“Why are you looking at her like that?” Gino asked.
I lifted my eyes to find that Milo was indeed staring at me hard.
“I’m just trying to place where I know her from,” he told Gino.
He waved away his question. “You’ve probably seen her dance.”
“No, that’s not it. I’ve never been in Honey’s.”
“Pfft,” Gino scoffed. “A young boy like you? Never been in a strip bar?”
“I didn’t say that,” Milo answered. “I said I’ve never been in Honey’s. But no, I don’t usually blow my money on exotic dancers. I have plenty of women showing me their tits for free.” He laughed, and Gino joined in, smacking him on the arm a few times.
My eyes went back and forth between them as they talked about me like I wasn’t there. I would’ve left the table, but the only place to go was back to my room, and I wasn’t quite ready to be stuck in there again. Besides, now that Gino was feeding me again and leaving my door unlocked, I didn’t want to risk pissing him off by leaving the table before I was dismissed.
Milo caught me looking at him. “Have you always hung around with these guys?” he asked me directly. “Maybe I’ve seen you at a dinner or a party or something.”
I knew exactly what he meant. He was wondering if I was one of the girls that got passed around between the capos. “Uh, no. Only at the club.”
“Huh.” He stared at me for a few more seconds, then shrugged. “I can’t figure it out. But I will eventually.” Tapping his temple with his forefinger, he smiled. “It’ll come to me.”
Why did that make me nervous? From the corner of my eye, I noticed Gino’s chin raise and his jaw tightened. “Luna, why don’t you excuse yourself and go back to your room?”
“Of course.” I quickly rose from the table and picked up my plate and glass. “It was nice meeting you,” I told Milo. “Please, excuse me.”
He didn’t respond, but I felt both men’s eyes on me as I took my dirty dishes to the buffet table, where I left them in the empty bin and rushed from the room. Something weird was going on, and I was more than happy to remove myself from the growing tension.
I took my time going back to my room, wandering around the house a bit until I found myself in the informal living room that guests rarely saw. I stared at the couch in front of the large television, remembering a similar setup in a different place and the man who’d taken so many liberties with me on a piece of furniture very similar to this one. Invisible fingers crawled over my skin, eerily soft for a man, the memories way too real even after all these years. I blinked, and the memory faded away, but not the feelings that came with it. I took a shaky breath, then forced them away. Nothing would come of reliving that time. It was over. In the past. And couldn’t hurt me now.
Behind the couch stood a large bookshelf that held quite a number of books for a man who lost his patience if a text message was too long. Unable to imagine Gino ever reading anything more extensive than a menu, I looked over the titles, hoping to find something even remotely interesting to help me pass the time in my prison cell of a room.
I was on the third shelf when the hair on the back of my neck rose like someone was staring at me. Fear shot through me, and I spun around with the book I’d been looking at still in my hands, my mouth open to explain to Gino why I wasn’t already back in my room.
But it wasn’t Gino leaning against the doorway, it was one of his guards. The one with dull, heavy-lidded eyes, thick lips, and a receding hairline he didn’t try to hide. Guido? Gary? Something like that.
“I was just grabbing a book,” I explained quickly. Keeping the one I had and picking another one without even looking at the title, I tried to rush past him and head back to my room.
But he grabbed my upper arm, stopping me. “Not so fast, girl.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I barely resisted the urge to knee him in the groin.
“Let me see those books you’re trying to steal.”
I sighed. “I’m not stealing them. Where the hell would I take them? I’m just borrowing them so I’ll have something to do.”
“Does Gino know you’re taking them?”
I pressed my lips together and didn’t respond.
“Uh huh. So you’re stealing them.” From the corner of my eye, I watched him look up and down the hallway before pushing himself off the wall and forcing me back into the room, his fingertips digging hard into my flesh.
I tried to yank my arm from his grip. “Let me go. Before I scream this house down.”
He ignored my threat. “I’ll tell you what,” he said once he’d gotten me out of the doorway and away from the eyes of anyone who might be in the hall. “I’ll let you take the books if you pay me for them.”
I almost laughed in his face. Did he think he was being clever? I knew this game, probably a hell of a lot better than he did, and I hadn’t played it since I was eighteen. “I’m not stealing, I’m borrowing. And you know what?”
He lifted his eyebrows in question.
