Page 98 of Vicious Little Games

“What?” I bark out a laugh, certain he’s joking.

“He probably won’t go for that, I know, so I could see about transferring to a school closer to Vegas. It would suck since not all my courses will transfer...”

“No, Cole. That's not...I can't go to New York, and you can't stay!” I scrub my hands over my face, wishing he would just give up.

No, he just snorts. “You say it like the fate of the world hangs in the balance and will end if I don’t leave Vegas.”

“Your world may end if you stay.”

“What are you talking about?” he asks. When I don’t give any further explanation he says, “Hold on. Are you threatening me?”

“No. Maybe.” Looking up at him from my pillow, I ask, “Would it convince you to leave if I did?”

“I'm not leaving until the end of summer no matter what. And I wish you would consider keeping this going.”

“Keeping what going?” I ask. “Us having sex? That's all this will ever be between us, Cole, and you know it. There's no way you would ever risk my father finding out...”

“If we went to him and told him we want to be together...”

“Wow, you are so naïve if you think it's that easy.” I laugh. “Daddy will kill you. He told me he would. That he would make it look like an accident, so it didn’t blow back on him.”

“There’s no way...”

“If he didn’t kill you, then he would seriously hurt you. Or have Eli string you up in the basement and torture you for days. He may even cut your dick off!”

“You’re overreacting.”

“I'm not. I know my father. We can never tell him about us. We can't tell Vanessa either because she would never keep it from my father.”

“Fine,” Cole mutters, followed by a sigh as he leans his head back to stare up at the ceiling. “Do you want me to stay or go tonight?”

“Stay,” I say without hesitation. “Just for one more night?”

He chuckles as if he knows I’m so full of shit when he gets up and turns off the lights. The past few days, the nights we’ve spent together, we’ve done more than fuck. It feels like…I don’t know, the beginning of something really good.

I should’ve told Cole to go. Part of me wonders if he’s only been staying to use me as a distraction so he doesn’t have to think about the two men he killed.

But deep down, I know that’s not the only reason.

And I also know that we are so fucked.

The next morning, Cole is gone by the time I wake up. And while I want to be angry at him for abandoning me, I know it’s for the best that he sneaks back into his room before anyone in the penthouse wakes up.

But the abandonment still stings more than it should today.

A shrink would probably say that I have issues because my mother went missing when I was so young, that I have a fear of other people leaving me which is why I’m so bitchy. Pushing people away before they can leave is like a defense mechanism.

And I have no doubt that Cole has some of the same issues because he never knew his father. His mother likely gave him new trust issues by lying to him his whole life and never trying to find out who his father is.

I can’t do anything about the twenty years Cole didn’t know he was the grandson of a Russian mobster, but maybe there’s a chance I can help convince her to give Cole a name or whatever information she can remember.

Later that morning, I find my stepmother sitting alone on the patio having breakfast.

“Hey, Vanessa.”

“Morning, Cass. There’s plenty of food left. Enough to feed the entire casino,” she says as she surveys the buffet of fruits, muffins, eggs, bacon, and nearly every other breakfast food on the table.

“I’m not really hungry,” I admit as I take a seat at the table in the chair across from her. “But could I ask you a question?”

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