Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sloane
W hat the fuck is he doing here?
Sure, I knew he’d find me. In the back of my head, I knew. But never in my wildest imaginings did he show up in the middle of a set with his clerical collar on.
He’s seen me naked. That’s not the issue. It’s the fact he came.
I’m staring at myself in the mirror backstage, trying to decide what to do.
“Did you see the man in the front? Jerry said that’s Ardesia Ricci!” Cherry says to Pearl.
Pearl whistles. “No. I was looking at the silver fox he brought with him. Cherry, do you know who he is?”
Cherry shakes her head as I listen to them banter back and forth.
“You think he’s a real priest?” Pearl asks, voice dropping lower as if Luca can hear through walls.
“I don’t know, but if he is, what a fucking gem, right? Any girl in this club would love to defile him until lightning struck them down. I know I would ride him until Lucifer himself dragged me to hell.”
Pearl laughs, and anger rises in my chest as my fists ball on the table beneath them.
“What’s gotten into her?” Pearl asks Cherry if I’m not standing in the same room.
Cherry rolls her eyes and turns around on the bench as she straps her heels. “Some bitches can’t take a joke. She’s one of them.”
It’s not the first time she’s pointed out my serious nature, but I’ve had to keep my wits about me my entire life. The one time I let them drop, I got kidnapped.
The girls move back out into the club as my new phone rings. It had taken me all day to get my phone and get the bank dealt with. Gio told me to take a few days to myself, but dancing clears my head, and my head is a muddled fucking mess.
Myra’s number pops up. It’s a number I’d know in a pinch. One I could recite to the cops if I was arrested and had only one phone number to dial.
“Hello,” I answer.
I called her earlier, but she screened the call and didn’t answer. I thought she’d have called sooner, but Myra has always done things on her terms.
“Girl, I just got time to check your message! Are you okay? I’ve been worried sick since you went missing.” Something that churns in my gut says otherwise, and I don’t know why.
But I’ve honed my skills at listening to my gut my entire life.
“I’m fine. Back at work now.”
“How the hell did you get away? I assume someone took you, right? Who had you?”
Something about the question throws me off-kilter, and I want nothing more than to hang up on her. “I was, but I got free. I don’t want to talk about it. I just…” I sigh, looking over my body in the mirror. A hundred-dollar bill sticks out of my panties that I’d missed, and I snatch it out and toss it onto the table with the rest.
Ardesia’s wife had paid me a small fortune tonight. Not that I’m not thankful.
“Alright. Well, I’m just glad you’re safe. You at work?”
“Yeah, Gio, let me come back, thank God.”
The mention of God sends a shiver down my spine, and I shake it away.
“You were busy today when I called?” I ask her.
She sighed in exasperation, and everything to her was about the drama. “Yeah. I started the new job at the record label, and I had so much to learn and work to catch up on that the previous girl wasn’t doing.”
Myra and I were unlikely friends. Her father hit it big as a songwriter, and she moved out of the slums, leaving me behind.
But we always stayed close.
There’s never a moment that I don’t feel our differences viscerally. Never a moment, she doesn’t remind me she’s better than me.
“Well, I’m glad you’re safe. I’m going out with Jenny from work, so I’d best be getting ready. If you need anything, Sloane, don’t hesitate to call. I love you.”
For the first time in my life, I get off the phone without returning the sentiment, and there’s a nagging feeling in my gut that it has a lot to do with the priest sitting by the stage back out in the club’s main room.
He’s made me realize just how much shit I’ve been accepting in my life and also that I don’t want to accept being treated like shit any longer where I can help it.
I put all my money in my bag and head back onto the floor after checking my hair and changing my panties into different ones.
I forgo covering a damn thing other than that. He thought he could withstand coming to my work, then he is going to see who I truly am. There’s no reason to hold back any longer.
As I walk toward Luca, sitting in his chair and facing me head-on, the music changes to something slow, as no dancers are on the stage.
Love The Hell Out of You by Lewis Capaldi blasts through the room, and I can’t help but smirk at how the lyrics make so much sense for our situation. Even though we’re far from anything I’d consider love, I can’t deny how I feel when I’m near him.
I love a good love story as much as the next girl, and I’ve always dreamt that it would come when I least expected it and be a sweep-me-off-my-feet kind of love. But never did I think it would come as an untouchable man.
I stop between his massive thighs, chin held high in the air. “Father, what brings you to Happy Endings tonight?” I ask him.
He’s trying to keep his eyes on my face and not let them wander. The muscle in the side of his jaw ticks with the effort.
“Is there somewhere we can speak in private?” he asks me, and I smile politely, as I would with any customer.
“Certainly, sir. If you see Cherise up front, she’ll give you a price for renting out one of our esteemed private rooms.
“That’s how we’re going to play this?” he sneers.
I back up, my arm still pointed to where Cherise sits at the cash register by Jerry. Both are watching my bare-breasted exchange with the priest.
“Alright,” he grits out, sliding off his chair and stomping to the front door, his chair swiveling in haste.
Ardesia’s wife walks up. “Hi, I’m Brynne!” She holds her hand out, a gleam in her eye.
I smile and shake her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Even under the circumstances,” I say.
“Hey, I’m in awe of you. I can see why Father Russo is questioning his faith.”
I arch a brow at her in question.
“You’re beautiful. But there’s an aura around you, girl.” She shakes her head in silent appreciation.
“Are you married to me or her?” Ardesia asks her.
And even though I’ve not been formally introduced, everyone who’s anyone knows who he is.
The Grim Reaper of New York.
Brynne rolls her eyes, moving back into her husband’s lap. “Now, Daddy, don’t get jealous.”
