Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
“Someone dare to call you pretty again?” I asked, glancing down at her hand pointedly, but trying to keep things light.
I wished the light was better in the apartment. I wanted to inspect her face, to see if she was covering up any other injuries with makeup.
“Oh, geez. Do you need some first aid supplies?” Lore asked as she noticed her knuckles as Cinna raised her glass to drink.
“I cleaned them earlier,” Cinna said, and it was fucking pathetic how I felt myself lean toward the sound of her voice.
“Oh, good,” Lore said as I finished making her drink. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages,” she went on. “I texted you,” she added, the tone a bit pointed for someone as shy as Lore.
The two women were as polar opposite as you could get. Where the boss’s wife was all sweet, unsure of herself, and shy, Cinna was all hardness and confidence, and I’d never seen her struggle to assert herself. But, somehow, at the beginning of Lore and Renzo’s marriage, she and Cinna had formed a sort of older-sister, younger-sister bond.
That was clearly strained recently.
It was one thing for Cinna to be avoiding me. It felt like a complete other for her to pull away from Lore.
“You did. Sorry. I’ve been… busy,” Cinna said. “We can get coffee this week,” she added.
“I promise I won’t make you order for me,” Lore said, liking her coffee sweet and full of shit that Cinna would find embarrassing to order.
“Sure you will,” Cinna said, this time shooting her friend a small smile.
“Are the girls having a meeting?” Saff asked, moving up between the other two women.
“Yep. Just the girls,” I agreed, getting an eye roll from Saff.
“Did you like the book?” Lore asked Saff, making my brows raise. That was something I didn’t know about the young, fiery capo. She liked to read?
“Look, Lore,” Saff started, sucking in a breath. “While I appreciated all of the many vivid sex scenes,” she went on, making Lore’s cheeks go scarlet, “it needed a lot more violence. I mean, I’m sorry, these are warring clans doing constant battle, and no one got beheaded? Get real.”
Lore let out a tinkering little laugh. “Well, I will keep an eye out for books with a lot more torture for you.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” Saff agreed. “I mean, if the main characters still want to have many detailed sexcapades, maybe while covered in the blood of their enemies… oh, who are you raising a brow at?” Saff asked, looking at me. “Like you’re not the biggest whore in this room.”
I wanted to look at Cinna when Saff said that, but I didn’t dare. Not when Saff was clearly a lot better at reading me than she had any right to be.
“I heard he ignored a beautiful woman flirting with him at the pizza place tonight,” Lore said, excited to be privy to some gossip.
Fucking Elian.
He and the boss’s wife were close.
“You?” Saff asked, eyes going wide.
“We had to get the food back here,” I said, waving it off.
“Um, didn’t I hear a story about you being three hours late to an important meeting because you were banging two women in an alley?” Saff asked.
Christ.
The last thing I wanted right that moment was to be talking about the women in my past with Cinna standing right there. Not that she didn’t already know. But I don’t know, it felt different now.
The problem was, I leaned into those stories when someone brought them up. That was what people expected of me. So I couldn’t just shrug it off.
“It was the back of a van in an alley,” I clarified.
But as soon as I started speaking, Cinna turned and wandered off.
Some part of me wanted to believe it was because she didn’t want to hear me talk about other women. The other part, though, was worried she didn’t want to hear my voice at all.
I was trapped there with Saff and Lore for a while. Maybe that was for the best. It kept me from following after Cinna like a lost fucking puppy.
But when I saw her pull her phone out of her pocket and dip into Renzo’s office for some quiet, I went ahead and excused myself from the women who were in a debate about some TV show, the two of them disagreeing about the love interest, Lore loving them, and Saff insisting that the heroine belonged with someone as equally as badass as she was… like the villain of the show.
They didn’t even know I’d left.
I tried not to look suspicious as I made a beeline for the office, pushing the door the rest of the way open, then closing and locking it before Cinna could even look up from her phone and notice me.
I moved in on her, grabbing her phone, setting it on the desk, then reaching behind her to grab a handful of her hair at the base of her neck, angling her head up at me.