28. Nina
E va and I arrived at the spa without any issues.
An hour into it, relaxing after a thorough massage, I sank against the cushions of a couch in the spa’s lounging area and sighed.
“I feel like a puddle.”
Eva nodded, stretching back as she moaned lightly. “It’s been a while since I’ve felt this loose.”
“It’s… world changing,” I joked. “I never realized a massage could be this good.” Good, but still not as good as sex with Dante. Or his brand of massage that he liked to give me. Any time that sexy man had his hands on me was a gift.
She glanced at me as the spa staff member brought us our iced waters. “You’ve never had one?”
I shook my head, then sipped. Even the water tasted better somehow. The masseuse liquified me with that deep tissue kneading, and I was parched.
“Never had the money.”
Eva raised her brows. “You do now, cozying up with my uncle.”
I didn’t flinch. I was sick of her mean girl routine, but I’d started to think she was lightening up on me.
Guess not.
“I’m not a gold-digger, Eva.” I sipped more water. “I’m not the bad guy no matter how desperate you are to see me as the villain.”
She didn’t double down with the attack. Instead, she nodded. “I just want to make sure.”
I shrugged. If I hadn’t convinced her to not be a bitch to me by now, there was nothing else I could do to salvage the situation. “If you loathe me so much, why’d you invite me along tonight?”
“I don’t loathe you. And I can tell you’re not a gold-digger. I went through your guest room.” She smirked. “You haven’t even touched any of the clothes I ordered for you.”
I laughed lightly, too relaxed to find the energy to show my amusement completely. “No, I didn’t. I had to wear those dresses when Dante told me to. But he ordered me things more my preference?—”
“Cheaper, you mean.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “We have different tastes. That’s not a crime.”
“I suppose.”
“Why do you keep giving me a hard time if you know I’m not a materialist user trying to take advantage of Dante?”
“Because he’s suffered through women like that before, one-night stands who got it in their heads that he’d be their sugar daddy.”
Her saying that reminded me of that time Tessa and I joked about it. Sugar daddies. Dante wasn’t one. He was… my boyfriend.
Speak of the devil. My phone chimed with another text, and I frowned as I pulled it out of my purse while Eva chattered.
“Many women have looked at my uncle—and my cousin—as easy ways to get rich.”
“He has yet to give me any money,” I told her.
“But all his flings?—”
Before I looked at my phone, I shot her a look.
“What, you don’t like me mentioning that he’s slept around?” she taunted.
“He’s had sex before. I’m well aware. He’s much older than me, but I think you’re overexaggerating. Dante was married to his job, to the family’s businesses and deals, before I moved in.”
She huffed. “You’re right about that.”
“His not being quite the player you’re making him out to be?”
“That. But also that he’s changed his workaholic habits since you showed up.”
I couldn’t keep up the lies anymore. Weeks ago, after that ill-fated evening at Escott’s, I blurted out to Romeo that Dante and I were pretending to be a couple. I never told Eva. Even though Dante and I weren’t faking anything anymore, I felt bad not to explain to his niece.
“When Dante and I met, we agreed to a fake date. We were pretending to be together so I wouldn’t have to go to the Devil’s Brothers.”
She scrunched her face. “Why would you?”
“My brother bet using me and lost me to Reaper.”
She rolled her eyes. “What an idiot.”
“An idiot I cut ties with when I ran into Dante that night.”
“You haven’t talked to your brother since he lost his bet to the biker leader?”
I shook my head. “No.”
She grimaced.
“I’m sorry to have kept that from you. And I know you’ll assume I am conning someone by explaining why I moved into the house at all.”
“Oh, please.” She waved me off and laughed once. “It might have started out like that, a fake relationship, but it’s pretty damn clear that my uncle wants you for real.”
I smiled. It sure looked like that. It felt like it too. A smidgen of doubt lingered, though, and I hated that I would always be this guarded in life.
My phone buzzed again, and I cringed as I looked at it, pulled from this conversation with Eva.
“Who’s been calling you all night?” she asked.
“It’s not calls. Just old voicemails that are blank and texts that won’t load. It’s an old phone.”
“My uncle will get you a new one,” she said.
I was sure he would, but I didn’t want to ask. This one worked—or it did until it seemed to want to die today.
“Well, who is it?”
“My friend. Tessa. We used to waitress at the steakhouse together.” I bit my lip and tried to call her again. It dropped.
“Is something wrong?”
“I worry that something is. She’s been pressured to marry this creep. He’s a lawyer, and her parents are pushing her to get hitched because they think that means they’d get money. I’m nervous that he’s going to force her to elope or something.”
Eva shook her head. “That’s bullshit.”
