Page 131 of Ruining Vanessa

I flinch at the sound of his voice.

I can’t go over to him. I still remember that look in his eyes.

“I don’t mind if you eat mine,” Damien answers, slowly guiding me to the kitchen.

I don’t fight him, letting him bring me closer to Giulio and Slayer. I can’t look at them. I can’t look at any of them without wanting to flee. I knew they were hardened mafia men, but this was beyond anything I could’ve comprehended.

And they’d made me be a part of it.

Giulio laughs. “Okay, fair enough, I don’t want your ultra mega death spicy mapo tofu.”

“No one does. Except maybe Vanessa,” Slayer says, coming around to kiss the top of my head. “Now that she’s got the taste for it with the baby and all.”

I flinch, but he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

Between the two of them, Slayer and Giulio had set out tableware for everybody on the kitchen island. The different dishes have been transferred to nicer containers, and there are even champagne glasses.

It looks like a formal family dinner.

Slayer stays standing, grabbing a fork and digging into his food. “Man, nothing like a good torture scene to get me hungry and horny,” he says. “I just wish you hadn’t ended Paul so quick. I could’ve had some real fun with him.”

“Look, his screaming was starting to get repetitive.” Giulio serves himself a little bit of everything, even Damien’s dish. “Plus, with Damien having shot him, he was already bleeding out. There wasn’t that much life left in him anyway.”

That should make me feel a little better about having picked Traci to live—not much better, but at least knowing Paul would’ve died anyway makes me feel like I’d done something right.

Damien pushes me toward the stool next to Giulio.

I reluctantly go to the seat, sliding onto it, but even the smell of food makes me feel more than a little nauseated.

“I’m not sorry I shot him,” Damien says as he takes the seat on Giulio’s other side. “I told you when you hired him he wasn’t going to be useful.”

Giulio groans loudly. “Man, his brother was a good guy though. I was trying to do him a solid. I figured Donny could handle whatever messes Paul made.”

“He tried, during that whole cop thing,” Slayer says between bites of food. “Donny seems like a pretty good manager when he doesn’t have his back against the wall. You like him, don’t you, Vanessa?”

When I don’t put food on my own plate, Damien frowns and reaches across the table so he can dish some out to me, giving me a little of everything like Giulio had taken. I stare down at it, my stomach churning, and I half-heartedly stick my fork into a piece of chicken. “Yeah,” I say. “He’s nice.”

“Fun fact,” Giulio says after skewering a piece of chicken, “Donny is completely gay. He actually tried to hit on me when we first met. He thought I was a twink looking for a sugar daddy.”

Slayer nearly chokes on his food. He covers his mouth as he coughs, then begins to laugh. “Well… He wasn’t completely wrong.”

Giulio chuckles and motions to himself. “Yeah? You think I can pull off twink?”

“Maybe. Well, I definitely know you can pull off douche,” Slayer retorts. “You’re getting too old for twinkdom, though.”

Giulio gets an arm around me and pats my shoulder. “Do you hear this, Vanessa? Slayer says he’s perfectly straight, but he knows what makes a good twink. What clubs has he been visiting, I wonder.”

I don’t like being dragged into this conversation, and I like his arm around me even less. It feels menacing, even more so than usual, and I can’t help but think about the fact that it’s been all of two hours—if even—since he murdered someone and decided to put someone else up for sale. I go still, not even bothering to pretend to eat.

Damien coughs, drawing attention to him. “You were almost a twink in college, Giulio. Which I know, because you kept telling me about your escapades.”

“I don’t even want to know,” Slayer says instantly, around a mouthful of noodles.

There’s a tiny part of me that’s curious about what Giulio was like in college, but I’m too sick to my stomach and heartsick all at once, and I don’t really want to hear about it right now.

“I was equal opportunity,” Giulio jokes. “A twink for the men and the ladies both. It somehow worked out. Well, aside from the fact that I was too jacked for it, and do you know how very real biphobia is, man? There was a dude who told me he’d never sleep with somebody who also ate pussy.”

Damien pauses with his food halfway to his mouth. “Was that… Was that the night I had to pick you up from lock-up?”

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