Beyond everything, it’s the right move. With Sergei lurking around out there, there’s no safer place she’ll be than with me tonight.
21
EMBER
“Move in with me.”
He says it so softly that I barely even hear him. I lift my head up from his chest and look him in the eye. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
I’m speechless for a moment. When he came back last night, bruised and bleeding, all I could think was that he needed aid. I focused on dressing the wound on his forearm and I didn’t ask any questions. Although I had a million of them floating around in my mind.
We didn’t make love last night, but he held me. I stayed wrapped up in his arms all night, and I don’t think I’ve ever slept better. Especially, all things considered.
I want to know what happened with the club. Practically speaking, I need to know if there was any damage or arrests or worse. Am I going to have to have the cleaning crew come in early tomorrow and get everything together? Is the place ropedoff like a crime scene? And if so, how long are we going to have to be closed?
But that’s just the surface stuff. The bigger issues still lie before me. It was the FBI who did this. Probably Rastelli, in fact. I haven’t told her anything, though. Why would she even bother with this?
If I had know that they would sweep in and bust the club on the same night as his meeting…
Which is a whole other ball of wax. I didn’t tell anyone about it. Not even Natasha. But it can’t be coincidence. That had to be the reason the club was busted. There was nothing else. At least not that I knew about. I guess the bigger, scarier question is just how the hell did they even find out about it?
But one disaster at a time. Roman just asked me something that I was not ready to hear. Not now. Not with all this.
“Roman, I can’t just drop everything and move in with you,” I tell him, my mind spinning around all the practicalities of doing something like that. “I have a lease on my apartment. I have things that I would need to move?—”
“You don’t need to worry about any of that. I’ll take care of it. You just have to say yes.”
I sit all the way up, regarding him. He looks back with such confidence, like all he has to do is command me and I’ll bend to his will.
It’s not gonna be that easy. Not this time.
“Last night, I told you that I’m going to need you to tell me what happened. I think it’s important that we talk about that now.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You do?”
“Yes. I do. Roman, If you want me to just walk away from my life and move in here, you’re going to have to talk to me. What happened to you last night?”
He sighs and looks at me with a little smile on his lips. He brushes some of my hair out of my eyes. “All right. I had a meeting with an associate. Joseph Abate. He was looking to me for help with a problem he was having, so we agreed to meet up.”
I bite my lip, trying to feign some surprise. “At the club?”
“Yes.”
“After I asked you not to do business there.”
He pauses, but then says, “Yes. Kitten’s Paw is a popular club now, and he hadn’t been there since all the big changes. He insisted on seeing it before we sat down, so we had to meet there..”
I scowl at him. “I really hope you’re not implying that it’s my fault that you broke the one rule I asked you to follow. Making the club successful is a goal that everyone wanted.”
He shakes his head. “Just telling you why we were there.” He pauses as he locks eyes with me. There’s a test behind them. Something he wants to be sure of. “That a dealbreaker for you? Me going against your wishes?”
It’s not, and I think he knows that, at least on some level. “I just wish you’d told me about it.”
“Surely, you don’t expect me to ask permission?—”
“No, I just… I’d like to have been in on it. That’s all. Maybe if I knew ahead of time, I could have made some preparations just incase. Maybe whatever damage the FBI has done to the club could have been avoided if I’d been there to head them off.”
