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He makes a soft noise of assent.
“I’m gonna go talk to Roxy. I’m gonna make myself absent for about an hour. When I get back, I want to see you fully prepped and ready for me. I plan to find out what you feel like inside. You get me?”
The smile that spreads across his face takes away any guilt I might feel.
CHAPTER43
LEO
Roxanne isneither a happy nor grateful woman, but she’s also not going anywhere, which is the main thing I wanted to check.
“You think I’m a fucking idiot?” she snaps at me when I tell her she needs to stay put a little longer. “I’ll move in permanently if I have to. I’d rather live with that psycho down the hallway than deal with your fucking Family. All disrespect intended, by the way, Leo.”
Things are getting difficult for her, or she wouldn’t risk talking to me that way. “Okay, okay.” I hold up my hands in surrender. “I get it. You like breathing. Good. And you won’t have to stay here forever, I promise.”
“Fuck you, Leo,” she says, but she just sounds tired now. There’s an empty bottle of Chablis on the coffee table, and she’s working her way through the red standing next to it. “You can’t promise me something like that. Don’t talk to me like I’m a moron. I knew what it meant from the start, being with Gino. I knew even better after—after Annie.”
She doesn’t talk much about Anaïs Beaumont, but I know it cut her up inside. Her best friend, killed and dumped.
“If you knew,” I say gently, “why’d you stay? Gino’d never hurt you. He would’ve let you go.”
She gives a sob-laugh, and I see she’s pretty far gone tonight. Maybe every night. There’s not much for her to do hereexceptdrink, I guess. “Because I’m in love with him, dumbass.”
It still doesn’t make sense to me. “If you love him, why didn’t you go tohimfor protection?”
“Gino’s got no protection to offer,” she points out bluntly. “No real power. You know that.”
“But why trust the Castellanis, for fuck’s sake? You told me they’re the ones who killed Anaïs, but here you are.” That’s the thing that doesn’t make sense to me the most. “Why go to the enemy for help?”
But Roxy gives me a furtive, tipsy look. “I didn’t go to them. They came to me. And maybe you don’t know everything that happened with Annie.”
“You gonna tell me?”
Her chin lifts up. “Nope.”
I’ll say this for Roxanne: she can keep a secret. Much respect for that. “Then explain it to me in a way I can understand.”
She looks down at the couch she’s sitting on, picking at the upholstery. “Miller and I go way back, and I knew…I knew I could trust him, even if I couldn’t trust the Castellanis,” Roxy says. “And frankly, Leo, I didn’t trustyou. You do everything Poppy tells you to. You don’t think for yourself.”
It’s a slap in the face, one I don’t think she’d give if she wasn’t so deep into that bottle. “Is that so?” I ask.
“Yeah, it is,” she says recklessly. “Even Gino’s scared of you.”
That hurts. I’d do anything for my little brother, and it fuckinghurtsto hear that he doesn’t see that. “But here I am,” I say heavily. “Working with the enemy to keepyourass safe. Guess you were both wrong about me.”
“Guess we were,” she says vaguely, but she sounds like she’s all but forgotten the topic of conversation. “Go away, Leo. I want to sleep.”
* * *
I’m so pissed off that when I get back to my room and see Julian lounging on a towel on the bed—naked apart from that golden cock cage he likes to wear sometimes—it takes me a second to remember Itoldhim to be waiting for me.
He opens his eyes as I enter the room and says sleepily, “You were ages.”
“Sorry,” I say shortly. “Roxy’s in a mood.”
“Hm,” he says, and rolls onto his back, trailing his fingers over his body as he watches me pull my shirt off. “So, it seems, are you.” He doesn’t say anything else until I’m standing there naked, when he asks, “Where’s your head, Leo?”
“Huh?”
