Page 48 of Captivated

Like when he was at the dinner.

Cold.

Black.

Hard.

Nothingness.

Liliana blinked, and stopped her stretches when Joe said, “No, I need you to look into that for me—yeah, business reasons. Find out who the fuck it is. Later.”

He ended the conversation.

She didn’t move a muscle.

“Joe?”

“Hmm?”

Instantly, the coldness was gone. He was Joe again, looking at her in that beautiful way of his.

“Why are you still in New York?” she asked.

One of many questions she had.

Joe shrugged his shoulders. “Business.”

“That’s all you want to say?”

“That’s all I can say.”

“You kind of give me whiplash, Joe.”

He, too, stayed still as stone. “Why’s that?”

“Sometimes, it’s like you’re someone else entirely. You go back and forth between this person I get to see, and someone else you let the people around you see. And I’m not sure how I feel about the other Joe when he comes out to play.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He’s cold—blank, I guess. It almost makes me wonder if you feel anything when you look like that, you know?”

“And what else?” he asked.

Liliana glanced down at the floor. “I just … what do you really do in the business, Joe?”

“I’m the shadow people need when something needs to go, and nobody needs to know about it.”

That … told her nothing. Or, maybe she just didn’t want to think too hard about what that meant. She was not dumb—she knew the men in her life weren’t entirely good people. They were criminals, and yet, she still loved those men. They were good to her. And that’s what counted the most.

“So, what does that make you, then? A good, or a bad man?”

And what was she supposed to do with it?

Joe’s expression gave nothing away when he said, “The only man I know how to be, Liliana.”

“I fucked him.”

Cella’s head popped up from staring down at her phone, her eyes became impossibly wide, and she choked on the latte she had been sipping on just seconds before. So, maybe that hadn’t been the right time to blurt that information out to her sister.