Page 18 of Ruining Vanessa

“Aww, she just wants to say hello,” I say innocently, not even bothering to hide my grin as I open it up. “Don’t you want to be polite?”

“It can just stay in there,” Slayer says firmly.

Just like Vanessa, he calls Antonia it, which would offend me on my girl’s behalf if I thought she actually cared.

“I think she needs enrichment,” I say, reaching in to take Antonia off her low branch. She immediately slithers up my arm to settle around my shoulders. I have to make sure she doesn’t attempt to coil around my neck, but I’m well-practiced by now. Antonia is a familiar weight, and I love the sensation of her cool scales against my neck.

Slayer grimaces the entire time. “I can’t believe you touch that thing, man.”

“This thing is a beautiful ball python,” I correct him, stroking Antonia’s scales. “And she’s way more interesting than any toy train.”

He continues to glower at me. “They aren’t toys!” he says again. “And at least they won’t try to murder me if I let my guard down. I can’t believe you let it near your neck.” He shakes his head. “You’re fucking crazy, man.”

“Duh,” I answer, grinning widely. “Now, what were you going to talk about? Something about work.”

He grimaces. “So, about Paul. You don’t actually need him alive, do you?” he asks, deadpan.

I take a moment to think about it. I’ve been pretty annoyed with Paul for a while now, and if his brother hadn’t been one of our better capos, I wouldn’t have let him stick around for as long as he had. “Not really, but I don’t really feel like doing any recruiting right now. What’s he done to piss you off?”

“Sergeant from the 52nd precinct is digging around into that detective’s death,” Slayer says grimly. “And a bunch of strip clubs, too. Apparently, the guy was undercover looking for prostitution. Only good thing is that yours truly is the lead detective on the case in this precinct. Still, it’s a cop missing, man, and they want to find out what happened to him.”

Not this headache. I’ve got enough trouble with Victor fucking Corvi sabotaging my operations in Benton City. I don’t need the cops breathing down my neck too.

“Should we try to set up a false trail?” I ask, lifting my arm when Antonia tries to slither down. “Or paint him to be dirty or something? Since we’ve got a name now, we could try to access his bank accounts…”

“No, they’re watching those now. We’re better off laying low on that front.” Slayer makes an annoyed sound. “The only good thing is that apparently, he was having a fling with a guy. Poor wife and kids had no idea he was screwing around, but the good sergeant wants me to look into male prostitutes. That means I’ll have to do a precursory ‘check’ on Ntimacy, Ruby’s, etc., but I’ll be handling those myself. The focus will be on some male strip clubs and the guys on the street.”

“Ooh, can you bother the club run by the Risottis? Last time I saw Benny, we, uh. Well, we didn’t part on the best terms.” I laugh, remembering how I’d left a long slice along Benny’s side. Of course, he’d shot me, so I think that’s only fair.

Damien had wanted to kill me himself, afterward, but I did appreciate his tender care while I was recovering.

And this, so he says, is why I’m not allowed to go anywhere without at least one bodyguard, because shit like this happened even before I took over.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Slayer says. “Just make sure nobody ever finds even a piece of the body.”

“You know Damien would never—” I start, but the buzzer goes off then. There’s no pause before I hear the front door opening, too. “I guess that’s Damien and Vanessa. We can talk more business later.”

I set Antonia back in her enclosure and secure it. Slayer waits impatiently for me, eager to see Vanessa again. He’s probably less eager to see Damien, but that’s perfectly fine by me.

We head out of the reptile room to meet them. Damien is dressed in a business casual look, with nice slacks, expensive shoes, and a dark shirt with a faint, shimmery pattern. The first two buttons on the shirt are undone, showing off some of his chest hair already.

Slayer stops when he sees Vanessa and wolf-whistles. “Damn, they really got you cleaned up. You almost look respectable.”

Vanessa blushes, fidgeting self-consciously with the dress she’s wearing. It’s nothing too fancy, just a simple wrap dress with a bright pattern. She has matching tights and properly fitting shoes.

I’d once said she had the girl-next-door look, but with how we’d basically kept her naked the past month, she’d mostly resembled a whore. Now she really does embody that innocent air of somebody’s first crush.

Not my first crush, but I’d been more into the tall, dark, broody type back then.

“Wow, all ready for a college hangout,” I say, half mocking. “Damien, are there any job fairs we can take her to? I bet she interviews well.”

“I’m not the one who picked out the clothes,” Vanessa cuts in, making Slayer laugh.

“Of course not. Damien would be the one who’d dress her like that instead of something sexy,” Slayer says. “Then again, we’ve already seen you look plenty sexy, haven’t we? All nice and naked, sweating and moaning…”

That has Vanessa shutting up fast, her brief spark of defiance extinguished with the taunting.

Damien puts his hand on the back of her neck and shoots a glare at Slayer. “I thought this was supposed to be a nice date, Giulio.”

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