He smirks playfully, the monster he is slithering behind a softer facade than he wore a moment ago. “I don’t like to share, bunny. You know that.”
Something about the exchange makes envy dance in my stomach.
Father Russo returns to the table, exasperatedly grabbing his glass and chugging some down. “Do you know how foolish I look as a priest buying one of those rooms? She looked at me as if I had three heads! I hope you’re happy!”
I can’t help but fight a smirk as I look toward Cherise, who winks at me.
“Well, you won’t regret it, Father. Which dancer did you choose to take with you? I’ll get them for you.”
His face gets redder as anger washes over him. “Are you kidding me?”
Even Ardesia is fighting a laugh as I grab his hand and lead him to the back. “Come with me. Let’s work off some of that frustration, hm?”
Feeling in my element has some of my sass firmly back in place, and I can tell that Father Russo is not equipped to deal with it.
I open the curtain to the room he’d reserved for the hour, holding it aside for him to enter.
When he does so, I follow behind him, closing it and the club out of view.
A single couch is in the middle of the room, and dim purple lights are overhead. The songs from the main room still filter through the curtain enough for me to give Father Russo the dance of his life. Even when he says he wants to talk, I think he needs to realize how out of his depths he is.
It’s like he said, we’re done.
This is done.
I push him back onto the couch.
He looks me over as I drop over his lap to straddle him. “Sloane,” he warns.
“You wanted to speak to me?” I ask him, grinding as I Luv This Shit plays by August Alsina gives me a nice slow rhythm to dance on him to.
“I—” he swallows, and I can hear it.
“You,” I taunt.
“Sloane,” he says, his hands gripping my hips without thinking.
I’m still in only a thong, and he can’t help but squeeze my bare hips after he realizes. “You ran from me,” he says, and it nearly has me choking on emotion.
“I don’t run from shit,” I tell him, turning in his lap as I move my ass over the hardness growing between his thighs.
It feels dirty and sinful, him being in my house instead of the reverse.
“What are you doing?” he whispers, his hands having a mind of their own as they dust over my bare breasts.
“You paid for a private dance, sir. I’m giving you what you paid for,” I murmur back, trying to ignore how his hands on me are making me feel.
Like I’m floating in the fucking stratosphere.
“I can’t be here in this capacity, Sloane. I just needed to get you. You need to stay with me.”
His words are clipped and hard-fought as I continue to grind on him, increasing my pace because it feels good to do so.
I know I’m crossing a line that I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself when I’m with him. This is the exact reason he’s a fucking weakness.
“Sloane!” he shouts, breaking me out of my fog, and I spring to my feet, crossing my arms over my chest.
“If you don’t want what you paid for, I guess I’ll just stop then,” I wail, looking down at where he’s adjusting his hard cock in his pants.
“You shouldn’t be here. In this place…”
My eyes go wide with rage. “Don’t you dare give me that you’re too good for this place shit, Luca. I make an honest living here, Gio takes care of us! He’s the only support I’ve had in my life. Ever! Don’t you fucking judge me!”
“I’m not judging you, Sloane. You’re so damn young. There’s so much you could do rather than this…” he waves his arms around before sinking his hands into his hair as he stands and faces me.
“Don’t you think I know that?” Tears betray me and fall down my cheeks, and I’m too proud to wipe them away. I always cry when I’m mad. It’s another weakness he’s getting to see tonight. “My entire life is a series of unfortunate events, Luca. I fucking know that. But I am who I am because of them. I’m stronger because of them!”
His eyes soften with pity, and I can’t stand to look at it growing in his eyes.
“Listen,” I say, wiping the tears off my face. “I appreciate you saved me, but you’ve done your due diligence, and I need you to see that I’m okay on my own. I’m going to be fine.”
“Are you?” He steps into me, backing me towards a wall. “Matteo is still out there, Sloane. I want to know you’re safe. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.”
“Because I’m Ray’s daughter,” I say.
He nods, but something else sits right on the surface of his face that’s unspoken. “Because you’re Ray’s daughter.”
He leans down, hovering far too close for comfort, and the world fades away. Such is the way when I’m near him. It’s like he’s a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and the world’s volume turns down when he’s near.
I close my eyes, drinking the feeling in. “I don’t know that we’ll survive one another, Luca.”
He exhales shakily. “I know. But we have to try.”
I shake my head. “I’ll settle for a bodyguard. Ardesia can do that, can’t he?”
He licks his lips, brows tugging together in concern. “Sloane, I?—”
I shake my head. “We’re like a fucking ticking time bomb together, Luca. I won’t be the reason you lose your job, nor your faith. While I don’t believe the things you do, I won’t ruin you because of it. A bodyguard is where I’ll compromise.”
He searches my face for indifference, but I hold fast to my decision.
He nods. “Alright, it’ll be arranged.”
He walks toward the curtain, stalling momentarily to gain his composure, and I grin, rubbing my finger over my lips at the thought of how far I’d pushed him tonight.
“Father Russo,” I say, walking up this back and pressing against him. With my heels on, I’m nearly his height, and I lean in and skim my lips over his ear. “Please, don’t come back here.”
He doesn’t say a thing, only thrusts back out into the club, leaving me empty behind the curtain that waves from his exit.
Standing in the private room, I hang my head and cry as Crazy in Love by Beyonce plays on the speakers.
Luca Russo is the closest thing to happiness I’ve ever felt, and by letting him go, I’m endangering myself and leaving that behind, too.
But survival is something I need to do alone.
Because I’ve already tarnished the good father, there’s no need to corrupt him entirely.