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I tilted my chin up and tore my wrist away from him.
“I came here to be nice to you and wish you a happy birthday. Are you so miserable that you have to stomp on that, too?”
“Yes.”
The earnest dip of his brows. The flare of something undefinable behind his eyes. The tense set of his shoulders.
I’d walked onto a minefield with that question, and there was no backing out now. Not unless I wanted to get blown up, and even I couldn’t pull off splattered intestines.
I couldn’t erase his reply from my memory. My self-preservation demanded I try, but I didn’t.
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Do you want to know what I think?” He didn’t wait for my reply. “I think you’re miserable, too.”
I should have been pissed off.
Nice people didn’t say things like that. Polite people didn’t either. Civilized people didn’t confront other people’s demons like they had a right to pick fights with them.
“Well, I think you’re trying to pick a fight with me because it’s your birthday; you’re alone at your bar that closed an hour ago; no one in your family is here, including your sister; you’re wondering how you reached thirty-one with no one to chase away the loneliness; and you’re so fucking bitter, you can’t think straight.”
I knew this because I felt the same way.
Living in a city of millions but always alone.
Always bitter.
“There she is.”
I narrowed my eyes, not waiting to take the bait but biting into it anyway. “There who is?”
“The real you.”
“Oh?” I hated his certainty and wished I had it. “And who is that?”
“You’re a biter. Once you latch on, your jaw clamps down, and there’s nothing anyone can say or do to get you to release. You decided from the beginning you would hate me. I’m okay with that. It wasn’t like I treated you like royalty. But the thing about being bitten is, it means nothing if I have a high pain tolerance. I don’t need you to like me for L’Oscurità to maintain its success.” His eyes raked a path down my body before he met my eyes once more. “I don’t need you to like me for us to fuck either.”
I knew he was deflecting, turning this conversation away from him, trying to swim from the deep end to the shallow end as quickly as he could.
I wouldn’t let him.
“You’re disgusting and crass, and this has nothing to do with me and Tessie.”
“Except it does. You and I aren’t made like everyone else. You like to bite; I like to be bitten. But other people? They can’t handle the pain, the anger, the aggression, the never-ending stream of bullshit life has piled onto us. Tessie is a strong girl. She’s smarter than most kids double her age, and she always will be. But the one thing she is not is a fighter, which means people like us have to take the hits for her. And I’m okay with that.” He cocked a brow. “Are you, Biter?”
Always.
I would always be okay with protecting Tessie.
I wanted to tell him she didn’t need protecting from me, but that’d be wrong. If I succeeded in my assignment, I’d strip her of everything—her family, her money, the life she’d grown up in.
She did need protection from me.
I swallowed away my hatred for myself.
This should have been easy.
It should have been black and white. Romanos—bad; FBI—good.
