Page 9
Luca leans into the mic, face twisted, and spits it at me in front of everyone. “You mouthy, fat little bi…”
“Enough.”
The Big Bad’s voice comes from right behind my left shoulder, deep and unhurried.
The room doesn’t go quiet. It goes graveyard quiet.
Then, softer, almost pleasant:
“Finish that word, Santini, and they’ll bury you with it in your mouth.”
Luca’s eyes shift past me, and for the first time in my life, I watch Luca Santini go pale.
The Big Bad comes to stand beside me.
Beside me.
Not in front.
Under the stage lights, he’s twice the size he was in the shadows. Black suit cut like armor. Stillness so complete it feels like a threat all by itself.
He’s close enough that heat comes off him in waves, and that dark pepper-and-amber scent hits me like a first sip of something I know I’ll regret.
My knees go weak. Not from fear.
I can’t stop looking at him. Two hundred people in this room, and my eyes keep sliding back to the line of his jaw, the hand at his side, and all I can think about is what that hand would feel like spread across the small of my back with nobody watching.
Around us, people are moving. Not toward the stage. Away from it. A woman in peacock feathers quietly sets down her glass.
Luca laughs. It comes out a half step too high, and the mic catches the crack in it.
“Come on,” he says. “It’s a toast. Everybody bleeds a little on toast night. That’s tradition.”
“She isn’t on the block, Santini. And if she were, you couldn’t afford her.”
He said it to Luca, but it lands on me. Low and hot and possessive, right between my hips. Two hundred people just heard a man decide I was priceless, and my body took it personally.
The only thing Luca Santini fears more than the man in front of him is being seen as the coward that he is.
“Relax.” He smooths his tie, smile back in place like nothing happened. “I’m saving you money.” He lifts his glass to the room. “Opening bid on the rabbit. One dollar.” He lets it hang. “Gentlemen, please. I’ve already sampled the merchandise. Trust me, nobody in here wants my sloppy seconds.”
Nobody laughs.
Not one person.
The whole room suddenly finds its drinks fascinating.
Beside me, his jaw clenches.
I feel the change in him before I see it. The air around him goes cold and still, the way a room does in the second after a gun clears its holster. Whatever was patient and amused in that booth is gone. What’s left is the thing this whole room has been afraid of all night.
He doesn’t move closer to the stage. He doesn’t have to. When he speaks, his voice is quieter than before, and it carries to the back wall.
“Speak about what’s mine like that again, Santini,” he says, almost gently, “and I’ll cut out your tongue.”
Nobody breathes.
My brain is very clear about this man. Killer. Trouble. Run.
