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I can’t wait to prove him wrong.
He pulls out a chair at the small metal table in the center of the room and takes a seat. I arch an eyebrow at him and cross my arms, making no move to join him at the table.
“Not restless. Just a little stiff from sitting and waiting for you to decide to get off your ass and come down here to lay the charges.”
“You understand you have the right to a lawyer and can ask for one at any time, correct?” he says, glossing over what I said as he drops his file in the middle of the table and opens it.
“I won’t be needing a lawyer.”
“My name is Agent Tyson Wilson. I work with the Organized Crime Unit for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
He pulls out his credentials and holds them out to me. I roll my eyes and yawn, pacing away from him. There’s a smile on his face as he puts his credentials away and shuffles the papers in the file.
“Please take a seat. I’d like to talk to you about a deal.”
“No, thank you. I’m fine with standing.”
“Have it your way,” Tyson says, that infuriating smirk still on his face. “You’re the youngest child of Antonio Russo, head of the Russo crime family.”
I shrug. “Never heard of that in my entire life. My fatherisAntonio Russo, but that’s a common enough name for an Italian. Are you sure that you don’t have your files mixed up?”
“Aria Russo, you were brought here after being caught racing in the middle of the city.”
“If I did such a thing, and this is not an admission of guilt because I have no knowledge of what you’re talking about, I was winning the race.”
Tyson’s smirk drops as he studies me, his eyes narrowing. An easy smile crosses his face again as he shrugs.
His suit is a dark gray that brings out the few gray strands of hair starting to appear in his closely groomed beard. Warm brown eyes look up at me, taking in every movement I make as he’s been trained to do. If he wasn’t making my life that much more complicated, I would find him attractive despite the obvious age difference.
“How old are you, Tyson?” I ask, grinning at him as I perch myself on the edge of the desk.
His gaze never leaves my face, even as my denim shorts ride higher up my thighs. I want to roll my eyes but I keep the seductive smile on my face as I lean over, letting the neckline of my shirt fall open while I look down at his papers.
“I fail to see what my age has to do with why you and I are meeting right now.”
“I’m guessing you’re in your thirties,” I say, making a point of looking over him slowly. “The gray gives you away. Same with that chiseled jawline.”
“Again, I fail to see what this has to do with why we’re here, Ms. Russo.”
“Your file is wrong,” I say, changing the subject and pointing to the place where my age is written. “I’m twenty-one.”
In that second, I see the smile falter slightly. He shrugs and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest.
I don’t have the upper hand here and I’m not sure what to do about it. Most men either fall prey to my knife or a quick show of too much skin. Since skin isn’t working and I don’t have my favorite knife, it looks like we’re going to be playing mind games.
“You know, you have a pretty miserable life with the Russo Mafia,” Tyson says, nodding to one of the pictures he had taken out of the file.
I look at the picture of myself, sitting on my private balcony at my father’s estate. As wrong as Tyson may be about what he thinks he knows, he isn’t wrong about this. I’m my father’s pretty captive bird.
Never to be free and always waiting for him to once more slam the door to the gilded cage at the drop of a hat.
“You know nothing about my life,” I say, feigning disinterest as I stretch my legs out in front of me, crossing them at the ankles.
“I know that if you don’t take the deal I’m about to offer, you could be looking at a long time in jail.”
I grin as I lean closer to him. “I’m not going to jail. I’ve done nothing wrong. Not a single one of those officers checked my speed. It’s my word against yours.”
“We have camera footage throughout the city.”
