I move close to her. She’s standing in her doorway, a spring to my desert. I breathe her in. Jesus, she smells like my childhood, after a storm, mist in the fresh air.
My hand slides up her arm. Goosebumps trail behind, her body reacting to my touch. My fingers touch her shoulders. My face tilts down brushing my nose to the shell of her ear. Lightly, I press my face against hers, wrapping a strong hand around her chin to hold her still.
"Lock your doors and all your windows. Get a good night’s sleep tonight. Tomorrow, pack everything you need and get the fuck out of this life." My free hand slips a fat envelope into the hem of her panties as my lips brush a kiss against her neck, and step away. I leave her in the doorway, breathless and eighty grand heavier, to start a new, safer life.
Somewhere far away from the Fretolli crime family.
Chapter 9
Felony
There are two more hours until the club opens and I’m behind the bar slicing lemons and limes thinking about what Corrado said to me two nights ago. It’s on repeat in my head—the wild, dangerous way he looked, soaked in blood, to the heat of his whispers against my skin demanding me to leave. As I stand here I can still feel the grip of his hand on my face and how aroused it made me.
I didn’t listen to him, though. I didn’t pack my bags. I can’t. I can’t leave this place. It’s my home. And the truth is, I have nowhere else to go.
“Mignotta.”
I freeze at the vulgar word—one hand squeezing the blade of a knife, the other crushing the life of out the lemon I was slicing.
Junior slides up behind me and repeats himself in a whispery, taunting voice. “Mignotta.”
He’s calling me a whore.
Instantly his giant frame cages me in, his rough callused hands grabbing my wrist so hard I know there's going to be bruises as soon as he lets go,if he lets go. "Tony wants to see you."
I hesitate for a moment, tightening my grip on the knife, imagining what it would feel like if I pressed its tip through his skin and muscles and bone. But instead of fighting, I drop the utensil and the fruit. Junior isn’t going to hurt me if Tony wants to talk to me about something. He’d wait until after, so I’m buying time.
He twists me around fast and yanks me against him. It’s like hitting a brick wall and all I can feel is the hard metal of the gun in his waistband and the erection from his pencil-thin dick right next to it.
His hand slides down to my ass and squeezes so hard my eyes tear from the pain. "Andmignotta, I ain't done with you, yet."
I close my eyes shut tight. His breath is rancid and smells of spicy sausage and cigarettes.
He drags me out from behind the bar, right to Tony's office and shoves me inside. I stumble to get my footing and hit my elbow against a corner of a shelf and curse under my breath.
"Sit." Tony’s voice is gravelly and demanding.
I stare right into his eyes and walk to the chair that’s set in front of his desk and do as he commanded me to.
I never lose eye contact.
I don’t drop my gaze, but I know he wants me to. He’s dying for me to. Because he’s sitting behind his desk cleaning about half a dozen guns. Well, not cleaning them, he’s polishing them with a rag like they’re trophies he hangs on the wall. He’s trying to intimidate me. There’s a cigar in a large crystal ashtray next to him with a long, thin string of curling smoke drifting up from it. I’m more intimidated by the cigar and its secondhand smoke in my lungs than any of Tony’s guns—or any of Tony’sboys.
I’m just one of thedancers. Worthless in their eyes. Whatever this is, it has nothing to do with me. I’m just a pawn in some game they’re playing.
I straighten my back and sit quietly, like I’m ready to listen, to obey.
“This is what’s going to happen,” he begins, lifting up an abnormally huge gun and inspecting it with a close eye. He’s still just trying to threaten me.I didn’t look down at his toys so he’s bringing them up to my eye-level. “In a few minutes, Corrado is going to walk through that door,” he explains, pointing to his office door. “And he’s going to see something that makes him real angry. Got it?”
I don’t dare speak.
I give one quick nod.
“If you want him to stay alive you’ll play your part right now. You understand what I’m getting at?”
My gut instinct is to play stupid. I’m just a dancer. A worthlessmignotta, in their eyes. “I don’t understand, but I’ll do whatever you ask me to.”
He regards me for a moment and places the gun back on the desk in front of him. “I have to find out who has my back,” he says, quietly. He stares at me without expression for a few more moments then leans forward. "Do you know anything about Franco and Carmine?" he asks. “How about Paulie and John?
