1
SARA
“Don’t look now,but I think one of those bodyguards is looking at you.”
Halle, my coworker, is about as discreet as a kid in a chocolate factory. Her whisper is the urgent kind that doesn’t quite do what it says on the tin, and I don’t need to glance up to know that she’s full-on staring at the bodyguard in question.
I keep my head down, focus on the hands of the woman sitting in front of me. Long, slender fingers. Tiny, tapered nails. Hands that don’t match the rest of the body, as if the owner decided a long while ago that her hands were her best feature, and she’d look after them no matter what. She’s a regular customer at the nail salon where I work. She got Halle’s message too.
And she isn’t the only one.
He’s been staring at me since he walked through the door. Motionless. Hands behind his back. Feet planted squarely in his usual spot near the entrance, with a display of sparkly, pinkand gold acrylics on the window directly behind his head, framing him like a halo.
Not that I’ve been staring right back at him. More the occasional glance, head down, trying too hard not to make it look obvious. But it’s hard, you know, when the guy is an actual giant with shoulders that you can imagine crying on, abs that would lift a truck, and hips that… well… make me imagine things I have no business imagining.
Especially at work.
When my forehead might as well carry a sign that reads: SHE’S IMAGINING WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE NAKED, FOLKS.
He’s been coming here regularly, every third Friday, for the past six months. With Gia Rossi. His boss. And every third Friday for the past six months, he’s been standing in the same position watching me like he’s afraid I’ll pull a gun out from underneath the rack of nail polishes and try to assassinate the woman in his protection.
Who am I kidding?
It’s more the kind of look I assume the lion would aim at his prey directly before he sinks his teeth into their throat.
I’m not quite sure how to feel about it.
I mean, the guy is a heavyweight hottie, straight out of theDirty Dancingmold. Patrick Swayze eat your heart out. Because this guy rocks the tight, black pants (nope, definitely not going there), black T-shirt (too late), and leather jacket bad boy look (kill me now) like he owns the rights to it.
But it’s the intensity of the stare that has me squirming in my seat whenever he’s here. I wish he would tell me what’s on his mind and be done with it. Then, I could get on with my nailart, make small talk with my customers, and act like the butterflies inside my chest are nonchalantly taking a raincheck.
Gia Rossi, the woman who brings the hulking bodyguards with her to get her nails done, laughs brightly. I glance over at Mary’s station, where Gia admires her new, shiny silver talons with a black lace design like spider webs crawling across several of them and tiny diamantes on the pinkie nails. I imagine her in a floor-length, slinky black gown, raking her talons across the shoulders of every other heavyweight hottie in town at a gala event because women like Gia Rossi can get away with that level of flirting.
Everyone knows that Gia Rossi, sister to Elio Rossi, is connected as well as drop-dead gorgeous.
And everyone knows that Elio Rossi is the head of an international mafia family, and he’s not only richer than God, but he’s extremely protective of his little sister.
Gia, Elio, and I went to high school together. Well, not exactly together. They’re a few years older than me, and Gia never even knew my name until I started working here, but from what I can remember, she doesn’t need bodyguards.
Despite the glossy hair that probably gets the salon treatment every three weeks too, the glossy scarlet lips, and the silver talons, she can take care of herself pretty damn well. I guess it comes with the territory, you grow up with danger lurking in every corner, it must become second nature. Like how I head straight to the bargain basket at the front of the grocery store when I run out of food.
I finish up on the easy mani I’m doing and collect my tip. After, I grab my phone, using Insta as a distraction between clients from the bodyguard staring at me like I’m some important influencer with a million followers, instead of anail technician with an entire reach of ooh, let’s see, seventy-five.
Halle slides her chair over so that our shoulders are almost touching. “Seriously, Sara, he hasn’t taken his eyes off you.”
“Shh,” I hiss. “What if he can read lips or something?”
“Then he should read this.Ask. Her. Out. Dumbass!” She enunciates every word clearly, exaggerating her lip movements and making me giggle.
Halle is the same age as me, and she has literally been dating her boyfriend since ninth grade. In Halle’s world, boy meets girl, boy kisses girl and tells her that she’s the only one for him, and they live happily ever after in a neat house with a wide porch, an apple tree in the front yard, and enough rooms to accommodate all the babies they’ll have together.
She has no clue about the real world. Not that I’m an expert. I rarely make it past first date because I like men with clean nails, decent dental hygiene, and respect for women, and guys round here seem to lose the memo the instant they reach adolescence. Or perhaps their mommies convince them they’re perfect just the way they are.
I poke Halle in the side, and she squeaks. “What was that for?”
“I don’t need to go out with guys in the mob!” My lips barely move, but I hide my face anyway. The last thing I want to do is get on the wrong side of a guy who could crush me with one huge, meaty fist.
She dismisses the comment with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand as if she knows what’s best for me. “But they’re like thefancymob. They’re actually Italian. Not like the De Lucas.”
