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“Nothing.” But it was something. Pina Bernoulli was sitting an arm’s length away from me, more undressed than she was the day I took her virginity. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”
This time Luca followed my eyes down to Pina. “She’s pretty, eh? I didn’t know you have a thing for blondes now.”
“I don’t.” But I had a thing forher. A hunger that refused to diminish even when I hadn’t seen her in months. “Go home, Luca. I have something to take care of.”
Before the man could say another word, I got up from my chair and started crossing the room. All I could see was her and all I cared about was gettingtoher. Maybe like that I could find those fleeting moments of peace she gave me before.
Chapter 2
Today was going to be a bad day, I’d felt it as soon as I woke up. In the past few months I’d learned to ignore the sense of dread I felt as soon as I opened my eyes, but today the nagging feeling wouldn’t leave me alone. Even Panini, my French bulldog, was agitated all morning, running around the one bedroom I rented for us.
When I walked into the Flora House for my shift, I was waiting for the earth to open up and swallow me whole and end it already, but maybe that had more to do with my job than my gut feeling. I hated this place and hated to feel everyone’s eyes on my exposed skin. It was worse when one of them got too drunk to see I wasn’t willing to entertain them and would try to put their hands on me, sometimes worse.
I looked down at my hip, where the shape of a bite was still fading from that night a week back when a man wanted totasteme. He would have done much worse if Leonardo Bugllioni, the man in charge of this place, wouldn’t have stepped in. Leonardo was a soldier working for Tony Balbano and he took special interest in this place. At first, his attention made me feel uncomfortable—I wasn’t used to it—but it proved to be more than useful when you work nights in an underground high-end brothel filled with horny men who are not used to the wordno.
I thought that maybe I was on edge because tonight Leonardo wasn’t here, which meant I had to be extra careful, but it wasn’t that. A sixth sense, one I didn’t know I had, tried to warn me that something else was about to go down. Nothing unusual happened until I started my shift. I was taking an order to one of my usual tables—Signor Brandini, owner of one of the biggest banks in Italy, and his much younger wife who came here looking for a third in their bed—when I first felt the cold sensation in the back of my head. I was being watched, but unlike the other nights, this time I could feel the eyes on my skin. I was exposed and I had to fight the instinct to cover my chest with my arms.
Determined to ignore the sensations and do my job, I turned around to go to the bar with the empty glasses I gathered from tables, thinking I was out of the danger zone. That was until I felt a hand on my elbow and someone turned me around. Before I could react, I was staring in the eyes of Garon Caputo.
My heart dropped at my feet, desperate to hide from the man that broke her once before, fearing the pain he might cause this time. I stared at the blue irises, colored like dark skies that brew storms, not knowing if I should speak or run. What I wanted most was to just… disappear, and not feel the humiliation that was crippling all my senses.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He snarled, looking me up and down like he couldn’t believe his own eyes. Like he was the one ambushed by the last person he wanted to see.
“I… what?”
“Answer the fucking question, Pina.”
The question? What was the question? I couldn’t bring my thoughts together with him so close.
“Garon…”
“You’re fucking naked.” He looked around. “Everyone can see your fucking tits.”
“I know. I… this is how every girl here has to look. It’s what Tony wants.”
“Goddamn it.”
He grabbed me tighter, pushing me back to the corridor leading to the bathrooms. I should have asked him to stop, but couldn’t. Garon’s presence made me freeze like a deer in headlights.
He was angry, I could read it on his body, like the last time he pushed me away in a hidden room, only now he had no right. I did everything he said, I gave him everything he asked for and more. It was him who pushed me into this life where I was nothing more but a lost prisoner. No, Garon Caputo had no more things to be angry about. This time it was my turn.
“Let go of me.” I said while pulling my arm back hard enough to make us both shake.
“What the fuck is this…” His eyes grew, “what business do you have here, in this place, looking like… like…”
“Like a whore?” I finished for him. “What do you have to object about it? You’ve been surrounded by whores all your life.”
“Dannazione6, Pina, tell me what the hell is going on!”
“Why do you care?”
“The last time I saw you, you were a blushing virgin and now you’re half naked in a brothel.”
I flinched. “I wasn’t a virgin when I left, or did you forget that?”
His face showed me he remembered and I felt relieved. Finding me like this was enough humiliation, I didn’t need to hear how unimpressed he was with what we did in that closet.
“Start. Talking.” He wasn’t asking, he was demanding. Well, I couldn’t give a damn.
