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I wasn’t trying to work myself up, but it was just happening.
Ashton had given me and Jess and Trace the info on what he thought was happening because my dad was scurrying around out there. And also that he’d sent in an order for Marcus to reach out, but that he hadn’t yet. That was either good or bad. I checked my phone, but he’d not messaged or called me there either.
“Do you think he’ll be alarmed when he goes to your apartment, Molly?” Jess had asked earlier.
I snorted before remembering she didn’t really know the dynamic between my father and me. I shook my head. “Number one rule surviving being Shorty Easter’s daughter? Never let him know where you live. He only knows to get ahold of me at Easter Lanes.”
“And if he shows up, Glen will let us know. I have other men in place as well.”
Ashton. The Mafia man of the men. He had them everywhere, had ears everywhere, eyes all over the city. I watched him now as he came to the bed and reached for his shirt’s hem to haul it over his head, but he paused upon seeing me studying him.
He asked, “What?”
“The Worthing family sent men after you.”
His eyes grew wary until he masked them.
He was doing that less and less, or I was starting to be able to read him better and better. I was going with me. Woman power. I was awesome.
“Yes.”
I reached for the blanket, my finger running over the end, playing with it. “So according to Mafia street rules, that means you guys are going to hit them back?”
His shoulders rose as he took in a deep breath. “It’s not normal for me to talk about who I’m going to murder before I do it.”
If he meant for that to be cutting, I let it roll off my back. “They hit you before? With your uncles. Your grandfather. Trace’s uncle too.”
Ashton’s mouth dipped down. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m getting at, why haven’t you hit them back yet?” My pulse began to pick up pace. “Ashton, you are not the guy known for restraint. What is going on?”
He stared at me before a slight grin curved at the corner of his mouth. Reaching for the sheet, he moved it back and got underneath. He rested against the headboard, looking at me, so I moved forward, facing him and kneeling on the bed. He laid a hand between us, palm up, but other than that, he didn’t move to touch me.
“Most women don’t advocate for murder.”
I snorted at that. “Most women don’t own a business or have lived in a community where the Mafia runs it either. They get to live in fairy tales and castles. I don’t. Hit them back.”
He frowned a little. “We’re planning on it, but no, I’m not telling you the details.”
“I don’t care about the details. I just want to know you’re going to do it.”
He rested his head back, still looking at me. It gave him an almost softer look. “You and Jess are friends.”
I shot him a frown. “Yeah?”
“Then why am I the one in here with you?”
I shrugged at that, turning so I was sitting with my back against the headboard with him. I was still playing with the bedsheet in my hand. “Because Jess thinks I’m fragile, and she talks to me as if I’m an egg about to crack open. Yes. I’m not tough in hand-to-hand like she is, and I didn’t have to deal with parolees like she used to, but in a way, I’m more street than she ever was.”
“Her brother is in prison. Her father was murdered.”
“She was never homeless, and she lived in a decent community.” I’d stopped looking at him when he asked about Jess, but I chanced one now. “You don’t treat me like that. You don’t talk to me like that.”
A dark understanding was looking back at me. “I wasn’t? Not when I was carrying you around?”
I grinned. “That was me milking the situation. No matter how old we get, there’s always a little girl in us who wants to be picked up by her knight.”
He lifted his hand up, his thumb coming to rest on my chin, right in the dip. His gaze fell to my lips. “I’m not your knight.”
I swallowed over a lump. “No, you’re not. You’re the bad guy.”
His eyes darkened, and his thumb moved down to my throat, farther, gliding between my breasts. “Yes. I am.”
“You’re the murderer.”
That should scare me. It didn’t. It really didn’t, and it wasn’t because I was attracted to him or whatever else might’ve been unfolding between us. It had to do with something more, something underlying everything. Something in him that recognized something in me. Something that I felt, knew, was there but still wasn’t altogether ready to address.
