out, the body was gone but blood still coated every surface of my kitchen. Anger grabbed me by the throat and squeezed.
Lorenzo and Luca walked through the front door, laughing at some joke.
“Where does Allister live?” I asked, not able to control the venom in my voice.
Luca snorted. “What do you think you’re going to do to him?”
Lorenzo shook his head. “He’s not someone you fuck with, Gianna.”
“Where. Does. He. Live?”