Page 25 of Embracing the Dark Side

“For a mafia?” he growled. “You aren’t stupid. So, I’ll ask again. What are you doing here?” He studied her, searching for the truth. He knew what he saw at the party, but he wanted her to say it. The quiet continued, her shame as apparent as the glitter on her chest. “Got a thing for bad guys, huh, JoJo?” Vincent watched, waiting for an answer to come across her face. “He come to your bed after fucking his wife? You his whore?”

Jolie snapped her head up. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

Vincent smirked. “There she is.” He proudly chuckled. Vincent knew Jolie like the back of his hand and so he changed his words to accommodate. “Were you dating him?”

“No.”

His tongue played with the piercing on his lip. Would she remember how she said she hated it? Jolie was never one for piercings and tattoos, but the woman standing before him was different from who he knew. How much had she changed? “You fuck him?” Vincent needed her to say it, if only to gauge how much she was willing to lie.

Jolie couldn’t stand his one-track mind. “What the hell is wrong with you? You just killed someone, Vincent! You murdered him.” A hand came across her lips as her body shook. She could still see how heavy Yakov’s body fell. Hear the screams echo out of Tatianna as she dived on top of her husband. It was so much that Jolie felt the world crashing on her, and she couldn’t breathe. She tried to suck in breath, but her throat refused to open. She clawed at her throat and gasped and struggled to breathe.

Vincent was beside her in a heartbeat, guiding her to the couch. “Put your head between your legs.” With ahand on the back of her neck, he leaned down. “Relax, mami. Just focus on breathing.”

Jolie stared at her heels and painted toes and remembered what it felt like preparing for Adrik’s birthday party. She had been euphoric, still coming down from the high of his touch. She remembered what it felt like to wake up next to Adrik, to watch him sleep, the first time she saw him so relaxed and untroubled. He had been beautiful.

Vincent’s hand rubbed her back. “Still have attacks, huh?”

Jolie’s eyes narrowed. She had only started having panic attacks after Vincent robbed a bank. As soon as he was out of her life, they miraculously stopped. Jolie shivered in disgust and shifted out of his reach, scooting to the far side of the couch and hugging the armrest.

Vincent scoffed and fell back against the cushion. “It wasn’t my first time, JoJo.”

Her brows depressed at such a confession. Vincent was dead—that’s all that could really compute—and this was a shadow, a demon walking around in his skin.

The spider tattoo on his clavicle stared at her. “Did you send that man to hurt me?”

He shook his head. “Santi did that. I'll punish him for it.”

“And who are you to do something like that? Punish someone? To break into the Morozovs and kill Yakov?”

He stayed silent, letting her figure it out.

“You’re the leader? Of the, um…” She searched her memory for the name. “Toxins, right?” Every memory of them watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns and snuggling in the round chair in her room took this moment to play in her head, messing with her. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing happened, JoJo. I’ve always been like this.”

She shook her head. “That’s not true.”

Vincent shoved himself off the couch and returned for his cigar, taking it between his lips as he leaned against the mahogany desk. Everything in here was worth more than he’d ever possessed. The fucking desk was more than his car. The cigar was probably as much as his car payment. It was ridiculous what Yakov spent money on. But it didn’t matter, did it? Because it was all his. The smoke swirled to the ceiling before he spoke again. “I lied to you about a lot of things. But it was for your own good.”

A scoff came out unhindered, but she stared at the floor, refusing to look at him.

“My father, his father, and his father before him were drug traffickers. It’s in my blood. I’m a beast, baby. Sorry to disappoint.”

The ‘hood’ spiel unnerved her because she knew how fake it was. “Your ‘blood’ know how you cried duringMarley and Me? Don’t try to act like a tough guy. You lived in a run-down trailer, with foil on the windows and aDragon Ball Zposter above your bed.”

Vincent’s humor disappeared as he narrowed his eyes. “Then I spent five years in prison. Why is that, JoJo?”

“Because you robbed a bank.” There was a tremble to her that she didn’t like, even as she ground her teeth. The guilt from that time in her life was sneaking up like PTSD. “You weren’t like this. Even then.”

“Yeah, well, prison’s a fucked-up place, and I was eighteen when I got inside. Any boy that was in me was beaten out of me, day after day. But it don’t dissolve the fact that I was made for this life. My mom kept me frommy father for years, but the moment I turned eighteen, I was allowed to leave. My initiation was that damn bank. And I would have been sitting like a king instead of being thrown in fucking jail if—” Vincent cut himself off. She got the point.

Jolie wiped a tear from her cheek. She remembered how she lay crumpled on the bed, crying, and he knelt beside her and held her hand.‘JoJo, you have to keep quiet. They’ll arrest both of us. Do you understand?’

Vincent scratched the back of his head. He was remembering it, too. “I didn’t bring you here to fight you, JoJo. Or to reminisce.”

Jolie bit her cheek to keep herself from crying. This was the last thing she wanted to face. She wanted to go home and curl up in her mother’s lap. She wanted to talk to Adrik to get his assurance that everything would be alright. But it wasn’t, was it? Would it ever be?

“I need a caretaker for Helina. I’ll hire out if I have to. But if you want a job, you can have it. I’ll pay you. What was he giving you? A thousand a week? I’ll double it.”

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