Page 51 of The Wages of Sin

“You’re a gangster?” I asked the second the door closed behind Dorian’s brothers.

He hesitated. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”

Complicated? From where I was standing, it seemed pretty cut and dry. “Just tell me the truth. Are you in the mob or not?”

He looked me in the eye. “I am.”

I didn’t know why I was surprised. After all, I knew Dorian was no angel. Men like him didn’t buy apartments like this by pulling small-time jobs.

“What do you do?” I demanded, but Dorian just shook his head.

“You don’t want to know, Kiera. Trust me.”

And the weird thing was he was right.

No answer he gave could pacify me. Any mafia activity he was involved with—extortion, drugs, prostitution, illegal gambling—would be upsetting.

I wasn’t proud of myself, but all I really wanted was to retreat back into ignorance. What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.

More importantly, it couldn’t hurt my opinion of Dorian.

All I wanted was to keep pretending that, while he might be a criminal, he wasn’t a villain. That he wasn’t evil.

How could he be?

Truly evil people didn’t kiss like him. They didn’t make love so passionately. They couldn’t make you feel like you were the only person in the whole world who mattered.

Of course, I knew that wasn’t true. The whole line of reasoning wasn’t logical…but I simply didn’t care.

Logic and reason couldn’t wrap me up in its arms and caress all my troubles and fears away. Only Dorian could do that.

So, I made the conscious decision to turn away from good judgment and plunge headfirst into the self-preserving waters of denial instead.

Without another word, I turned on my heel and started walking away.

“Where are you going?” Dorian asked.

“Back to bed,” I called out over my shoulder. “I’m going to go back to sleep, and when I wake up, I’m going to pretend everything that happened this morning was all a bad dream.”

I have no idea what Dorian thought of my plan; I only know that he didn’t try to stop me.

Chapter Eighteen

KIERA

Imust not have fully recovered from the exhaustion of the previous week, since I somehow managed to fall back asleep after climbing back into Dorian’s bed. Unfortunately though, once I woke up, there was no pretending any part of that morning was a dream.

Not when the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the pair of Gucci jeans neatly folded on the bed next to me with a note perched on top.

Check the closet.

The closet?

I eyed the light burning inside the walk-in skeptically. I wasn’t sure I could handle another surprise today.

Eventually, my curiosity won out over caution, and I climbed out of bed and quietly tiptoed my way across the hardwood floors.

I walked past the row of bespoke suits and tailored shirts, past the drawers filled with silk ties and shelves of Italian leather shoes, and was surprised to find a whole rack of high-end women’s clothes hanging at the back.

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