Page 16 of Second Chance for the Mafia Enforcer

I felt a little shiver run down my spine. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want him to notice something like that. I still didn’t know exactly where Avda and I stood, what with having hooked up again, and I felt like letting someone else in on it was just going to cause more trouble in the long run.

"Are the two of you seeing each other?" he asked me. I laughed.

"No," I replied quickly. "Why are you so interested?"

"Just curious," he remarked, tipping his head to the side, his dark hair falling into his eyes. God, he really was cute. The last thing I needed was to let this crush on Sasha go any further when I was still in that strange situation with Avda, but when he looked at me like that, it was hard not to let my mind wander in a million different directions at once.

"Why, you want to get your hands on him yourself?" I shot back jokingly. I expected Sasha to throw something snarky back at me – but, instead, his face dropped at once.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, suddenly straightening up, shifting away from the bar.

"I mean, you always seem to be around him, and you notice when he’s not here," I pointed out. "You got a crush?"

He shook his head at once.

"You don’t know what you’re talking about," he snapped at me. He seemed genuinely thrown by the suggestion. Which caught me off-guard. Sasha had seemed laid-back and easy-going in the time that I’d known him, not the kind of guy who would get pissed at me teasing him like this. Maybe he really did hate Avda that much for real...or maybe...

"I should get back to work," he told me, and he stepped away from the bar, leaving me shocked. I didn’t know what had just happened, but I felt as though I had really hurt him, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. What was going on? Why was he acting like I had just come out with something seriously nasty when I had just been goofing around?

"What was that about?"

I jumped when I heard a voice behind me and turned to see Freddie, having returned from his errand, standing behind me, watching as Sasha stalked away from the bar with a dark glower on his face. I shook my head.

"I don’t have a single clue," I admitted. "I thought we were just messing around, and then..."

"Hey, don’t overthink it," Freddie assured me. "Sometimes these Bratva guys can have serious egos. It’s probably nothing to do with you."

"Yeah, probably," I muttered, but I couldn’t help but stare after Sasha, and wondered just where the hell I had gone wrong. I knew it really shouldn’t get to me if he was mad at me for some reason, but I didn’t like the thought of hurting his feelings...

Fuck, these Bratva guys were a whole lot more confusing than I had imagined they would be when I had taken this job. First, Avda walking back into my life, and then Sasha freaking out on me like this? I didn’t know what to make of it.

But maybe the best I could do was just accept that I was never really going to be able to make sense of it. These guys threw my head into a mess, and I couldn’t help it.

I needed to focus on work and forget about them for a while. Even if that felt like an impossible task right now.

Chapter Eleven – Sasha

I paused as I stood in the doorway, staring over at the bar, where Jo was getting everything set up for the night. I knew I had to talk to her about the way I had acted the day before, but shit, I wasn’t sure exactly how to put it into words.

When she’d thrown that joke out there about me having a crush on Avda, I couldn’t have reacted worse. Because I knew there was no way she actually believed it – no way she actually thought that I had anything other than complete disdain for the guy, given the way we’d been coming up against each other at work. But, instead, I had freaked, and probably given her way more to think about than I had intended.

And the last thing I fucking wanted was for Avda to find out about that. I knew his reputation in this city, and it wasn’t exactly progressive – nah, he was all about women, hooking up with whoever he could get his hands on, including Jo. He was a little older than me, and everything I knew about him, he would turn on me in an instant if he got the idea that I was into him on any level. No, I wasn’t going to let myself admit that to anyone, let alone him, and if Jo knew, it was only a matter of time before she spoke to Avda about it.

Which left me no option but to go to her now, and apologize for the way I had acted. Leave it behind us, so I could hope that she would just drop it, forget about it, and make it like it had never happened in the first place. That was my plan.

She had come in a little earlier today, to get ready for the busy shift we were meant to be having tonight, and while it was still quiet, I was intending to catch her and talk to her about what had happened. I had been tossing and turning all night, thinking about it, thinking about how she must have read into that conversation we’d had, but there was only one way that I could actually make sense of it once and for all – and that was by clearing the air in person.

I made my way over to the bar, and she glanced up at me. Her expression didn’t shift as she locked eyes with me, clearly not exactly delighted to see me.

"Oh, hey," she greeted me.

"Hey, Jo," I replied. "Have you got a minute?"

She glanced around, clearly looking for a way out of this conversation – but, finding none, she just sighed and nodded.

"I guess so," she replied. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me expectantly. "What is it?"

"I wanted to talk to you about what happened yesterday," I admitted.

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