“Midnight Rose?”
“Yeah?”
“You talk too fucking much.”
“It just seems like it would be painful.”
He didn’t answer me, only watched me with that familiar impassive stare.
It didn’t make me uncomfortable. If anything, it made me feel like he had no expectations and was waiting for me to show him who I was, which was absurd, but there it was. What was even worse, I couldn’t seem to stop the disappointment from washing over me when I thought about him leaving. Which was not only playing into far-fetched fantasies, but real danger.
I wasn’t sure what he was going to do—stay until morning? Or stay until the antibiotics made him feel somewhat better? I didn’t ask, though, because I liked him being here. I liked the way he watched me, and I liked being able to watch him without worrying about who might see. He was probably here because Cilla hadn’t come home yet, and he was waiting for her, but the reason didn’t seem to matter.
If I was being honest with myself, Aniello Assanti intrigued me like no one else ever had before.
He made me think. He made me feel. He made me want to remember.
He made me want to be right where I was. With him. In this strange, uncertain bubble.
I wasn’t sure of the reasons why, though. He was as cold and as deadly as ice, even though his skin burned beneath my touch. But there was something about him, something that trapped me and held me prisoner whenever he walked into a room.
This close?
He consumed me. And for whatever reason, his presence made the missing pieces of my life seem inconsequential. Maybe because something about him made me feel that he had enough power to help me create new ones.
It was insane—to the highest degree—but what Ben had mentioned earlier seemed to slither in between me and the man in my bed.
Someone at Club D had killed Richie because of me?
What if Ben’s theory was true? It was never something I even considered. It had never even dawned on me.
No.If someone had killed Richie, it was because of something Richie had done. If it was an arranged marriage, they would have made sure it happened. Unless Richie had turned on Club D.
Or...
If I’d fallen in love with someone at Club D, that would have complicated things. I’d always known the consequences of falling in love with a man who belonged—and so did that man. He would be killed, so it really made no sense that Richie was the man who ended up dying.
No.This infatuation I had with Aniello Assanti had to be something else. Something created from my desperation to feel…connected to someone else. I was desperate. Lonely. Missing a chunk of my life that constantly haunted me.
Aniello Assanti radiated power, even when he was laid up with a gunshot wound. And maybe, more than anything, that was what I needed in my life. A man who could promise me that everything would be okay, and I’d be able to believe him. I didn’t trust many, and for whatever reason, I trusted this man without knowing him.
Did he have it in him to kill me?
There was no doubt.
Would he?
Something told me he wouldn’t. And that was a very dangerous thing for me to believe, given who he was and what he did for money.
“Why do you do what you do?” I whispered, turning the washcloth over, so that the cooler side touched his feverish skin.
I didn’t expect an answer, wasn’t sure if he’d even heard me. But it was something that had crossed my mind after the accident. I knew money was the root of all evil, and for some, it was enough. But I often wondered if it was more than that—did something exist even deeper that made some men into killers?
He put his hand up, and I thought he was going to stop me from touching him, but he didn’t. He covered my hand with his own. “Everyone wants an excuse not to like someone,” he said, his voice tired and gruff. “I just make it worth their fucking time.”
With that, his eyes drooped, and he fell asleep with his hand over mine.
8
