Page 39 of The Sin

Which begged a question I probably didn’t want to know the answer to. But since when had that ever stopped me?

“This place is very…”intimate“…cozy,” I said. “Have you been here before?”

And with whom?

He considered his answer, consideredme, and he grasped what I was actually asking. My subtly wasn’t nearly as stealth as I’d thought.

“I like the mood here,” he said. “It’s a good place to depress. I usually come here alone, and peopleleaveme alone here.”

“You’ve never brought anyone here?” I had to ask. Because apparently I was a glutton for punishment.

Roman shook his head so slightly, I almost missed it.

“Not even Amelia?”

“Amelia?” His brow lifted.

“You loved her very much.”

“Iloveher very much.”

The correction stung far more than it should have. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t already suspected. Amelia was one of the many thorns in our marriage, the reason Roman did not want to want me. She was gone, but never gone—as Roman had just confirmed.

I pulled back, putting some desperately needed distance between us.

“Georga.” He reached in the buffer I’d carved for myself, his palm cupping my jaw, his thumb grazing just below my bottom lip, and I didn’t pull away.

I should have. I was feeling too much right now, always too much when it came to Roman, to be drawn into a cat and mouse game.

But I didn’t pull away.

I didn’t want to. And this was the reckless side of my personality that Roman always had so much to say about. I didn’twantto protect myself. Not from him. Not from this world. Not from the truth.

A server arrived with the bottle of wine Roman had ordered, breaking the tension-filled pause between us. He was young, too young to be dressed in a three-piece black suit with a bowtie, too young to be working a job.

Roman tasted a sip and, at his nod, the server filled our glasses.

“Are you ready to order?”

I opened my mouth to ask for a menu.

Roman beat me to it. “Yes, thank you.”

The serverwasthe menu, rattling out, “We have a seafood special today. Calamari, prawns and white fish. As well as the green and BBQ platters.”

I was impressed. Proper seafood, from the sea rather than the lake, was only very occasionally available and mostly unaffordable.

Roman glanced at me. “Any preference?”

I shook my head, and he ordered a mixed seafood and green platter to share.

Once we were alone again, I said, “There’s a Seafood Baron, isn’t there?”

A dry chuckle escaped him. “He calls himself a Sea Lord, but essentially, yes.”

I dragged my glass closer, my fingers twining around the stem as I thought about the server. And the children I’d seen on the streets today. “That server was like, thirteen or fourteen? Shouldn’t he still be at school?”

“There’s no formal education here,” Roman said.

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