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Nia furrows her brows with slight confusion. “Vacation?” she asks, like she barely knows the meaning of the word. Suddenly, her eyes go wide as she looks desperately around. Her gaze settles on the bedside clock and she jumps out from underneath the covers. I thought I’d had my fill of her naked body last night, but still, the beauty of her is enough to take my breath away. I struggle to stay focused. I fear it’s a losing battle. So, I look away.
“I’m going to be late for work!” Nia gasps. Her clothes are on the floor, right next to where mine were. I hear her scrambling to get changed.
“You’re really going to go to work?” I ask, turning back around to her when I feel like I can handle her beauty again.
“I need the money, Ronan,” she says in a hurry.
My eyes wander down to her thighs, which are accentuated so deliciously by her tight blue jeans. My pants stir and my stomach growls. I realize I’m starving. For her and for some breakfast.
“Stay here, please,” I ask, taking a long step towards her. “We’ll make a quick breakfast and I’ll show you around the loft.”
My words don’t seem to deter her. Nia’s hiding it well, but I can tell she’s panicked. “I can’t lose this job, Ronan. God, I have one night of fun...”
I wrap my fingers around her shoulders, willing her to take a deep breath and a step back. “Stop, Nia. Breathe. Look around for a second.”
I gesture to my sprawling bedroom. The open concept floor plan is so expansive that it even makes my Alaskan king bed look small. Long, elegant, dark red curtains cascade down from the ceiling on the far side of the room—when you open them up, you’re treated to one of the best views in the city. A television-sized fire crackles near the bed, and a 75-inch TV hangs above it, just waiting to slide down at the click of a button. There’s a long oakwood desk near the doors of two walk in closets and, beside that there’s a heated-tile bathroom with a rain-forest shower head and a polished white bath tub as big as an infinite pool.
I make sure Nia knows what she’ll be missing out on if she leaves for work. “I know what it’s like to live in poverty,” I tell her. “And this is not it. There’s room to breathe here.”
“But for how long?” she sighs.
I’m scared to be any clearer. The truth is, I never want her to leave. This has become my sanctuary, and now I want it to be hers too. How can I ask her to stay without revealing too much? I dreamed about more than just her body after we were done fucking last night, I dreamed of an entire life together.
“As long as you want,” I assure her.
“And then, what?” Nia crosses her arms and bends at the hip. “What happens if one of those gunfights you get into goes bad? What if you get betrayed or arrested? What if you suddenly realize that we’ve only ever really spent one night together and we hardly even know each other? Then what? I like you Ronan, but I need to have my own life. I relied too much on my mother once, and when she left me, I was fucked. I’m not making the same mistake twice. I can’t give up my job. I can’t stop making my own money.”
I wrap my arms around her and pull her in close. She doesn’t resist, but I can already tell she’s not nearly as warm as she was last night. “You don’t need money anymore,” I try to tell her.
“I can’t rely on your generosity, Ronan,” Nia pushes away from me. I don’t want to let her go, but she’s a hell of a fighter. Her heavy hand leaves an imprint on my chest, just as it did on my wounded arm that night we first met.
“Well, then pawn off your new bracelet. I’m sure it’s worth at least a day’s pay. Take a break, please.”
Nia shakes her head, admiring the jewelry. “You just don’t get it. I’m making an honest living. There are no days off. People rely on me.”
I know I’m not winning this battle. It’s a bad start to a day where I need to come out on top. “At least let me drive you to work,” I ask, reaching out my hand to her. “We can have breakfast together.
To my relief, she takes it. “Well, I’m sure as hell not taking the bus.”
15
Ronan
Finn wasn’t lying when he’d told me he had good news.
“Three separate sources confirmed it,” his voice crackles over my earpiece.
The two of us have spent the past few hours staking out either side of a warehouse not far from where I had my little shootout last night. Finn had been one of the cops called in response to the skirmish, and after everyone else had left, he’d decided to take some initiative and ask around about Santino. To his surprise, he got some bites.
Several citizens had sworn that they’d seen someone who matched Santino’s description in the area over the past two days. One was a garbageman, who’d seen him coming out of a nearby alleyway with an armful of groceries just before the break of dawn. The garbageman told Finn that the memory only stood out in his mind for two reasons: first, because no grocery stores were open so early, so he figured the man must have looted his haul; and second, because the man had a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his forehead.
I must have nicked him with a bullet, I thought, when Finn had first relayed the news to me.
Another witness, an elderly woman, told Finn she’d watched from her apartment window as a man wearing a bloody headband snuck into this semi-abandoned warehouse, not long after she’d been awoken by gunshots last night. She’d been too infirm to make it down to the police before they’d left, but when Finn stuck around, she’d told him everything.
That was the good news. The bad news was that we still weren’t sure how we were going to get into the warehouse itself. The decrepit building looked worn and abandoned, but a construction crew with a security detail had quickly shown up just after dawn and surrounded the place while working on some mysterious project.
They’ve been at it all day, and Finn and I have had no choice but to just sit back and watch, and hope that Santino might come to us. We’ve had no such luck—and I was starting to get restless enough to try something reckless before an opportunity finally presented itself.
