Page 82 of Cruel Kiss

The night proceeds, and I try to shake the encounter off. I really do.

But Vera's thumb on his jaw keeps replaying in my head.I used to have to kick you out of my apartment.The tinkling little laugh after. It's stuck in my throat like a bad shrimp, poisoning me with every breath I take.

I remind myself I handled it. I passed the test. I don't care.

Except I do.

I'm jealous.

"You okay?" Ronan asks.

"Fine. Just warm."

He doesn't believe me. I can tell. But he lets it go, thank God.

I need a minute. I tell him I'm going to find the ladies' room, and he offers to walk me. I tell him no, I can find a bathroom by myself, thank you. With a shrug, he lets me go.

I don't make it far.

A woman catches my elbow near the coat check. She's older, maybe fifty, in a gray dress and good pearls. I don't recognize her.

"You're Ronan's wife," she says. She doesn't wait for me to confirm. "Walk with me a moment."

I don't want to. But there's something in her face that isn't a test. It isn't Marisha or Vera. It's something else. So I walk.

She keeps her voice down as she starts to whisper at a breakneck pace. "The women hear things. More than the men think. They talk in front of us like we're invisible, and sometimes, we end up getting information that's truer and more recent than theirs."

I shudder. "Uh, okay…"

"You should know what they're saying." She glances over her shoulder, then back. "Lev has been making promises. He tells the ones who are thinking about leaving that soon, he is going to get 'the operator.' Then he'll have both the machine and the money-man. Do you know what I mean?"

This is all happening so fast that I'm a little confused. "The operator…?"

She pinches my arm hard, which makes me yelp in surprise. "The one who runs the machine." She looks at me with pity. "That's you, dear. You're the operator."

Oh, shit.

"Why are you telling me this?" I rasp.

"Because you look at Ronan the way I used to look at my husband, before I learned better. So look after yourself, girl. Nobody else in this room is going to."

She lets go of my elbow and walks away. I stand there by the coats, jaw on the floor, once again asking myself just how willing I am to trust the man who brought me here.

23

CALI

I make it through the rest of the night on autopilot.

But the whole time, two things are chewing at me. The first is what the woman in gray said.You're the operator. Look after yourself.

The second is Vera's thumb on Ronan's jaw and that stupid little laugh.

I wish I could say that the second one isn't bothering me more than the first, but that would be a lie.

What does that say about me, that a threat to my life feels less important thanDoes Ronan truly love me?

We say our goodbyes. It seems like we've done what he needed to do this evening, because he's getting plenty of respectful nods and firm handshakes from the men. Then we're outside in the August heat. Paolo is off tonight, so it's just us in the Rolls Royce as Ronan pulls out into the dark streets of Brighton Beach.