She offers me the small cutting board with its pile of zest and a naked citrus, all pith. “Here you go. What else should I do?”
Lock yourself in your room and don’t come out until the next week and a half are up, I almost say. Because that’s the only way I know she’ll be completely off-limits to me. And even then, I’d have the key.
“You can stir the pasta.”
I pop the cork out of a bottle of dry white wine and pour a measure into the pan, deglazing it. Then I add the zest before juicing the lemon into my bubbling mixture. The shrimp go in next. I feel her eyes on me while I work. This whole fucking night is too domestic. Tomorrow, I’ll eat dinner at Sergio’s, the private restaurant we own, and have something delivered to her here instead. The less time I spend eating with her and doingmundane shit, the better. We’re not playing house, and I can’t fuck her.
Maybe I’ll call Sofia and work out my frustration with her. We’ve never been serious, but her brother’s a solid and trusted part of the crew. She and I have hooked up in the past, and we have a standing arrangement that’s mutually beneficial. She doesn’t want to be married off, and I can’t settle down, but together, we can get our rocks off.
But thinking about Sofia while Isla is standing nearby in my kitchen unsettles me even more than I was to begin with. I dump in the shrimp and send hot olive oil splashing onto my hand. It burns like hell, but I just clench my jaw and keep fucking stirring.
“Didn’t that hurt?”
I cast a glance in Isla’s direction. “I’ve had far worse.”
“Like what?”
“I’ve been punched, kicked, stabbed, and shot. Almost got hit by a car once. You name it, I’ve pretty much experienced it.”
“Alessio, oh my God.”
She’s the only one who calls me by my real name. I liked the way it sounded when she moaned it. I like the way it sounds now too.
I shrug, averting my gaze to keep from looking at her, beautiful and appalled, standing barefoot in my kitchen as if it’s where she belongs. “It’s not a big deal. Comes with the territory.”
“You say that like it’s nothing.”
“That’s because itisnothing to me. I was born into this life. I’ll leave it when I die. That’s the way it goes.”
My pan is screaming hot, and the shrimp are already done. The timer on my phone starts dinging, and I realize the pasta is too, so I pull it off the burner.
“What if you don’t want to be in the life? Doesn’t anyone ever leave?” Isla asks softly.
I cut a glance in her direction as I start draining the pasta. “In a body bag.”
She stops asking me questions after that, and I finish making dinner.
Isla
“What canI do to help clean up?” I ask Alessio, carrying my empty plate toward the kitchen.
He’s an excellent cook, which I find somehow surprising. Dinner was delicious, even if we did eat mostly in silence, Cid curled up nearby like a chaperone. Being alone with Alessio, in his private space, has left me with a strange feeling I can’t shake.
His apartment isn’t as huge as Priest and Luna’s penthouse, but it’s still large and sumptuous by anyone else’s standards. Like their place, he has a showstopping view of the city, only his apartment overlooks the river. I couldn’t stop admiring it before the sun went down, and now that it’s dark, the city coming to life with lights, the river is equally majestic.
“Do you do dishes?” he asks over his shoulder.
I try not to notice the way his ass is perfectly delineated in his black slacks. He may be a mobster, but Alessio dresses like a billionaire businessman. Everything about him is put together and bespoke, with an old-world elegance few men can pull off.
“With great reluctance,” I tell him honestly.
I hate dishes, and I hate cooking. Basically, I think all kitchens are evil. I’ve been living off deliveries from nearby restaurants since arriving in the city. Mostly because I didn’t want to set Luna and Priest’s kitchen on fire.
“Same,” Alessio says, moving to the sink. “We can split the work. I’ll rinse and you load.”
“Deal.”
We settle into a comfortable routine, both of us gathering dirty pots and dishes and utensils, him rinsing and leaving them in the other side of the double sink for me to retrieve and load into the dishwasher. I can’t stop thinking about everything he told me tonight as I slide plates into their parallel grooves. The terrifying Russian mobster who was following me earlier, the repercussions for Alessio, the danger he faces each day, the fact that he can’t get out of this life even if he wants to…