“And now that we mentioned my brother, I realize he wouldn’t be able to contact me if this phone is toast. I don’t remember his number.” My peaceful sluggishness faded. Anxiety crept back in. “He’s an asshole, and I say karma should be served for his losing me in a bet. For betting with my life in the first place!”
“I’d say,” Eva said.
“But he is my brother. The only family I have left. When my dad was dying in the hospice, he made me promise to look after Ricky.”
“Wait, is he an older or younger brother?”
“Older.” I tucked my hair behind my ear. “But that doesn’t matter. He’s still family. I tried, but…”
Eva shocked me, reaching out to pat my knee. “Hey, it’ll work out however it’s supposed to.”
“Wow. Did they slip a sedative into your water? Are you actively trying to be nice to me?”
She smirked. “Yeah. I can’t help it. I’m glad that you care about others. I see it in the way you interact with my uncle. Hearing you worry about your friend, and even your brother, who doesn’t deserve kindness for losing you in a bet to the MC…” She smiled, almost sheepish to do so. “I like that you’re not self-centered.”
“Thanks. That means a lot.”
She must have met her quota for sappy topics and sharing her feelings. Furrowing her brow, she concentrated. “Is your friend stuck in an arranged marriage?”
“No. Not formally. Just caught between persuasive people who just want to use her, I think.”
“Some families only pair up with arranged marriages.”
“That sounds like hell.”
She nodded, flicking her perfectly smooth hair back over her shoulder. “Oh, it is.”
“You haven’t been arranged with anyone?”
Her responding bark of laughter was haughty. “No. My uncle would never make that choice for me.”
“But it does happen?” I wasn’t thinking about Dante or myself. Not even Eva or Romeo. For some reason, I was looking ahead. If I were to have a child with him…would my baby be expected to marry someone chosen for them?
I wasn’t sure if I was getting too far ahead of myself. With every day that my period was late, I grew more excited with the prospect that I could already be pregnant. If I wasn’t, I had to be infertile. Dante and I were having sex at least once, but usually multiple times, daily. We’d never used protection, and it felt like it was bound to happen sooner or later.
If I was late any longer, I’d ask for a test. When I worked my ass off, always waitressing, I seldom got my cycles. The stress. The constant working. Poor sleep. I never worried because I was a virgin. Now that I wasn’t, the absence of my period could mean something. Something permanent.
“Nina.” Eva cleared her throat, breaking the silence of several minutes by saying my name.
“Yeah?” I stuck my phone in my pocket, giving up on it for now. I’d have to ask Dante for one tonight. I didn’t want to be without a means of calling him.
“You do realize that Ricky’s not contacting you might mean…” She winced, raising her brows in a prompt for me to finish her statement.
I sighed. “Yes. I considered that. I don’t want to think about it. If the MC was mad that he didn’t hand me over, they could’ve done anything to him.” Horrible, unfathomable things like torture.
Or murder.
“Maybe Dante can look into it for you,” she offered.
I almost smiled. “He did tell me that I could ask him for anything.”
She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, he’s infatuated with you. He’d give you the world if he could.”
Warmth filled me, and deep inside, I felt at peace. He really did care for me. I knew it from the bottom of my heart.
“You’re prepared to commit to him?” she asked. “For the long haul?”
Considering the way I’m wondering if I have his baby inside me already, yes, in for the long haul. I nodded.
“What do you want with him?” she asked, but not sounding pushy about it.
“I want it all,” I answered.
“Do you love him?”
Very much. I nodded. As I opened my mouth, ready to admit it, I was startled. Franco ran up to us, dashing through the spa. Blood spilled down his shirt.
“Franco?” He was shot!
Another Constella guard sprinted with him, but a gunshot rang out and the man fell forward.
Eva screamed. The staff at the spa yelled and shrieked as well, scattering and running or ducking to hide from the men running in, the gunfire, and the guard dropping to the floor to lie unmoving.
“Go!” Franco ordered me.
More shots were fired, and as Eva moved to stand, to run, reaching out for my hand to guide me to safety with her, I flinched as a bullet sank into the cushion of the couch. Inches from my head. It was the luckiest miss, but I wasn’t sure Eva would survive a hit if she got up from the shelter of this lounge area.
“Get down!” I yelled it as I pushed Eva down, sparing her from a direct hit to the head, given the location of where the bullet pierced through the chair she’d sat in.
As we stumbled lower from my act of shoving her and covering for her, I lost my balance.
I fell. It was such a hard impact that my breath was punched out of me. I’d been holding it, tense and bracing for pain with this sudden attack.
My head smacked on the edge of the low table, and darkness quickly eased into my vision, sending me to oblivion as I was knocked unconscious.