18. Cassandra
18
CASSANDRA
I don’t recognize myself in the mirror.
I’ve done intense shopping trips before. Hell, my mom and I even visited the Mall of America when I was a kid.
But nothing compared to what Rocco just made me do. Somehow, they measured me for this dress while a gentleman named Hugo descended on my hair with foils. The soft highlights now frame my face, amplifying my new layers.
I’m still unsure how and when someone got to my nails, but their dark maroon color perfectly matches my near-black outfit.
The material hugs every one of my curves as it falls in sleek waves to my heeled feet. The long slit down the side comes scandalously close to my upper thigh. But that has nothing on the deep plunge of my neckline.
It’s almost as if the fabric has been stitched into my skin—it leaves nothing to the imagination.
My appearance would be distracting if Rocco wasn’t standing behind me.
His own suit is tailored to perfection, as always. But it’s his shirt, a dark red match to my dress, that’s unbuttoned far enough to reveal the tattoos beneath that makes my mouth water.
“You’re perfect,” he whispers in my ear. His eyes rove over my body hungrily.
I’m about two seconds away from demanding we stay home and entertain ourselves another way.
But…our newfound alliance still feels somewhat tentative. It’s the same as before, except somehow it isn’t. I don’t think I realized the implications of calling Rocco my ”friend” before he returned the sentiment.
I shake my head to try and clear it of distractions. I have a job to do.
The plan is simple. Go into the Candelabra, pretend to be Rocco’s doting mistress, and slip away to confront Claudio.
“Remember, get him to talk about how he acquired the loan,” Rocco reiterates as he tucks a hidden mic into the strap of my dress. “Anything else is a bonus. But leave at the first sign of trouble.”
He goes over this at least five more times on our way over to the club.
There’s something almost heartbreakingly familiar about standing in front of the Candelabra once more. Everything in my world has been flipped upside down, but there it is, standing tall and proud, exactly the same as the day I left it.
“Shall we?”
I turn to see Rocco offering me his arm. I reach out and take it, finding no small amount of reassurance from his touch.
“Remember,” he whispers in my ear as he reaches out to push open the door. “Tonight, you’re my trophy. Act like it.”
We step through those doors together, only to be greeted with resolute silence.
As my eyes adjust to the mood lighting, I wonder if it’s because the place is entirely empty. But to my dismay, I find instead that every one of the club’s patrons has turned to look at us.
Even Danny, standing on the stage, has faltered in her song. She coughs quickly and tries to recover.
“Rocco,” I hiss nervously, glancing wildly around us.
His arm wraps around my waist as he turns to nuzzle my ear. “Relax. Now, giggle as if I’ve said something funny.”
The sound I make doesn’t feel entirely natural, but it seems to satisfy his request. He leads us both toward the VIP table at the very end of the stage.
I almost wish we could sit at the back of the room. At least that way, Danny wouldn’t be able to glare down at me so much.
Rocco pulls a seat out for me. “ Angioletta.”
I sit down awkwardly. “Remind me why this is all necessary?”
Rocco chuckles as he pulls his own chair next to mine, draping a protective, arrogant arm over my shoulder.
Again, he nuzzles into my ear. “My men are under the assumption that I bought you from Lazzaro for a particular purpose,” he purrs. “I’d like to keep up that appearance as much as possible.”
His mouth grazes on my jaw, and my eyes flutter closed.
“You really think they’d care that much? You didn’t need to dress me up like this.”
His tongue darts out along my neck. “But where is the fun in that?”
Fuck. I can already feel myself getting damp. And this dress is far too revealing for that to lead anywhere good.
“CAS!”
We leap apart like startled teenagers at the sound of Mia’s voice.
The woman I consider to be my oldest friend marches towards us on the warpath—her fiery red hair streaming behind her like a banner.
But she stops just short of our table, eyes practically bulging at the sight of us so close together.
I cross my legs in annoyance. “Mia.”
“You,” she tries, then starts again. “I was so worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
My words come out far colder than I intend them to. But that old ache in my chest flares up at the sight of her.
She knew who Rocco was and that Claudio had been a mafia man when we were dating. Yet she kept the mafia and the Guild and all the Italian bullshit from me, even though she knew I was involved.
She lied to me for almost twenty years. And I don’t think I’m ready to deal with that yet.
Her expression shifts to defensiveness at my tone. “I sent you like a million messages.”
“I know.”
Mia’s eyes shift over to Rocco menacingly. “What have you done to her?”
To his credit, he doesn’t wilt under her gaze. “I told her the truth, Chiavari. Now, I must ask you to leave us alone.”
The slight waver in her eyes at his order tells me everything I need to know.
“You work for him, don’t you?”
She looks back at me in alarm. “It’s not what you think, Cas. Please.”
“You hid this from me.”
“I was trying to protect you!”
Around us, people begin applauding as Danny finishes her set.
“And what an excellent job you did of that,” I reply bitterly.
Mia seems frozen in place, torn between obeying the orders of her don and trying to reason with me.
