Chapter 15
Fifteen
LULU
My head is killing me, and my mouth is dry. I turn on the bed and pry an eye open. Then I sit up straight, and my heart feels like it’s going to pound out of my chest.
Where the fuck am I?
I’m not in my motel room.
And then I start to remember. I was going to sleep, but someone burst into my room. I hid in the bathroom. He was going to hurt me.
Then Rome came.
Rome works for my father.
Panic rises up my throat and threatens to choke me as I look around. This bed is too nice. The bedding feels too good for it not to be something my father is paying for.
He may beat the shit out of me every chance he gets, but he makes sure I’m always in the lap of luxury. Fucking hypocrite.
I need to get out of here.
I move to stand and feel woozy but take a deep breath.
Hold it together. Just get out of here. Run away and fall apart later.
I walk to the door and turn the knob, surprised when it isn’t locked, and open it just a crack. I don’t hear anyone, and no one guards me from the other side.
For a second, I stand and try to listen, but I don’t hear anything through the rushing in my ears. It feels still.
I can see I’m on the second floor … in a house? I must be in a house.
Maybe I can run to a neighbor for help.
Just run!
I swallow hard, then do what my gut tells me.
I run. My bare feet slap against the floor, but I don’t care.
I see the stairs, and I manage to get down them without falling and breaking my neck.
Just when I see the door, a huge body steps in front of me and takes me by the shoulders before I crash into his chest.
No.
“Going somewhere, firefly?”
“Let me go,” I say and feel the tears come. “Just let me go.”
“I can’t do that,” he replies. “Look at me.”
He takes my chin in his fingers and makes me look way up into his bright blue eyes. I know I should be petrified.
Rome is a big man who far outweighs me and is so much stronger than I am.
But I’m not scared.
I also don’t trust him because I’m not that stupid.
“I’m not letting you go,” he says, staring into my eyes. “And I’m not going to hurt you.”
I clamp my mouth shut. Christ, I’m going to be sick.
And he must see it because I’m suddenly airborne, cradled in his arms, and he’s hurrying past the other men from the motel room.
“What happened to Rome?” one of them asks.
“Never seen anything like it,” another says.
He gets me to the toilet in time, and I throw up until I can’t breathe and I’m covered in a layer of sweat.
“God, I’m sorry,” Rome murmurs, and I realize he’s pressed a cold, wet cloth to the back of my neck. “I’m going to kick Mateo’s ass for drugging you.”
“Didn’t my father tell you to?”
“No.” His big hand rubs up and down my back, and I want to lean into his touch and purr. “I don’t know who your father is, Lulu.”
Is he telling me the truth?
I want him to be. From the moment I laid eyes on this man, I’ve been pulled to him. I can’t explain it, but I don’t think it’s all because of my vagina.
“Better?” he asks.
I nod, and he leads me to the sink, where I swish water in my mouth. Then he leads me out of the bathroom.
Three huge men stare at me, and I stop dead in my tracks.
“We do not work for your father,” Carson says. His voice is still hard and gravelly. “We don’t work for anyone but ourselves.”
“And we need to know who your father is,” another of them says.
“Wh-who are you?”
“This is Julian and Mateo,” Rome says, pointing at each of them. His arm is still wrapped around my shoulders, holding me to his side.
Julian is the one who asked about my father.
My gaze bounces between them, and I think they’re telling me the truth.
I don’t think they work for my dad. If they did, wouldn’t they just take me to him rather than bring me … wherever I am?
I take a shaky breath, and when my knees want to give out, Rome picks me up and carries me to a couch, where he sets me down and covers me with a blanket.
“I’m not cold,” I tell him.
“I don’t want them looking at you without more of you covered,” he replies simply, calming me with an even, deep tone that seeps into my nervous system.
I’m in my sleep shirt and shorts. No bra.
Because that’s what I was wearing when everything happened.
“Oh.” I tug the blanket around me. “Okay. I’m not trying to cause trouble.”
“Great,” Julian says. “We don’t want trouble. Who’s your dad, Lulu?”
I can’t escape. Rome won’t let me out of this place, and the three men in front of me—who all have splatters of blood on them—quietly terrify me. Yet, unexplicably, I feel safe. Even though I was drugged.
Fuck.
“Salvatore Rizzo.” It’s a whisper, and all four seem to lean closer to me.
And they look mad.
“My real name is Eloise Rizzo, but my friends call me Lulu. I use the term friends loosely because I don’t really have any, but my classmates and our housekeeper call me Lulu.
I had to run away, so I came to Vegas. I found a job, and I like it, and I don’t want to leave, but obviously my dad found me, and I won’t go back to him, so I have to leave Vegas.
I have some money, so I can just go and be out of your way. Wait. Why do you care who my dad is?”
I frown up at them.
“If you don’t work for him, and you’re not going to make me go back, what does it matter?”
They share a look.
“What don’t I know?” I ask them. “Oh God, is my dad dead?”
I blink at the thought.
“Why don’t you look upset by that idea?” Rome asks me.
“I’m only upset that I didn’t get to watch,” I mutter and look down at my hands. “I hope it was painful. The bastard sold me.”
