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They sure do when I dig the tip into the soft meat of those danglers, and his eyes go wide.
“Whoa, whoa! Psycho b-bitch,” he stammers, suddenly scared shitless. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“No means no.” I say it slowly for his benefit, and my smile warms. “Repeat it for me.”
He’s silent for a moment before I dig the knife deeper yet, and he lets out a strangled groan of pain. “N-no means no.”
“Very good,” I coo.
Appearances are everything for people in my position. But so is self-defense. I’d be a piss-poor heir if I let scum like this guy manipulate and maneuver me.
“Besides, the grime underneath your fingernails is too thick for you to be wealthy. It’s a clear indication you don’t take the time to care for yourself.” My eyes drop to his hands. “You may work for your boss onhisyacht, but the champagne you claim to have would not be yours. It would be his. Or it would be old. Not nearly what it would take to woo me.” I purposely lower my gaze to his crotch and angle the knife into his sac until he gasps. “And I hardly think the few inches you’re packing will do anything for me other than make me angry. And I’m already pissed off.”
Losing my cool won’t do any good. It will lead to a verbal tongue-lashing in the privacy of Papa’s office and a harsh, potentially even painful reminder not to pull these kinds of stunts. Definitely not where people can see me.
Appearances are everything.
And there’s no escape.
I slice the knife down toward his taint for spite, and tears prick the corners of his eyes. Shit, I haven’t even cut through fabric yet. Why is he crying?
“Don’t hit on another fucking woman on your way out, or I’ll know,” I tell him in an undertone. “Trust me.”
The man is so surprised by the knife pull and the near castration that he falls backward off the bar stool. All eyes in the room turn in his direction at the noise, the disruption, and the already hushed conversation drops to a silence where the scurrying of a mouse is as loud as a gunshot.
“You’re a fucking psycho!” He lands that one departing shot before he scrambles to his feet and sprints toward the front door.
Heartbeats later, the bartender drops a perfectly made martini in a chilled glass in front of me. “That’s the second one this month, Miss Balestra,” the woman says from behind the bar. “I’m not sure why the scumbags are attracted to you or how you manage to put them in their place so quickly, but man. It’s fascinating to watch.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” I tilt back the martini and take a sip.
Yes. Perfection. Shit, she’s good. This is almost enough for me to forgive her for the first name slip earlier.
“I don’t know how you weed them out so fast. It’s a gift.”
“It’s a skill,” I correct Sherry. “It’s a lot of practice.”
She isn’t prying. She was complimenting me. But I make a mental note to be more careful calling out the pricks who hit on me here, at least for a little bit.
“It’s a skill I’m going to need you to teach me.” Sherry adjusts the jaunty set of the black bowtie Uncle Henry forces his employees to wear at Meridian. “It’s hard to know the fakes from the good guys. We don’t get a lot of real bad dudes here, but there’s always a few in a crowd, you know?”
“Oh, that’s easy.” I wave her away. “You assume there are no good guys.”
I’m a pretty face, which has won me more than the wit inside my skull. The intelligence and practice allow me to monitor body language, look for clues over lies. The inside of my head is a constantly churning machine, and the machine can only work when I’m able to take people by surprise. Otherwise, no one pays me any mind.
Papa’s empire benefits from the deadly combination. At least, it does when the lowlifes aren’t trying to push my skirt up to my hips.
It’s the same one I’ll inherit one day if I can keep stomaching dealing with the assholes who want to claw their way up from the bottom. Ones with ambition or money or good, old-fashioned charm.
They want what the Balestra family has, and one way to do it is by getting to me.
The one with the microdick? Hard to say where his motivations really lie.
I raise my finger to Sherry to get her attention and reach into the small clutch on my lap, drawing out a hundred, making sure she sees me slip the bill under my too-soon empty glass. I have a two-drink maximum each time I’m dispatched to the club.
Two, max, like I’m some kind of fucking child.
Sherry nods and starts to make my third after covertly slipping the hundie into her cleavage.