I save myself the heartache of watching her choose.
“Excuse me, I need the bathroom.” I stand abruptly and march away before she can reply.
I can almost feel Rocco’s eyes on me as I walk straight up to the backstage door instead and slip through.
In my heart, I know how I acted toward Mia was cruel. But her deceit just raises more and more troubling questions. Do her parents know? Are they somehow involved in all this, too?
My father and hers had been friends from work.
Mia may have lied, but my own mother might have known all this too. And that is more heartbreaking than I know how to deal with right now.
Instead, I take a deep breath and force myself to focus on the task at hand. Find Claudio. Get him to talk.
Everything else I can figure out later.
But it turns out I don’t have to look very hard.
I hear him as I round the corner to my old dressing room.
Moaning. Loudly.
A shiver of disgust runs across my body. I already hate what I’m about to see before I even open the door.
There, leaning against my fucking dressing table, is Claudio. His pants are wrapped around his ankles as fucking Teresa, in her fucking midnight blue body suit, fu his fucking cock in her fucking mouth.
Fuck.
My anger doesn’t rage within. It burns everything around me to a crisp.
They both seem to feel it at the same time. Claudio’s eyes shoot open just as Teresa lets out a pathetic scream and scampers away.
“Cas!” Claudio chokes on the word as he fully registers who he’s staring at and what I’m wearing.
He awkwardly scrambles for his boxers and pants as Teresa all but crawls away. Coward.
“I thought you said you wanted to meet me here.”
Awareness seems to flood his expression finally. I can’t even begin to imagine how many drugs he’s on right now.
“I did, I do, baby!” he slurs slightly as he steps toward me, still fumbling with his belt. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Did you spend all the money you traded me for on drugs?”
Claudio makes an odd, dismissive sound. “Of course not! You paid off a loan, baby. I’m a free man because of you.”
“Clearly.”
“Don’t be like that,” he groans. “Teresa and I are just friends.”
“She was literally just in here sucking your cock!”
He gives me a blank look. “Was she really?”
This isn’t going anywhere, so I change tactics.
“Look, I came here tonight to see you. To see if you could be trusted enough to start over again after everything that happened. But clearly, this was a mistake.”
I make to leave and try not to flinch as he grabs my arm. “You can trust me, baby.”
“Can I?”
“Of course. I’m gonna make you a star, remember?”
I pretend to consider his grim smile as something I could possibly adore. “Then tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Why would you take that money from the mafia? It’s so dangerous! What could you possibly have needed it for to be worth the risk?”
He blinks at me for a moment. “You, baby.”
For a moment, I think I must have misheard him. “What are you talking about?”
“You think flights to Ohio are cheap? You think I could afford all those fancy meals I took you on?”
I shake my head. Even if he’d taken me to Michelin-star restaurants—which he definitely didn’t—there’s no way he could have spent one hundred and one thousand dollars over the course of our courtship.
“You took a loan from the Mafia to pay for our dates?” I can feel a laugh bubbling up inside me. “You really think I’m going to believe that?”
He moans loudly as he slumps down in the seat. “You’re fucking expensive, Cas! I had to buy a whole new apartment for you, remember?”
Remarkably, something does ring true as he says this. But he told me he was moving to the apartment in Brownsville because he got a promotion at work.
A promotion…within the mafia.
I laugh him off. “Who in their right mind, mafia or not, would loan anyone money so they can date someone?”
“I don’t know, Cas,” he slurs. “Ask fucking Bellini.”
Now, he’s really not making any kind of sense. “ I’m Bellini, Claudio. Cassandra Bellini, remember?”
“Fucking Bellini!” he shouts suddenly, almost startling himself out of the chair in the process.
There’s no point talking to him anymore, not when he’s like this.
If I’m being honest with myself, I’d wanted more from this conversation. I wanted him to be sober enough to see me as I am now: happy without him. I wanted that to hurt him. I wanted him to feel even a little bit of my own pain.
But instead, I’m left with this intoxicated mess.
“We’re done, Claudio,” I say anyway. “You can go to hell.”
It’s not at all satisfying. In fact, it feels as if I’ve said those words a thousand times already. There’s no need for closure when it comes to something you’ve already moved on from.
I think he tries to call after me, but I’m already out the door.
At least I got something out of him, even if nothing about it made any sense at all.
Maybe everything he said was an elaborate lie to get me back on side. It was as if he thought claiming that I was the reason he took the loan was some kind of romantic gesture.
All I can do is hope that this wasn’t some massive waste of time.
I push through the doors leading me back into the Candelabra and plaster on a sultry smile. Now that my part was done, there was no reason for us to head straight back to the brownstone.
But Mia careens around the side of the bar and marches straight toward me. I can tell she’s trying to get me to stop and speak with her, so I turn to avoid her.
Only to see…
Words escape me. My entire world spins out from under me.
“Cas! It’s not worth it.”
Vaguely, I’m aware of Mia’s hands holding down my shaking arms.
As I watch Danny straddling Rocco’s lap, her lips pressed up against his.