It was painfully adorable.
“I brought your phone,” I said.
She smiled over at me. “Thank you.” Standing up from the table and walking over, she took it from my hand and then looked up at me. “Um… I’m appreciative of you letting me check in. I want you to trust me, so I had an idea.”
I furrowed my brow, confused by that attitude. “Okay…”
“Rather than call her, so that you don’t think I’m trying to pull a fast one, I’ll text her. We text all the time anyway, and you can watch over my shoulder so you can see exactly what I’m saying,” she explained.
I had little to no idea why she would suddenly be so considerate of me, but then Milli’s words came into my mind—I was giving Avion the attention she’d long been seeking. Maybe she had already decided for herself that playing for my team was better than playing for her own. If that was the case, then I was already much closer to turning her than I first anticipated.
“Okay. That’d be great. Thank you.”
Avion walked over and turned around, pulling her back almost flush against my front. An impulse came over me to wrap my arms around her that I had to beat back with a mental stick. She had a gentle smile on her face, and up close I could see all of her freckles and the permanent crimp that her hair had from where she pushed it behind her ear. Her green eyes shimmered in the sunlight from the window across the room and my heart started to beat a little faster. Her beauty was superior to anyone I’d ever seen before.
“Hey Lorie,” Avion read out loud as she typed. “Sorry I haven’t been checking in. I met the hottest guy while out here. My family is back in New York now, but I’m gonna stay here with him for a little while. You always told me I needed to be more adventurous. Eat your heart out.”
She hit send and three dots appeared almost immediately on her screen indicating that her friend was responding. A text popped back that said, “I want to hear everything immediately.”
Avion giggled and replied, “I’ll tell you all the deets when I get home, I promise. For now, I gotta go. He’s back and I want to give himallof my attention.” She tacked on a couple of emojis and hit send.
Lorie replied. “Unfair. I wanna know now, but I guess I’ll be patient. Go get it, girl!”
Once that was done, Avion turned around and handed her phone back to me. “Thank you for that. I think that should keep her at bay for now.”
There was an actual shake to my hand as I pulled her phone away. “You’re welcome.”
Avion wasn’t in the cocky stage at all.
She was in a different, unidentifiable stage. She wasn’ttryingto be pleasing to me, she just was. It wasn’t arrogance, it wasn’t even confidence it just… was.
It was terrifying.
“I have work to do,” I said quickly and didn’t wait for a response before slipping out of her room and rushing away.
Why was my heart beating so fast? Why was I actually relinquishing control? I couldn’t have that. Milli was right, it was time to take a step forward. I had to reclaim my handle on the situation and fast-track Avion’s interest.
And I knew just how to do it.
14
AVION
Even though I tried to make nice with Gio during our last conversation, it had been a couple of weeks since then and I hadn’t seen him once. He would check-in at least once a day before that, occasionally bringing me my meals personally, but since he let me call Lorie, I’d only been getting my meals from staff members and he hadn’t been by at all, not even for a quick check-in.
Did I offend him?
I thought I had his personality figured out. He appeared to be a ‘kill them with kindness’ kind of guy—so long as I was being friendly, smiling, saying ‘please,’ then we were moving in the right direction. That was the main reason why I opted to go the trustworthy route with my texts to Lorie, because in my mind, I just have to become someone that he doesn’twantto kill. If he needs to figure out how to get his money back from my father, I’d be more than willing to help him with that, I just didn’t want to die.
Maybe I’d read him wrong yet again.
More than the fact that I was annoyed I had misjudged our situation, I was annoyed with the fact that I seemed really bothered by having not seen him. I tried to remind myself at least once a day of the circumstances I was in. He kidnapped me; I was his prisoner. Still, all I had to do was ask and he moved me from that terrible room that he first put me in, to a room that was nicer than my entire apartment. Our conversations were pleasant enough and he was really kind about my paintings. It irritated me that I couldn’t figure Gio out. Was he a bad guy or a good one? Most people could make a judgment call based on the fact that he was a mobster and had kidnapped me, but even my own brothers threatened to kill me off publicly if I didn’t want to work with them.
I was used to feeling like a captive.
It was weird feeling like I was much more content in these few weeks I’d spent in Gio’s estate than I was in all the years I was on my own with my brothers and father after my mother died. I didn’t have to put on fake smiles or pretend to be a loving family. Now that I had space I was comfortable in, I could spend my days doing things I really loved like drawing or binging on cooking shows. If I was being totally and completely honest…
…I wasn’ttotallyunhappy here.
