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Whether for selfish reasons or my sense of duty, I didn’t know.
Bastian’s glass had been emptied, but he didn’t make a move to clean up and leave.
“Why are you here, Ariana?” His words doused me like a bucket of ice-cold water flipped over my head.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you a bartender? As you like to slide into every conversation, you went to Degory. You graduated top of your class, too.”
Degory was the West Coast’s answer to Ivy League schools. I saw nothing wrong with being a bartender, but I understood what he meant.
What was the point of pursuing a premium education only to get a job I didn’t need a degree to do?
“I don’t slip it into every conversation.” It was valid, but I ignored his question anyway. “You actually read my resume?”
“I vet every employee I hire and all the ones I don’t.” His voice was miffed, as if the mere suggestion that he ran the restaurant anything but perfectly disturbed him. “Are you ignoring my question?”
I took a moment to think before I spoke, threading the truth into my cover like Wilks had taught me, “I don’t know why I’m a bartender. In fact, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life in general. Maybe I never have. I know what my family wants me to do,”—Aunt Nadia had been all for my career at the FBI and would probably have been delirious with excitement if I took any of the mafia syndicates down a peg, even if it wasn’t the De Luca family in particular—“but I don’t know what I want.”
I downed the last finger of my drink. “I guess, until I figure it out, I’m just going through the motions, trying not to disappoint anyone along the way.”
He turned to me and opened his mouth to say something but faltered, the most uncertain he had ever been around me. “I feel the exact same way.”
His words left me reeling.
“But you have L’Oscurità.”
And the Romano syndicate.
Was it possible he didn’t want anything to do with that side of the family business? That maybe, like me, he was just going through the motions?
I wanted to confide in him. To explain that I was floundering because nothing about my life was black and white.
But just like I couldn’t choose myself over my duty to my country, I couldn’t tell him who I really was and what I really did.
And I was struck by my desire to confide in him.
By this fleeting moment of camaraderie we shared.
His eyes didn’t leave mine as he spoke.
“L’Oscurità is mine and it isn’t. But even if it was entirely mine, I don’t know if I would want it.”
“So, what do you want?”
“I don’t know, Ariana. I don’t know.” He paused a bit before he admitted, “I want a lot of things I can’t have.”
A connection between us lingered in the air like the morning fog above the California coastline.
When I had gone to Degory, I used to wake up early to run through the fog. The cold mist against my skin felt like being kissed by mother nature, but this time, it was Bastian I wanted to kiss.
I leaned forward, my intent clear in my eyes.
This was wrong, so taboo I could hardly fathom it, but I wanted this more than I could remember wanting anything else.
And for a startling second, it looked like he wanted me, too.
He leaned forward, and finally—finally—his lips were almost brushing mine.
