11. Rocco
11
ROCCO
I could absolutely get used to coming home to that face, even if her expression is a delightful combination of alarm and disgust.
“Are…are you…” Cas seems to choke on the question as she stares at my chest.
I glance down. Ah.
Rubio’s underling had needed a little more convincing than I’d anticipated. A shame, really. I quite liked this shirt. “If it’s any consolation, the blood is not mine.”
Her face immediately hardens. “Monster.”
My carefree expression masks the jolt of pain at her words. In the cold light of day, there is no way I can hide my true nature from her anymore, and it’s clear she isn’t pleased with what she’s found.
Instead of addressing her, I turn to Donatella. “Set the table for two tonight. I would like Cassandra to join me for dinner.”
“Absolutely not.”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. You will join me for dinner.”
Something about my tone seems to infuriate her. Fire dances behind her eyes as she dips low into a curtsy, her pale shirt doing nothing to conceal her dark underwear beneath.
“My apologies, sir, I forgot my place! Would you like me to present myself entirely naked, or would you like the honor of unwrapping me yourself?”
Despite the sarcasm leeching through every word, my cock twitches at the thought.
“Donatella, please remind Cassandra that she is my guest, not a commodity?” I shoot Cas a warning look as I ascend the staircase toward them. “Despite what she might be so eager to think.”
“It’s hard not to think such things when that’s all you seemed to care about when you traded me for my boyfriend’s debt.”
Finally, I reach the top of the stairs and can stare down at the defiant young woman before me. “I’m offering you the opportunity to negotiate your own terms, Angioletta. I suggest you take it.”
I allow myself one blissful moment to soak in her closeness. The fresh scent of her still-damp hair almost floors me.
“Or what? One day, you’ll come home with my blood on your shirt?”
At her side, Donatella tuts under her breath but doesn’t intervene.
“I did as you asked, Cassandra. You may not like my methods, but they were effective. Now, you can either spend the next months sulking around this house, resenting me for it, or you can join me for dinner to discuss how you’d like to proceed.”
Though she doesn’t break eye contact, I watch her swallow. “I want my phone back.”
“Then I’ll see you at seven.”
I hold her gaze a moment longer, transfixed by the way her lips part just so.
But I force myself to turn toward my own room and close the door behind me.
I try not to think about her as I strip off my ruined shirt and step into the shower. Try not to imagine what she’s doing, only a few measly walls away, as I don fresh clothing.
After the last few days of fruitless investigations, tensions were beginning to rise again in the Guild. Esther’s departure had been an effective distraction, but it hadn’t prevented the whispers and conspiracies for as long as I would have liked.
Right now, my best lead is Claudio Lazzaro. But in order to get to him, I now need something from Cas.
Which is perhaps the most terrifying part of this entire operation.
I wander down to the dining hall that evening with a clear strategy in mind. Get Cas to agree. Leave her alone. Simple, effective. It’s how I would deal with anyone else.
But as the minutes tick by toward seven p.m. with a brutal disregard for my previous instructions, my confidence falters. Perhaps giving her a choice in all this is the wrong move.
My father wouldn’t have hesitated; he would have locked her in the bedroom as soon as she’d stepped into it.
I pour myself a large measure of whiskey as his voice scolds me for being too soft, for allowing myself to care what she thought of me. For the sake of the Guild, I needed to turn off my emotions and do what needed to be done.
“In my defense, I’m late because Donatella forced me to wear this stupid dress.”
I look up to find Cas standing awkwardly at the door. And my brain seems to short circuit.
It’s just a dress. The one she wears on stage is far shorter. But for some reason, the way the dark green fabric wraps around her body, flowing out at her shoulders and around her shins, makes my mouth water.
It hugs her every curve perfectly, and one pull at the string tied at her waist would have the whole thing unraveling. Unwrapping her.
I need to have a word with Donatella.
“Take a seat.” I gesture to the chair at the far end of the table. A precaution in case my lesser instincts get the better of me.
To my dismay, Cas takes one look at the chair and drags it to my side. “I’m not shouting at you across the table all night,” she insists stubbornly.
I distract myself by waving to the kitchen staff as her knee brushes against mine. Dinner arrives seconds later, giving me a perfect excuse to position myself as far away from her as possible.
It’s a simple carbonara, adorned in truffle and seventy-two-month-aged parmesan. But she barely considers the dish before attacking it with her fork.
I watch her, bemused. “I take it you slept well?”
She glowers back. “Out with it, then.”
“With what?”
“Whatever offer you’re about to make me. Spare me the rhetoric about not being able to refuse.”
I don’t let her see my amusement. “I would like you to stay here.”
“Aren’t I already your prisoner until I’ve paid off Claudio’s debt?”
“The deal was a farce.” I place the fake contract on the table between us. “You are free to leave whenever you want. I only ask that you stay as a favor to me.”
She gives me a bland look as she pulls the contract toward her. I watch as she notes Claudio’s signature at the bottom.
“You can tear it up if it makes you feel better,” I offer.
“What could you possibly have to gain from this?”
I have to bite my tongue from answering crudely. Instead, I take a gamble, one that I try not to think too hard about.
“I believe Lazzaro has been working with a senior member of my organization to…undermine me.”
