Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
LULU
I’ve just set a pot of water on the stove to boil for the pasta, and I fetch a few blocks of cheese from the fridge so I can shred them and turn back to the island, where Rome is sitting, watching me.
He’s only wearing a pair of black lounge pants. His torso is bare with all those delicious tattoos on full display just for me.
“Did you do that on purpose?” I ask as I set the shredder on a plastic cutting board.
“Do what?” he asks, his face void of any emotion at all.
I let my eyes move over his body, taking in the ink and his muscles and bite my lip because damn. When my gaze returns to his face, he’s smiling at me.
“You did it on purpose,” I confirm with a laugh. “Not that I’m complaining.”
He leans his elbows on the counter and rests his chin on his hands. “You’re wearing my shirt, firefly. I didn’t have a choice.”
I glance down at the black button-up that I grabbed from his closet before coming downstairs.
“You have about a hundred more just like it. It’s comfortable, and it smells like you.” I pull the collar up to my nose and take a deep breath. “I could live in this thing.”
“And I’ll be fucking you in it before we go to sleep.” God, the way he says the word fuck should be illegal.
It makes me want to just lie down and spread my legs for him. Right now, I want to circle this island, climb in his lap, and let him hold me.
Just hold me.
Because nothing feels better than being in Rome’s arms, and after everything I went through tonight with Scarlett and the mayor, I could use some snuggles.
But first, we’re hungry.
I lift an eyebrow and resume the task at hand. “Well then, maybe I should wear your clothes more often.”
He smirks, and his eyes move down to my cleavage, which is clearly visible because I didn’t button the shirt up all the way.
“Before this moment devolves into me bent over this countertop, I have questions for you,” I tell him, and his eyes climb back to mine.
“You can ask me anything.”
I reach for my water and take a drink, eyeing him. “You’re mysterious. A little confusing.”
“How so?”
“You’re a major player in organized crime,” I say as simply as if I’m saying that he sells used cars for a living, “and you likely kill people without a second thought. In my experience, men like you don’t have soft spots.”
“Is there a question in there somewhere?”
I laugh and start shredding some cheese. “How did you come to own the club? I can tell that it isn’t simply a front for you. It’s not just a way to do your nefarious business.”
“Nefarious.” He hums. “I like that.”
“You care about it,” I continue. “You care about the people there. I could tell before, but after what happened to Scarlett tonight, it’s more obvious than ever.”
The humor leaves his eyes, and I wish I could take the words back. But I want to know. I’m falling in love with him, and I need to know what makes him tick. What makes him the man that he is.
I want to know everything, not simply how good he is in bed or how protective he is of me.
“If I answer questions, you answer questions,” he says.
“That’s fair. I’m down for that. Start talking.”
“First, you’re the only person in this world who can make demands of me. I want you to be aware of that. No one else tells me to do anything.”
“Not even Carson, Julian, or Mateo?”
“We don’t give each other orders,” he says, shaking his head.
“Wow, I get to touch you and boss you around.”
He blinks. “No. You can make requests, firefly.”
I grin at him. “I know, I’m only kidding. Okay, please talk to me.”
He takes in a breath and watches my hand run the cheese up and down the grater.
“My mom was a sex worker,” he says at last, and that has me pausing, surprised.
I don’t know where I thought Rome came from, but I guess I assumed his family had a history in organized crime, like mine.
“I don’t know who my father was. Likely a john.
She probably either couldn’t afford birth control, or it simply didn’t work. ”
I resume shredding, not wanting him to stop. His voice is level, matter-of-fact, and I can see he’s not looking for pity. But I can also see this is a difficult conversation for him by the way he fists his hands on the counter.
“So she was a single mom,” I say, reaching for another block of cheese.
“She was. And she was really good at it. I never wanted for much. Don’t get me wrong, we were fucking poor.
I wore a lot of secondhand shit. But I never missed school or a meal, and I knew she loved me.
We had fun together. She wasn’t a junkie or into drinking, but she was young.
Only fifteen when she had me. She ran away from home because her father was an abusive piece of shit. I never met them.”
“Doesn’t sound like the kind of people you’d want in your life anyway.” I turn to find the water at a rolling boil, and I pour the macaroni in, give it a stir, and turn back to the cheese.
“No. I never really knew what she did for a living. She worked mostly at night and had a neighbor stay with me while I slept.”
“So she could have worked any kind of night job, as far as you were concerned.”
“Exactly.” He nods, and his shoulders relax as if he just now realizes I’m not judging his mother for her choices.
“Do you look a lot like her?” I ask.
He stands and walks to an end table in the living room. He opens a drawer and pulls out a framed photo, then brings it to me.
The woman smiling out at me is gorgeous. And yes, Rome looks so much like her. Those ice-blue eyes and dark hair. The skin tone. The smile that sets my soul on fire.
“She’s beautiful,” I say softly with a smile. “And you definitely favor her.”
He nods and looks down at the photo, kisses it—my ovaries explode—then puts it away.
“She was murdered,” he says, his voice gone cold, “when I was sixteen. Sex got too rough, and they fucking strangled her.”
I set the cheese down and grip the edge of the counter, watching him.
“They threw her body into a dumpster because they were afraid of getting caught.”
