Chapter 20
Savvy
“You’re glowing. You know that, right?” Cassie gawks at me while sealing up the last box in her apartment.
“I am not.”
“You sure as shit are.” She laughs. “It’s good, though. Your mobster, he’s being good to you.”
“He’s not my mobster.”
She shakes her head. “Of course he is, and it’s okay to admit it, Sav. You like him.” She scribbles living room on the side of the box. “You might even love him.”
“Ew. No.” I turn away from her, so she won’t see my face burn up.
“Ew?” She laughs again.
“I don’t love him.”
“But you love how he makes you feel? Not just when he’s got his dick in you, right?”
“Oh my god. Why do I tell you things?”
“Because who else are you going to tell?”
When I glare at her, she frowns. “You hate me for going?”
“No. I get it.” I turn and drop the marker I was using onto the windowsill. “And the job sounds good.”
“Almost twice as much as I was making here when you consider all the benefits.”
“Yeah, it’s a smart move,” I say. “And St. Louis isn’t that far. Once I get my car back, I can make a weekend trip down there.”
She smirks. “Or you can just have your mobster drive you down there.” She throws up her hands. “I know, I know, he’s not your mobster—except he is, and you’re just too afraid to believe it.”
“I’m not afraid.”
She scrutinizes my expression for a long beat. “You used to be better at lying. I think this man is ruining your skills.”
“I’m not afraid,” I say again, but I hear the little waver this time and clear my throat. “I have a tickle, that’s why it comes out like that.”
She sighs. “Okay.”
“So, what time do you leave in the morning?”
“I’m planning to get on the road by ten, but I can’t pick up the truck until eight, so it just depends on how long it takes me to load up.”
“Is Tony coming to help?”
She deadpans. “No. Tony is definitely not coming to help. He called me five times this morning demanding I go with him tomorrow night to the tables. At first, I thought he was just being stubborn, but then I realized he was too high to remember he’d already called me.”
My heart sinks. “He needs help.”
She points at me with her eyebrows raised. “You are not caving.”
“I’m not.” I put my hands up. “I’m saying he needs help with the drugs.”
“Oh.” She nods. “Yeah, he does. But unless he wants to get clean, it won’t matter what we say or do. You know that, hun.”
We’ve been down this road with him a few times already, and she’s right.
“Well, that’s it for the packing. Let’s go get ice cream.” She waggles her eyebrows and snaps up her purse. “I’m going to miss the corner creamery.”
“Out of everything in Chicago, it’s the small ice cream parlor on the corner you’re going to miss? Not the pizza or the hot dogs?”
She scrunches her face, as she locks her apartment. “I haven’t been able to eat hot dogs since the Millers. Hot dogs every night for dinner—at least for us fosters. Their own kids got whatever they were having.” She holds the front door of the building open for me.
“You know I’m not leaving you, right?” She asks a few minutes into our walk.
“Yeah. I know.”
She stops and pulls me to face her. “No. Seriously, Sav. I know you got this hangup that everyone leaves you, but I’m not leaving you. I’m just moving.”
“Away,” I add with a grin. “I’m kidding, Cassie. I know you’re not leaving me. You’ve moved before. You’ll be back in a year; you’ll miss the pizza.”
She stares at me like she wants to tell me something. A big weight seems to be pressing down on her all of a sudden, and I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.
“Cassie, if you were in trouble. You’d tell me, right?” I ask once we get moving again.
She nudges me with her shoulder. “Of course I would.”
The ice cream shop is freezing inside, so we grab our one scoops and take them back outside. Even with the fall breeze, it’s more comfortable out in the sun. She pokes at her ice cream with her spoon while I take the extra scoop I bought to the SUV idling nearby.
I knock on the window, waiting for Damien to lower it.
“Thought you might want a snack.” I hand him the small cup. “You look like a Rocky Road kinda guy.”
He looks down at the nuts and chocolate and marshmallows. A soft smile tugs at his lips.
“You’re welcome, big guy.” I wink then jog back to the table with Cassie who is eyeing the exchange.
“No Lucian today?” She’s trying to sound casual but misses the mark entirely.
“Lucian’s Gabriel’s cousin. He’s got his own business or crew or whatever,” I explain.
“Ah, so too good to babysit the boss’s girl?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t understand the whole hierarchy of it all other than Damien works for Gabriel, and Lucian has his own thing.” I lick the strawberry cheesecake ice cream from my spoon. “Why? Were you hoping Lucian would be here?”
“No.” She snaps, then shoves a spoonful of her mint chocolate chip into her mouth.
“Hmm. You sure?”
“I’m sure. I was just asking because you have a babysitter again.”
“After the other night, he’s put someone with me all the time now. It’s overkill, but whatever. It’s not like I’m going to be able to talk him out of it.”
She laughs. “Or maybe being his good girl feels too good?”
“I shouldn’t have told you anything,” I say wiping my mouth with a napkin.
“You definitely should. And keep telling me. It’s been months since I’ve even been kissed. I need someone to live vicariously through.”
“I’m not telling you anything else.”
“So you won’t tell me what happened before you came over to make you all aglow and happy?”
“Shut up.” I toss my crumpled napkin across the table at her.
“Okay, okay. But to be serious a second, does he think Ricci will come after you? Maybe it would be smarter for you to come with me than to stay here with him.” She drops her spoon into the empty cup.
“Ricci’s not any threat to me, unless he thinks I’m important to Gabriel. Which I’m not, so—”
“How can you say that with a straight face? I mean, I know you’re great at running cons, but Sav, this is me. You can’t con me.”
“I’m not.”
“Then you’re purposely not seeing what’s right in front of you. That man wants you, in every way a man wants a woman. Not just for sex. I saw how he looked at you when he dropped you off earlier.”
I drop my eyes to my ice cream, taking my time scraping every last bit from the container.
“He probably looked stressed. He was going to another meeting for the hub he’s trying to build on the Southside.
I don’t understand what it all means, but I guess there’s another company that wants to merge with his.
It would give him the ability to double the space. I don’t know.”
“One, no, he looked like he’d rather gnaw off his foot than leave you behind. And two, he told you all of that?”
I shrug. “Yeah. It’s all legal,” I add, so she doesn’t think he’s getting me involved in his other work. Not that either of us have a moral compass that wouldn’t allow it, but it would definitely make things more complicated when I’m done working for him.
“Sav. You’re telling me he doesn’t want you for anything other than sex and your forgeries, but he had someone doing his paperwork before you came along, and a guy who just wants sex doesn’t chitchat about the stresses of his day job.”
“You’re reading too much into it.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re being obtuse on purpose.”
“I am not.” I groan. “Let’s talk about something else.” Just as I get up to throw away our trash, my phone pings.
“Tony?” She frowns when she sees me reading the text messages.
“No.”
“Then what? You look like you’ve been told you’re meeting the executioner tonight.”
My throat dries, and no amount of swallowing is helping.
“It’s from Gabriel. There’s some big party he has to go to tomorrow night, and he wants me to go with him.” I keep reading. “No, he has demanded I go with him.”
She laughs. “You love it when he gets bossy. It’s okay, you can admit it to me, I won’t tell him.”
“It’s a business thing, Cassie. I don’t have anything to wear. I’ll stick out like a bruise on society.”
“You still have that credit card he gave you?” Her chair scrapes against the concrete when she gets up.
“Yeah?”
She lifts a shoulder then nods toward Damien still sitting in the SUV, the discarded ice cream cup sitting on the dash.
“Let’s go shopping.”