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“Do you want to go back?” he asked.
“No.” I spoke emphatically this time, knowing that no matter what, I couldn’t go back there.
He stood aside, gestured toward the front door. “You are free to go,” he said.
As modestly as I could, I crawled out of the bed and stood, drawing as close to him as I dared. Then I looked toward the door, then back at him, my heart pounding harder than it had before.
He was offering a way out, the thing I had dreamed of, but my feet were rooted to the floor. I looked between him and the door again, sickening dread filling my stomach.
David would take me back. He always found me and took me back. But maybe here…
I met the man’s gaze head-on.
“I want to stay.”
FIVE
Vasile
I narrowed my eyes at her, taking in the stubborn tilt of her chin, the spark of intensity that flashed in her eyes, the first sign of fight I’d seen in her.
“Why?” I asked, assessing her.
“He won’t let me go. Not ever.”
The resignation and certainty with which she spoke were more tragic than the implication of the words. Bare of makeup, her eyelids not weighted by lashes, she looked younger, prettier, the fresh-faced innocence I’d glimpsed last night on full display now. As were the shadows that haunted her amber-brown eyes. Whatever she faced with Ashmore was worse than being with me, a person she didn’t know and one she likely didn’t want to. And fuck if for some crazy reason I wanted her to stay.
“I am Vasile Petran. You are welcome here.”
A faint smile curved her lips and the shadows in her eyes lifted. She was mine now. I wondered what I would do with her.
* * *
Vasile
“The purpose of that meeting was to reassure the other clans, not mess things up worse,” Priest said later that day.
I’d gone to Familie, the bar and restaurant that also was the base of Clan Petran operations. Priest had arrived before me, and now he stood, deceptively casual in his stance, his face betraying nothing of what he thought. Was he expressing genuine concern or testing me to see how I would respond to his meddling? With Priest, one could never tell, a fact that had served him well and made him the rarest of our community, one who had connections to everyone but formal ties to no one.
“Are you telling me how to run my business, Priest?” I asked, deciding that whatever his intention, I would not be questioned, not by him or anyone else.
“I wouldn’t, but more than your business is at stake here,” he said. “Ashmore washes for your clan and four others, the Peruvians, the Sicilians, and the street gangs. If things are bad with him, things are bad with the money, and people die when things are bad with the money.”
“Our arrangement stands,” I said. “We’ll send one hundred thousand per week, just as we always have.”
Priest blinked rapidly, which was about as lively as he got. “So that simple, eh? That woman you stole doesn’t matter?”
“I didn’t steal her. He offered, tried to give her to me. I accepted,” I said, allowing myself a grim smile, the memory of last night sparking anger anew. The woman—Fawn—shouldn’t have been with that porcine in the first place.
“He tells a different story.”
“Did he call you to complain, convince you to try to talk some sense into me?”
Priest laughed then, the sound surprisingly genuine. “I wouldn’t waste my time trying to talk sense into a Petran. But remember how deep the ties between your families run. Your father worked with his?—”
“My father is dead. His father is in jail. The decision is mine to make now,” I said flatly.
“Why go to all this trouble for some whore?”
