“What am I supposed to do?” Her voice is shaky.
I don’t turn around. She’s not my responsibility. Only onewoman is.
23
VIN
The Arsenal smells incredible, like garlic and lemon and roasting meat, but so far I don’t see Sophie anywhere. Her staff is freaking out that I’m here, flitting around me, trying to stop me as I head back to the kitchen. Good luck with that.
Since she hasn’t come barreling out of the kitchen to yell at me, I’m assuming she’s in her apartment so I head up the stairs.
The door is unlocked—not loving that—but the little space is empty. I stop for a second and just take in how she has filled the place, recognizing some of the furniture from her old house. It’s a little messy, laundry on the couch, dishes in the sink.
But I spot something that makes me stop short: on the windowsill sits a little opalescent basil plant. I wonder if it’s the one I shattered on the patio here. Did she rescue it? I don’t knowwhy, but it makes me happy to think she found it worth saving. Like maybe that means she’ll think I’m worth saving too.
As soon as that thought settles, another one, more panicked replaces it: I may have just started a war by telling Ashlyn things are over between us and Sophie doesn’t know it yet.
Where the fuck is she?
I head down the stairs back to the restaurant and push through the kitchen door, passing the dish room and stop. It’s not Sophie. It’s Rocco.
He’s at the prep station, breaking down a crate of tomatoes.
What the fuck? I haven’t seen him since he left me hanging from rusty ass pipes in an alley over a year ago. And I’ve been looking.
I have him by the collar and slammed against the stainless steel counter before he gets his hands up, tomatoes scattering across the floor in a red mess. His elbow catches the edge of a sheet pan and sends it clattering. He goes rigid, smart enough not to fight back, which is the only reason I don’t put his head through the cabinet.
“What thefuckare you doing in her kitchen?”
“Vin—Vin—” He gets both hands up between us, palms out, voice desperate. “I work here. I’m on staff. Sophie hired me back.”
“Sophie hired you back.” My forearm is across his chest, and I lean into it. “You left me strung up, Rocco, then disappeared. And Sophie hired you back. How’d you swing that?”
“I don’t know.” His voice cracks slightly. “She doesn’t know about… that. But I came to her before the restaurant opened, and I apologized. She was really fucking nice to me and she didn’t have to be.”
“No shit.” After everything this fucker did to her, she took him back? But me she avoids like the plague? What the fuck?
“I’m the dishwasher, man. That’s it. She gave me the worst job in the building, and I say thank you and show up every day.”
I stare at him for a long moment. His fucking eyes are different. Every time I see this fucker, something different is going on with him. When I first met him, he was an entitled asshole. When he grabbed me with his guys, he was calm and controlled. And now he just looks fucking scared.
God damn that woman, throwing this dipshit a rope. I hope he fucking hangs himself with it.
I let him go and step back, straightening my jacket.
He exhales and peels himself off the counter, rubbing his sternum where my forearm was.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“I don’t—”
“Rocco.”
He hesitates, dropping his gaze. “She had a date with the linen guy, Gavin.”
The name lands like a fucking rock. The idea of her sleeping in his bed, of him fucking her, of any cock in her mouth that isn’tmine—I want to fucking destroy everything I see.
I grab Rocco by the collar again, rage coursing through me. He throws his hands up immediately.
