Page 55 of To Hell

He nods. “Not a good enough reason?”

“Do you hear yourself?” I keep my tone swinging between low and amused. I don’t want to poke him or step out of line.

I have not been permitted to.

“All the time, and I love the sound of my voice,” he is in a good mood. The same mood he has been in since last night. I love this side of him. It makes him sound and look younger than the grief in his eyes makes him out to be.

“I don’t know what to say to you,” I snort.

“You can get blood on it, and no one would know,” he slips into his T-shirt and ruffles it into place. “But that’s not why I wear it; I was just kidding,” he swings his giant sinful body in my direction, and my lungs constrict, “I wear it because I lost a dear friend, and I went into mourning.”

“He got killed?” He lost someone. That must have been the reason for the grief in his eyes.

“She went missing,” he stops by the table, his voice tightening.

“She?” I clear my throat, and a pang of jealousy rocks me on my stool. “I’m sorry about that. But are you sure she went missing? Maybe she ran away from you? You are not such great company. I don’t know if anyone has told you that before.”

The buzzer goes off in my head that I just stepped out of line. I gulp and hold my breath, waiting for his reaction.

“Funny,” he pulls a stool beside me and sits, and now the big room feels cramped.

“You will kill anyone who says that to you, so we all have to lie about liking you,” I continue to tease, but carefully.

“But do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you lie about liking me?” He cranes his head so he is burning into my eyes with the hot coals of his gaze. “I will put a bullet in your head if I don’t like your answer, so you better think carefully.”

I giggle uncontrollably at his words and the sternness on his face as if he means it. He has a playful side. I like it. I like it a lot.

“Let’s see…” My phone chiming behind me cuts me off guard, and I decide I would rather go for it than keep smoldering under the gaze of the hypnotizing man. “Can I get that, please?”

“You don’t like me,” he says, rising to his feet and going to the corner to retrieve his black jeans thrown on a stool.

“I never said so,” I check my phone and see I have an email from a potential sponsor asking me to send my portfolio to him. My heart stops pumping for a second and my eyes fly wide.

“What is it?” He is slipping out of the dress pants, and I spin to give my back to him as if I do not want to ogle until I’m drowning in my drool. “Another horrible comment from a jobless sociopath?”

I shake my head. “No,” I gulp loudly, my hands clammy and shivering at the fact that it’s all happening too fast. Again. Like last night. “A potential sponsor wants me to send my portfolio to them.”

“That’s a good thing.”

I nod. “Yeah,” I take a deep shuddering breath, “it is a good thing.”

Thanks to Valerie, I have a rough, ready-to-use portfolio that includes some of the sketches I did for Ettore and the Bratva clubhouse.

“You are doing me proud. First the suits and now this.”

I turn to him, and he has a tenderness in his eyes that I haven’t seen before or thought was possible.

I go over to him and hand him my phone, “Please,” I hold my breath as he intersects me with his eyes.

“Please what.”

“Can you help me send the email with the attachment? It’s saved as Portfolio. I’m still learning how to deal with these modern phones.”

“We could send your response as a letter through a pigeon.” His lips curve in a smirk as he takes the phone from me and does something with his fingers, then hands it back to me.

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