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Dante rolls his eyes. “I spent years with women trying to make those kinds of arrangements with me. Plenty of them fucked me just for a chance to get one rung higher on the social ladder. LA is rife with it; you can’t tell me otherwise.”
He’s not wrong, but I’m not in the mood to keep harping on that particular point. “She came to me and offered me the same arrangement,” I say curtly.
“Oh?” Dante raises an eyebrow. “Interesting.”
“I turned her down. But she was desperate to find some way of replacing the agreement they had. It was clear that his support was going for her living expenses, not designer luxuries.” I run a hand through my hair. “So I offered her a different kind of job. She strips at the Rosebud, and we needed someone to move lower-level product.”
Dante’s eyebrows are nearing his hairline. “Are you out of your mind?” He shakes his head. “So this girl is desperate, and you’re using her to move highly illegal product?—”
“You almost sound like you disapprove.” I glare at him. “A minute ago, you were making fun of the idea of her fucking Altiere for the reasons you made up in your head, and now you’re disapproving of my solution to her problem.”
“If she’s doing it for luxuries, then that’s different.” Dante lets out a sharp breath. “This feels dangerous. For us and for her.”
“Think of it as charity. She was in trouble. It’s better than me taking her up on her offer to fuck me for money, right?” I raise an eyebrow at my older brother, and he shakes his head.
“You should have turned her away. Told her to handle her own problems. There’s charity you can write off on your taxes, Lorenzo, and then there’s this. This could get us in trouble. What if she causes us problems over Altiere? Or?—”
“She’s hardly going to do that,” I say coldly. “She’s running drugs for us now. She’s not going to go to the cops. She can’t blackmail us when she’s in illegal shit up to her neck now, herself. And besides, she didn’t want Altiere. I’d say she’s as glad as your Emma is that he’s dead. She just needed something to replace what he did for her. I’ve given her that, and it benefits us both.”
Dante shakes his head, his face still creased with concern. “This is reckless,” he says finally. “That’s not like you.”
“You want nothing to do with what Fontana demanded of us. So I’m solving this problem for you. Or isn’t that what you want? For me to handle all of this?” The words come out more harshly than I intended for them to, but I feel irritated with all of it. The deal was made with Fontana to protect the woman Dante loves, yet he wants nothing to do with any of this. And now he’s questioning my methods.
Or, you’re angry because you know he’s right.
I push the nagging voice aside, choosing to ignore it. I might have allowed myself to be more soft-hearted than usual with Mila, but I’m not wrong that we needed someone to move our product at a place like the Rosebud. And I’m not wrong, either, that we’ve insulated ourselves against her using what she knows about Altiere. She can’t, now, not without hurting herself as well.
Two birds, one stone.
“If you stop by next week, I can give you some projected numbers. I’ll pick up the cash drop at the Neon Rose tonight. I’m sure you want to be home with Emma.”
Dante shoots me a grateful look. “I appreciate it?—”
I wave a hand. “It’s fine. Go be with her. It’s only been a few days, after all.”
After Dante leaves, I sink back in my office chair, rubbing the bridge of my nose. My head has started to ache, and a part of me regrets offering to do the run tonight—I’d rather be home with a stiff drink.
Or, you could go to the Rosebud, and take Mila up on that dance.
My abdomen tightens, a burst of desire jolting through me at the thought. I should have been off-put by her cheap lingerie, the tawdriness of the club she dances at, but all I can see is her slender body and milk-pale skin wrapped in that pink bra and thong, the rhinestones on it glittering above me in the low light. I’ve never liked artifice, and even seeing her half-bared to me wasn’t enough. I wanted to strip the push-up bra away and see what her breasts really look like, to find out if she was entirely smooth and bare between her thighs, to take her somewhere where she could stop pretending and be herself again.
I remind myself that I couldn’t have had that, not even if I took her up on her offer. Even here in my office, on her knees, she was putting on a show. Pretending to be what she believes I want, instead of herself.
That’s all we would ever have. And that simple fact should remind me that I’ve made the right choice, not make me crave seeing her more. It shouldn’t make me want to find out if I could get past those walls, and discover who she truly is.
What is it about her that makes me care?
Dante is right about one thing, there are plenty of women in this city who would try to make such an arrangement with one of us. But it’s more than just Mila’s sincerity that’s drawn me to her. It’s something else, too, and I’m afraid to delve too deeply into what that might be.
Now, more than ever, there should be a professional distance between us. It’s risky enough to have tasked someone I barely know with working for us moving product. Mixing that business with pleasure would make it even more dangerous.
But still, it feels impossible to shake her. Not for the rest of the afternoon, as I work my way through mindless business tasks, and not that evening, when I make the run to the Neon Rose and pick up the cash drop. For a moment, I consider lingering and enjoying a dance from one of the girls there—more, even. One of them, Bella, passes me as I walk to the back office and flashes me a smile. I know what her full lips feel like wrapped around me, and I know I could easily pay her to feel them again.
What I want is Mila. The desire that floods me when I think of her pulses like a heartbeat, making me ache, and I know I’m destined to spend another night in my apartment, my hand wrapped around myself as I feverishly try to exorcise a desire that I have no business feeling.
A desire that disturbs me, because I feel it so fiercely.
Mila
