AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s you.
“Definitely the bad coffee,” Roman said. Was he smiling? The expression felt strange on his face. “The processed baked goods are just a bonus.”
She laughed — he’d already memorized the melody — and looked down at the register. A piece of dark hair streaked with burgundy fell out of her ponytail, and he had to resist the urge to tuck it behind her ear.
She really was beautiful, with creamy skin and refined cheekbones that were almost too sharp for her delicate features. His gaze locked onto her full lips, and he wondered what it would be like to kiss her.
“Pick your poison,” she said, pulling him away from the fantasy.
“I’ll have a large black coffee and…” He looked at the glass case filled with pastries, wanting to prolong his contact with her, “an apple strudel.”
“One bad large coffee and a processed apple strudel coming up,” she said, tapping the register.
He smiled as he watched her move around the tiny area behind the counter. She maneuvered gracefully around her coworker — a young-ish guy with a goatee and a handful of face piercings — as if she were a dancer in a strange ballet.
She was small but solidly built, with full breasts and a tapered waist that flared to pillowy hips. He imagined having her thighs locked around him, then looked quickly away, feeling like a pervert.
She placed the pastry and coffee on the counter and stretched to get him a cardboard sleeve for his cup. His eye caught on her wrist, a bruise darkening the delicate skin there.
Something like fury rose in his chest before he tamped it down. That wasn’t an I-bumped-into-something bruise.
That was a some-dickhead-grabbed-my-wrist-hard bruise.
Someone had hurt her.
“That’ll be $8.64,” she said with a smile.
His gaze snagged on her eyes, and for a split second, he felt something pass between them. He wanted to demand to know who had hurt her, to promise it would never happened again.
Then he got ahold of himself.
He didn’t know this woman, was projecting all kind of traits onto her that she likely didn’t possess, was idealizing her in a way that was inappropriate and quite possibly creepy.
He tapped his card against the machine, tipped 50%, and picked up the coffee and strudel. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “You too.”
He took the coffee and strudel and made his way through the throng of people toward the door.
Outside, he dumped the coffee and strudel in the trash and looked for Max. He spotted the Jag halfway down the block — a construction crew was setting up in front of the coffee shop — and headed that way, forcing the woman from his mind.
He had bigger things to think about anyway. Namely, the shit show in Chicago and his promise to help Lyon Antonov secure the territory. He was using his own men, the few he trusted not to talk inside the New York organization.
And they couldn’t talk, because there would be hell to pay if it ever got back to his father that Roman was involving himself in the Chicago turf war. At best, he would see Roman’s decision to help as an act of foolishness.
At worst, he would see it for it was — a trade: Roman helped Lyon secure the Chicago territory, and in return, Lyon would help Roman seize New York from his father’s leadership.
It would be a deadly game once Roman made the opening move. The longer he kept his father in the dark, the better.
He reached the Jag and slid into the passenger seat. “Let’s go.”
“Back to Brooklyn?” Max asked.
“Back to Brooklyn.” It was almost time for the meeting with his father. The scars on his chest and arms burned at the thought of him, and he heard his father’s voice in his mind:pain is a reminder of what you can endure.
Roman had endured plenty, mostly at the hands of his father.
But soon, the tables would turn.
