She could say that again. “Listen, it’s getting late. I just wanted you to know that I’m okay. I’ll call you again in a few days, all right?”
“You just say the word, baby, and I’ll fly out there.”
“I know.” I smile fondly at my phone. It’s nice that some things haven’t changed. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Cassy.”
An eerie silence falls over the room when I hang up. No sirens, no drunken revelers walking the streets, no tourists squealing outside my window. We may as well be a thousand miles away from Brooklyn.
Where the hell is this house?
I lie back in bed and try to settle into the quiet, desperate to ignore the demanding thoughts coursing through my brain.
I’d flirted with him. He’d asked for my help, and I’d offered to suck his cock.
What the hell was I thinking? I’d meant it as a joke…but…
Lying low to help out a criminal organization was one thing, but to make those demands had been a moment of sheer insanity.
Yes, I’d been worried about money. Yes, I’d been sick of everyone lying to me all the time. But all rational thought had apparently evaporated the moment he looked at me like…
Like I was something too precious for him to touch. As if my situation made me vulnerable and scared. As if he was somehow too honorable to besmirch my dignity.
The man who’d come home with another man’s blood on his shirt. And made ajokeabout it.
The hypocrisy is almost baffling.
Every time I think about it, I come back to the question: where the hell does Rocco Moretti’s morality lie? Because he simply can’t be both the savior of broken womenandthe breaker of men.
Can he?
I groan as I toss over to my other side. Maybe I’m just overcomplicating everything. Maybe he just wants me to play along with his little schemes without a fuss. Would he have really let me leave if I’d said no?
Where would I even go?
He had said Ohio. My mother wants me to go home. But do I want that? I’ve been here for two weeks, and it’s already been two weeks full of more chaos than I’ve ever endured. Is it worth sticking around in the hope that one day I’ll sing on that stage again?
That one day, I might know what happened to my father?
I shake the thought from my mind and toss over again.
I got dealt a shitty hand, that’s what Rocco had said. I played my cards, and this is the result. I got myself here, and now I won’t be able to leave for the foreseeable future. That was my choice.
Maybe that could be a good thing. Maybe I should start trying to live with that.
Maybe I could stop pretending that Rocco isn’t sleeping three doors down from me.
I’m not sure he has any idea what he does to me. I’m not sure I feel anything more for him than pure, carnal attraction. To my dismay, none of those feelings had changed as I watched him at dinner, despite everything I know now.
But if I have to sleep just down the hall from him for the next three months, it’s going to take everything within me not to kick down his door impulsively and demand he make good on his threats to fuck me.
As if I don’t have enough to deal with, trying to curb my rampant arousal whenever he’s around is quickly turning into a full-time occupation. It’s infuriating and so fucking frustrating.
My thighs squeeze together in the hopes of that pounding lust subsiding. But it feels so impossible.
Because he’s right there. Right outside my door, down the corridor fourteen paces, the first door on the left.
Maybe I could just go and see if he’s still awake.
