Page 27 of Ruthless Sin
Maria murmurs, “Let’s go,ma fille,” turning on her heel without waiting, and I follow the quiet slide of her slippers down the corridor.
Yelena would not recognize you.
You don’t get to be chosen. You get used and sent back. That is the whole shape of you.
The voice inside my head is awake early today. I keep my boots moving, my spine straight.
The kitchen sits at the far end of the service hall. Usually, I snatch the bread Nonna Rosa leaves out on the granite counterand keep moving, but today I pause because my hands want a second piece for Sofia.
Nonna is standing at the stove with her back to me, stirring the copper pan. She doesn’t turn around.
“You took two.”
“Sofia.” The name leaves my mouth before I can lock my jaw.
I close my hand around the warm loaf, squeezing until my fingers leave marks in the crust.
The copper pan doesn’t stop sliding over the flame.
“Bene fatto, cher,” Nonna says straight into the steam. Well done.
She doesn’t repeat the phrase, and she doesn’t make a fuss over the sound of my voice.
I walk out of the kitchen with the bread in my left hand.
Sestra moya, ya zhiva, I tell Yelena. I am alive. I am waiting.
Nico is waiting by the front door in a black tailored suit and white shirt, no tie. His right hand is in his pants pocket, his weight shifted back as he watches the hallway.
My thighs press tight together.
An ache blooms behind my pubic bone, a slow pulse of heat that dampens the cotton between my legs and catches in my throat. My mouth has gone dry. I am standing in a hallway with bread in my hand and he hasn’t looked at me yet and my body is already doing this.
I hate that my body is already doing this.
He turns his head.
His eyes find mine for half a second before he looks back at the hallway.
The ache sharpens.
Wanting is the leash. You know how this ends.
I press my spine against the wall. My eyes stay on his chest, the muscle straining against the linen where his shirt stays unbuttoned. He looks like a blade someone forgot to put away.
At Sunday dinner, I sat so close his body heat reached me across the table. When I put my hand on his sleeve, his pulse went hard under my fingers and his whole body went still. He wanted me.
It was the same hungry look I know from dangerous men, but he didn’t lurch into my space. He just stays on his side of the room, bleeding out in the dark, and the fact that he isn’t moving makes the heat in my belly worse.
He opens the rear door of the SUV for Sofia, and she slides onto the leather with her notebook pinned flat against her chest. He closes the door with a quiet click, walks around the back of the vehicle, and pulls the handle open for me.
I don’t drop into the backseat.
I walk right past the open door, my bare arm brushing the wool of his suit jacket, and stand directly against the front passenger window.
His hand lingers on the rear handle for one long beat, the tendons sharp in his wrist. Then he closes the back door quietly, steps into my space to open the front passenger side, and waits.
He doesn’t command me back into the shadows. He doesn’t say a word.
