There are several days of quiet, tense conversations with New York and Frank. Things are settled. There’s no financial settlement with New York because they agree that Alberto went rogue in a way that’s not allowed.
Frank doesn’t get the money he demands either. Sasha refuses to speak to him. It’s C who tells Frank it’s his own fault that he lost me for good. C says I would still be under Frank’s roof if he hadn’t walked away, leaving me alone for Alberto Leone to abuse and try to rape. Frank claims he had no idea what Berto planned to do and that he would have stopped him if he’d known.
C’s response is quick and absolute. “Your roof. Your responsibility.”
I listen silently on the line and shake my head, then I set the phone down and walk away before they finish speaking.
I want to put that night behind me; I’m trying to. I have a new cell phone and only a few people have the number. It’s nice that Frank can’t reach me anymore with text messages or calls. The longer we don’t communicate, the safer I feel.
Tonight, the five of us are in the kitchen. Sasha stands at the counter cutting vegetables. Zoe is going to make a stir-fry with three different kinds of sauces. She’s in charge of making the spicy cashew one that C apparently loves. I’m making a sweet and sour sauce for the fresh shrimp egg rolls that C’s making in the fryer.
Salsa music blasts through the kitchen, and Zoe’s hips are never still as she stands at the stove or comes to the counter island. She wears a hot pink lace slip dress that looks like lingerie.
“Trick, do you want to join us?” I ask, waving for him to come to the island.
He’s sitting on the couch in the breakfast nook, scrolling through his phone. “I’m working on something.”
Sasha picks me up and moves me a couple of feet over, so that his head isn’t directly under where the copper pots are hanging. He bumped one earlier, but didn’t bother to move then. His hand lingers on my waist for a second. I’m wearing a simple black silk dress that’s loose enough to flow when I move. It’s not sexy like Zoe’s, but I feel the heat of Sasha’s gaze whenever he looks at me.
“Anvil, you could ask her to move,” Zoe says saucily. “You don’t have to treat her like an object.”
“Mind your business, Z,” C says immediately, without looking up from what he’s doing.
“He treats her like she’s a doll,” Zoe says, holding a wooden spoon aloft. “That’s what Frank did. Not picking her up, of course. But picking out her clothes and posing her how he wanted for pictures. Now she’s in the middle of things, she’s cooking, and Anvil just grabs her out of the blue and moves her around like a toy? Why?” she demands.
C slides an arm around Zoe’s waist, pulls her over, and plants a kiss on her mouth. “Get back to what you were doing,” he says with a small smack to her ass.
Zoe is not the sort of woman who can just let things go unresolved if she thinks there’s a problem. It’s not in her.
“Does it bother you or not, Rach?”
I shake my head.
“It would bother me,” she announces, then turns back to the sesame oil that’s popping in the wok. “But to each her own.”
Sasha’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out, checks the message, and follows a link. I peek at the screen. It looks like a real estate site.
Sasha glances at Trick. “Probably,” he says. “I’ll show her later.”
“You know what I want?” Zoe demands, spinning around.
Trick strolls over, slides an arm around Zoe, and then salsa dances around the counter and says, “What,princesa?”
Zoe’s smile is blindingly bright. “Sangria,” she says, throwing herself into the dance. When she twirls away from him, she dips into a move that arches her back and has her breasts straining the top of her dress.
“Sangria and stir-fry and salsa? It’s International Fest,” Trick says, taking a couple of bottles of red wine from the wine cooler. “Which fruit?”
“Oranges and apples. And the sugar should be brown,” she says with a smirk.
“Naturally,” Trick says.
“Spoiled,” C murmurs.
I know that there was a night when Zoe was punished by all three of them, and it was followed by them bringing her to orgasm while C had sex with her. Sasha told me about it, reporting that he never touched her breasts or between her legs. His participation had been restricted to holding her down and giving her a few swats.
I suspect that Trick, however, had been much more of an active participant in that group scene. I’ve never seen him do anything overly familiar with her, but they share a closeness.
My gaze moves to C. He doesn’t seem worried.