“Fuck,” I whisper, shaking my head.
“Took three days before someone found her behind one of the resorts. So yeah, I care about the people who work for me and the members, too. Sex work shouldn’t be scary.
No one should worry about their safety. Many people do this for a living by choice, not because they have to, and I’ve given some of them a safe place to do that.
I don’t allow drugs here. Everyone is screened often for substances and STDs, and members are rigorously vetted.
I do a lot of shitty things, Eloise. I kill people.
Fuck, I killed two tonight alone. I print fake money, I run drugs and weapons, and aside from you, I don’t give a fuck about much.
But no one gets hurt in my club without me making it right. ”
I swallow and then walk over to him.
“She deserved someone like you looking out for her. I’m sorry there wasn’t anyone back then.” I place a gentle kiss on the ink on his chest that represents his mom. You raised an amazing man. His swift intake of breath is all the reaction I get, which is perfectly fine.
Heading back around the island, I pick up another block of cheese.
“What happened to you after your mom died? You were still a kid.”
He nods. “I discovered, or the authorities did, that I had an aunt. My mom’s sister. Luke’s mom.”
My eyes widen in surprise. “Luke’s your cousin?”
He nods again. “I moved in with them. Luke’s a couple of years younger than me. When I switched schools, I met Julian and Mateo, and we hung out pretty much all the time. Julian’s dad was a crime boss, Greek, and the three of us went to work for him. Luke followed.”
“Thank you for telling me all of that,” I tell him. “And I’m sorry about your mom. I know how it feels to lose her.”
He shifts on his stool. “What happened to yours?”
“You don’t know?” I frown at him, surprised.
“Should I?”
I scoff at that and turn to wash my hands, gathering my thoughts. I check the pasta and see that it still has a few minutes to go.
“My father is a piece of shit,” I say as I wipe my hands on a towel. “That’s not news. I was about eight, and I heard him screaming at her. He did that a lot too. I think they’d gone to some wedding or party, and he was angry because he thought one of the capos was looking at her.”
I shrug and grab some butter and milk out of the fridge.
“Maybe the capo was stupid enough to do that, who knows? I doubt it just because most of them seem to be scared of my father, but I wasn’t there.”
“And you were a child,” Rome adds quietly. His arms are crossed over his chest, and he looks pissed as fuck.
“Was I ever really a child?” I wonder, tapping my finger on my lips.
“Maybe, when I was a toddler. Anyway, whenever he’d go on one of these tirades, I’d usually hide in my room under the covers.
But this time, my spidey senses were tingling, and I knew something horrible was going to happen.
So I crept down the hall to the landing that overlooked the living room, and I knelt in the corner, making myself as small as I could. ”
I clear my throat and take another drink of water.
“The thing is, my mom wasn’t like yours,” I tell him, meeting his eyes. “She wasn’t much better than my dad. I mean, she would hug me, and she never hit me or anything, but she wasn’t a good human. I caught her fucking the gardener a couple of times.”
He raises an eyebrow at that.
“She wasn’t discreet. Maybe she wanted to get caught. Perhaps she knew that if she got caught, Dad would kill them both, and she saw that as the only way out of her shitty life.”
“Maybe the capo was checking her out,” he says.
“Probably.” I blow out a breath and look at something over his shoulder, seeing what happened in my mind’s eye. “But I’m quite sure she thought he’d put a bullet in her head and call it a day.”
“That’s not what he did.”
“No.” I shake my head and turn to drain the pasta. Not giving it time to cool, I pour it into a big bowl and start to fold the cheese in so it’ll melt. “He tortured her. It was gross and painful. Horrifying.”
“Please, Salvatore!” He laughs and hits her with the bat again, tearing open her scalp…
“And you sat there and watched.”
“He knew I was there. At one point, he glanced up at me and smirked.”
“That motherfucker.”
God, his voice is hard and frightening. If that’s the last sound his victims hear before he kills them, they might die of fright before the bullet hits.
“He spread a rumor that another family kidnapped her and tortured her. Even had her body dumped somewhere and everything.”
“How is it possible that you came from all of that, yet you’re the sweetest, most amazing human on the planet?”
I bark out a laugh at that and finish stirring in the last of the cheese.
“I think you’re biased.”
“I’m not,” he says. “I’ve seen so many shitty people in my life that there’s no way I could count them. You’re so good, Eloise. You’re kind and gentle.”
“Because I’ve been on the receiving end of the opposite of that all my life, and I won’t ever do that to someone.”
I dish us both up some dinner even though it’s almost morning and pass him a bowl.
“But, Rome, I can be ruthless. I’m capable of hardness. I can feel it inside me sometimes. Like tonight. I hope the man who hurt Scarlett is one of the two you killed today because he doesn’t deserve to breathe.”
“He’s no longer breathing,” he confirms, watching me with those intense blue eyes. “Now, get over here, firefly.”
I circle the island, and he pulls me to him, right between his legs, and holds his loaded fork up to my mouth.
I take the bite. “Mmm. That’s actually really good.”
Shoving some into his own mouth, he nods. “Excellent.”
“Better than the box?”
He laughs and kisses my forehead. “Much better than the box.”