I shake my head. Out of all of the horrible, painful things he’s done to me through the years, that’s the one thing that I can’t reconcile. He sold me.
“He didn’t send you here?” Julian asks me.
I shake my head but then feel dizzy. “No. And you didn’t answer me. Is he dead or not?”
“As far as we know,” Mateo says, “he’s alive.”
“Shit.” Tears fill my eyes. “I have to go. It’s not safe for me here.”
I go to stand, but Rome urges me back on the couch and turns to the others.
“Give us some time,” he says.
“She needs to answer—” Carson begins, but Rome shakes his head.
“She’ll answer, but she’s sick, thanks to Mateo. Give us some time.”
The three of them don’t look happy about it, but they do file out of the—apartment? I still don’t know where I am.
“I don’t want you to be in danger,” I whisper.
“I’m not,” he says, lifting me off the couch, blanket and all.
I’m not a petite girl. The fact that he can just carry me around is … alarming.
And a reminder of just how strong he is.
He stops in the kitchen and pours me some water, and as I sit on the counter, I drink some of it, watching him over the rim.
“How’s your stomach? Do you want some food?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Definitely not.”
“Hold on to your water.”
I do as I’m told, and he lifts me again, this time carrying me up the stairs and back into the bedroom where I woke up.
“Is this your bedroom?” I ask him.
“Yes.” He sets the glass on the bedside table, pulls the blankets on the bed back, and gestures for me to climb inside. “Lie down, firefly.”
“Why do you call me that?”
I don’t fight him. I scoot over in the bed and turn on my side so I can watch him. Rome unbuttons his shirt, removes it, and tosses it aside, and my eyes are plastered to his naked torso.
Holy fucking Jesus in a rowboat.
How? How is he so … muscly? And covered in ink, from his jawline to his fingers and everything in between. There are words and images. An angel. Flowers. It would take hours to look at them all, and my fingers itch to touch him.
“My eyes are up here, firefly.”
My cheeks darken as I roll my lips together and lift my eyes to his.
He’s grinning.
“You have a nice smile,” I say, surprising us both.
Leaving his slacks on, Rome climbs onto the bed, but he doesn’t touch me. He rolls onto his side, facing me, and pulls the covers up to our shoulders.
“What are we doing?” I ask him.
“Hopefully, we’re going to nap,” he says. “You need to sleep more of that off, and I haven’t slept in two days, so a few hours sounds good.”
“Why don’t you sleep?”
“Work,” he says simply. “Why did you run from your dad?”
I tuck my hands under my chin and let out a breath. “I should have run away a long, long time ago, but I didn’t have any resources, and despite what he did … well, I guess it was easier to stay. That makes me sound weak, and I hate that.”
“I haven’t known you long, but I know you aren’t weak.”
I feel warm with his words. I can’t believe I’m telling him so much. That I feel safe to.
“I don’t know how much you know about the Mafia.” I cringe. “That sounds like something out of a movie, but my father is kind of a big deal in that world.”
“I know who he is,” Rome replies, surprising me.
“You do?”
He nods.
“He’s not a good man. Not even to me.” I shake my head. “Anyway, he came to me not quite a week ago and told me that he’d arranged a marriage for me, and I’d be expected to go with this guy within an hour of his little announcement.”
Rome’s eyes go cold.
“I know that arranged marriages happen all the time in organized crime. It just is what it is. But he’d never talked about it with me before. Not that he really talked to me much. I know very little about what he does, except that he makes a lot of money, and he gets off on hurting people.”
Rome takes a breath. “How do you know that?”
I chew on my lip, looking at the angel on his chest. I don’t want to tell him how I know.
“Anyway, when I told him that I wouldn’t marry whoever this guy was—I’d never met him before, and I didn’t know the name—he hit me.”
Rome’s jaw clenches.
“Wasn’t the first time, but I knew that I couldn’t stay.
That I wouldn’t just blindly go to whoever my father sold me to and hope that my home life there would be better than it had been before.
I’d prepared to leave during the few years leading up to this, and I grabbed my go-bag and left.
I knew he’d look for me, I’m not stupid, and he’d never just let me go.
That’s why I found the cheap motel because he’d never think to look for me there.
Well, that, and I didn’t have much money. I don’t know how that guy found me.”
“Why Vegas?” he asks as he reaches out to push my hair behind my ear, and it sends warmth down my whole body. I love this man’s hands.
“It was convenient,” I admit. “I’m from Reno, and it was a quick and cheap bus ride. I didn’t lie to my boss, as I really do have a background in mixology, so I figured I’d find a job here pretty quickly.” Am I digging myself a deeper hole right now?
I feel so stupid.
“I like the job, and I’ll miss it. I like my coworkers. It sucks that I have to leave.”
Rome reaches out and brushes his finger down my cheek, sending a shiver through me.
“You don’t have to do anything right now. You’re safe here. No one can get to you. So why don’t you relax and sleep off the rest of that drug?”
My eyes are heavy. And this bed is so comfy, and I feel good when I’m with Rome.
So without fighting him, I let my eyes drift closed and fall asleep.