“Like a rat?”
I smirk. “Exactly. I need Lazzaro to believe that I’m…distracted so that he contacts the rat again without fearing my attention.”
“You want Claudio to lead you to him.”
“I hope that in your absence, he finds himself bored and resentful enough to try to undermine me again.”
She thinks on this a moment. “Is that why you told him we would be out of the country?”
“If it’s easier for you to lie low abroad, I can make that happen.”
“But you’ll be staying here to watch his movements.”
I nod as I take a sip of my whisky, allowing her a moment to process my request.
“So I’d essentially be stuck here until you managed to find whoever it is who’s plotting against you? How long would that take?”
I offer her a small smile. “I promise you I will have it done within one hundred and one days.”
“Ninety-eight nights left,” she corrects me.
“Fine.”
“And if you don’t do it?”
I pour myself another glass. “Then our arrangement is over. You can go back to Ohio, and you will never hear from me again. The choice is yours.”
She goes quiet for a moment before her chair scrapes against the floor. “I want to think about this.”
As she begins to leave, a dull kind of ache spreads across my chest. I’m not sure when I make the decision to follow her, but I reach the door before she does and block her path with one lazy, outstretched arm.
Her infuriated expression is almost too endearing.
“I thought the choice was mine,” she snaps.
Wordlessly, I reach into my pocket and pull out her phone. It was a bargaining chip I was prepared to hang on to for as long as I needed.
But it’s the only thing I can think of that might make her stay, even for just another moment.
“Can I trust you with this?” I ask softly.
It might have been a risk to tell her about my plan to smoke out the rat. But this is borderline reckless. I can almost hear my father screaming at me to stop.
I don’t know why it’s so important to me that she trusts me, that she stops looking at me with that apprehension in her eyes. But if this small gesture helps alleviate that just a little bit…I can’t help feeling that it might be worth it.
Tentatively, she reaches out with her hand to take it from me. “Yes.”
All rational thought is telling me that the first call she’ll make will be to the police. That I’m risking my unsteady alliance with the NYPD over this.
But as she matches my unblinking stare, it’s not betrayal I find there. It’s truth and determination. I could be an absolute fool for believing it, but…
Our fingers gently graze each other as I pass the phone to her. Is it my imagination, or do those beautiful hazel eyes flutter closed for just a moment?
“You are not a prisoner here,” I reiterate. “I only ask that you help me as I helped you.”
Cas looks away to pocket her phone. “I suppose there are worse vacation homes.”
“You’d be welcome to stay in my South African home if you’d prefer,” I offer, despite the traitorous part of my mind wanting her to stay close at hand.
Those bright eyes meet mine again. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Quite the opposite.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. I have to physically restrain myself from reaching out and running my hands through her dark hair. “Although I imagine it would be easier.”
“I suppose having a random girl staying in your bachelor pad would ruin your reputation,” she snarks back.
I shake my head. Always so fiery. It’s been a long time since anyone dared talk to me the way she does. The trouble is that I’ve already discovered what it’s like to draw out far more pleasing sounds from that perfect mouth of hers.
Sounds that only continue to torment me every second we’re apart.
“I made an oath to you that night in Electrix that I would protect you from Lazzaro,” I say slowly. “But I also swore I wouldn’t touch you again.”
Her breath catches at that. “As noble as that was, may I remind me that you grabbed me when you were trading me for Claudio’s debt.”
She’s goading me; I know she is. But still, I step closer, unable to stop myself from demonstrating my next point. “That’s not what I meant, and we both know it.”
Finally, I allow my fingers to brush her hair back from her face. The way she absently leans into the touch makes my heart begin to pound in my chest.
“I didn’t realize it was in a don’s nature to exercise self-restraint,” she counters, her voice quieter than before.
“It’s not in my nature to take advantage of women in desperate situations.”
She chuckles darkly. “You seem to think I’m incapable of making my own decisions.”
“You really want to argue with me about protecting the best interests of a woman who was being beaten by her boyfriend and decided that begging the local don for help was her best course of action?”
Her eyes narrow at that. “You think I’m an idiot.”
“I think you got dealt a shitty hand and took a calculated, if not reckless, risk,” I allow. “But I don’t think you’re an idiot.”
She searches my eyes for the truth, and I allow it to shine there.
Finally, she sighs. “If you want my help on this little operation of yours, you have to start treating me as an equal.”
“All right, consider it done.”
“I want to be trusted with any new information that you get.”
I consider this. “At my discretion.”
She takes a step closer to me, so close I can see the tiny glimmers of green in her eyes. “And if I want to get on my knees and put your cock in my mouth, you will get off your high horse and trust that it’s a decision I’m making for myself.”
I feel like something within me snaps in half at her words, knocking me entirely from my axis. Angioletta, I had called her. But perhaps la ammaliatrice was more fitting.
It’s as if she was conjured with the sole purpose of tormenting me. Every movement, each sway of her hips or flick of her hair, those goddamn perfect lips, all beckon to me and tell me to dive head first off the cliff of my own self-restraint.
From her smirk, I know she can see the effect she has on me.
Well, two can play that game.
“Is that an offer, Cassandra?”
Her eyes narrow. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“My discretion.”
With that, she ducks around me and walks away.