Chapter 3 #2
I stare at him. “I do.” I study the cover of the YA paranormal novel. It’s the latest from one of my favorite authors and I haven’t had time to read it yet. “Why this one?”
“You like her.”
“How do you know?”
“I like the other girl better,” he says, flicking his finger at the mainstream novel.
There were many times when the C Crue guys were still working for my dad that I suspected someone was watching me read. And a lot of times a book I’d just finished would go missing for a while and then pop back up again. Was he reading them?
“You know how I got started reading?” I ask.
“My mom didn’t want me to watch too much television, so there was no TV or computer in my bedroom.
But I was forced to stay in my room for hours when my father visited, back when he was having an affair with her.
A lot of the time it annoyed him to see me because he didn’t want a bastard daughter back then. ”
Sasha scowls. “He’s a dick.”
“I read books and pretended to be the characters. It was how I coped when he threatened or rejected me.”
“He threatened you?”
The murderous look on Sasha’s face should scare me.
Instead it’s satisfying. So is the fact that he bought me books.
The only other man who buys me things is my father, and he only gets me things to wear so I’ll look good on his precious social media account.
Fancy clothes and shoes serve his own interests, not mine.
He used them to make me an Instagram star and to trade me to a New York Mafia heir.
“Do you read much?” I ask.
He shrugs.
“Did you read my copies of Fight Club and The Coldest Girl in Coldtown? And Paper Towns?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Why?” I ask.
“To see what was in them.”
“Did you like them?”
He shrugs. “I liked the necromancer vampire mafia ones better. I read all those.”
I laugh and find it hard to stop. The thought of him reading sex-filled urban fantasy novels full of over-the-top wisecracking characters is crazy to me.
He smirks.
It’s so rare to see him smile that I stare up at him.
“Trick calls them trash. But he reads them all too. Sometimes I buy ones where it’s all sap ‘cause I know he’ll force himself to read them to mock me.”
“Do you read the sappy ones?”
He shakes his head.
I laugh again, this time at the idea of Sasha tricking Trick, who’s known to be dangerously clever.
“Are you and Trick friends?” I ask. They hadn’t seemed like it when they worked for my father.
He shrugs. “More like brothers. Stuck with each other, forced to be together all the damn time.”
“But you’re close?”
After a moment he shrugs again. “Not close as friends. But no one can come for one of us without coming for all three of us.”
“The family you choose,” I say, nodding. “That’s Zoe and me. Can you ask C to bring her here? I want to see her.”
He looks away.
“Why not? I won’t tell her.”
“Tell her what?”
I glance at the bedroom. “I won’t tell her what you did.”
“I don’t care if you do.”
“Did you tell C that you planned to force me to have sex with you as revenge?”
“I didn’t even tell him I planned to take you.”
I stare at him. After several beats of silence, I say, “Isn’t this a C Crue operation?”
“No.”
“So what is it?”
“I wanted to know some things.”
“Such as?”
“Whether you love Leone. Whether he deserves you. And whether Frank’s still a shit father.”
“What-what have you found out?”
“That you don’t love Leone.”
“I care about him,” I say slowly. “What you and I did is not okay. I—”
“He doesn’t deserve you,” he says coldly.
“Why not?”
“A lot of reasons.”
Alberto’s certainly done some horrible things, but they weren’t directed at me. So I wonder why Sasha’s tone is so cold and hard. Before I ask about Berto though, there’s something else I want to know first. “Why do you care?”
“Three years ago, he ordered the hit on C. To make Frank vulnerable. I took the gut shot from one of Leone’s shooters.”
“Is that it? Did you screw me to get even with him?”
“With both of you. You enlisted his help to kill Frank. We lost guys the day they tried to hit C.”
“I didn’t enlist his help to kill Frank!
I just told him about some things Frank had done.
I never thought he’d do anything to hurt anyone.
He wanted information. I thought he was planning to help me leave Coynston in a way that wouldn’t risk—it doesn’t matter what the details were supposed to be.
He changed his plans without telling me.
Right after it happened, I called everything off.
I didn’t really want to do that to Frank.
He’s a monster, but he’s still my father.
And then seeing you wounded and everything you went through, I couldn’t live with more collateral damage. I made a deal with Frank.”
Sasha’s eyes narrow. “What deal?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Then tell me.”
“Let’s just say that you didn’t need to come for your revenge. Forcing myself to make a deal with the devil should’ve been revenge enough.”
“C says it is. He said your living under Frank’s thumb is punishment enough. Back in the day, Trick was the one who found out you’d been feeding Leone information about us. He wanted to kill you. We convinced him not to.”
“You agreed with C?”
“No, I had my own reasons.”
“You wanted to take your own revenge?”
“Something like that.”
“And now you have.” My heart beats a painful thudding rhythm in my chest. “Are these the last books I’ll ever read?”
He shakes his head.
“Is that because it’s like C thinks? It’s more satisfying to destroy my life?
” I ask, taking a step back, letting the depth of his vengeance sink in.
There’s nothing romantic about this. I need to get a grip.
Sasha Stroviak’s a cold-blooded criminal.
Everyone knows that. “By taking my virginity, you killed three birds with one stone. I guess that was the plan? Get even with me. Get even with Alberto by taking my virginity that he wanted to take as my husband? Get even with Frank by destroying my engagement?”
“Guess so,” he says, his trademark stone-cold expression back on his face.
It couldn’t have hurt more if he’d punched me with one of his massive fists.