Page 53 of Tempted By Sin

Now, I have no choice but to go home and face the music.

I finish getting dressed and shove my phone into my jeans pocket and look at the messy bed, my brows furrowed. After I fell asleep, I didn’t notice Ace leave my side. I whirl around, my gaze sliding across the empty bedroom.

Where is he?

Using the little light streaming in from the window, I walk to the closed door and pull it open. The upstairs hallway is dark, save for a light shining from beneath two doors down to my right. My footsteps are light as I make my way to the closed door. I consider walking in without knocking, but I’m not sure what Ace is doing in there, so it would be rude of me not to at least signal my presence.

I rap my knuckle on the wooden door three times before twisting the handle. When I step into the room, surrounded by bookshelves lining the walls on either side of me, I find Ace sitting behind a large mahogany desk, his gaze lifting from the laptop open in front of him to me.

“Little bird.” Ace leans back on the leather desk chair, his chest bare and the strands of inky hair a mess atop his head. “You should be sleeping.”

“So should you,” I counter, walking further into the room.

He points at me, his head tilted to the side. “Why are you fully clothed and not naked? I didn’t say I was done with you yet.”

My cheeks warm as I stand beside him. “What are you doing?” I ask instead, pointing at the screen. From where I’m standing, I can’t make out what he’s reading, but it looks like paperwork of some sort.

Ace pokes the side of his cheek with his tongue, his intense gaze sliding across my face. The harshness of his features and the tension coursing through his body reignite the fire in my core. I thought I had gotten my fix of him tonight, but it seems just one look from him has me crumbling at his feet.

“Nothing that concerns you, little bird.”

Apart from the fact that Ace kidnapped me and has been stalking me ever since I was rescued, I don’t know much about him. I don’t know what he does for work, what he enjoys doing in his spare time, or the little details that make up his personality. Getting to know a person all over again after I started dating Liam is not something I thought I’d ever have to do.

“Tell me about yourself,” I say, resting my hands on his bare shoulders. The muscles tense beneath my touch but loosen after a second. Ace leans his head back, his eyes meeting mine. “I don’t know anything about you. What do you do for work?”

“If I tell you, will you leave me?”

“That depends on what you do. If you’re an accountant, I may have to leave for fear of boredom.”

Ace bites back a smile. “I’m definitely not an accountant.”

I squeeze his shoulders, and he sighs at the gesture. “Then you have nothing to worry about. I’m not leaving, Ace. You can tell me.”

He holds my gaze for a moment, his jaw ticking as he considers my words. After everything that has happened between us, learning what he does for work is the last thing I’m worried about.

“I’m an enforcer for the Gambino gang. I hurt people for a living.”

My first instinct should be to run and never look back because what normal person isn’t afraid of someone who admits they’re in a mafia gang and hurts people without so much as batting an eye? Not me. If Ace had told me this the first day I woke up in that cabin, I would have shaken in my boots and stayed as far away from him as possible.

But as I’ve spent more time with him, and he’s proven to me that he would never hurt me, I’m not afraid of him. If anything, I feel safe with him. He kept me fed and hydrated in the cabin, he watched from afar when I left work at night and made sure I got home safe, and he even saved me from the mugger in the alleyway. Ace’s actions and ability to protect someone may not be conventional in the sense of what is acceptable in society, but it’s how he shows someone he cares. I can’t fault him for that.

“When did you start working with them?”

Ace’s eyes widen slightly at my question and lack of physical reaction, but he doesn’t dwell on it. He reaches his right hand back to rest over mine, his thick silver ring cool against my skin. “When I was twenty-one. I would often compete in underground fight clubs for the adrenaline rush of hurting someone. I was addicted. It was enough to pay the bills, so I kept going back, chasing that rush. That’s where Enzo found me and offered me a job as his enforcer. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to live comfortably while continuing to feel the rush I needed.”

“And do you…”

“Kill people?” He raises a brow at me, finishing my sentences. “Yes, I do. All the time. Bad people, little bird.”

I swallow hard. I have never met a person who has killed someone, let alone someone who does it for a job. It’s an odd feeling to look someone like that in the face, knowing what they’re capable of. While I don’t condone killing people, I can’t change this side of Ace. It’s part of who he is, and I don’t want him to change that about himself for me. He says he kills bad people, and I believe him, so I’m willing to push the details to the back of my mind where it’s easier to pretend he doesn’t have the blood of others on his hands.

“Why me?” I ask, my throat thick with nerves. It’s a question I have been searching for the perfect time to ask. “Why did you kidnap me?”

Ace turns his attention to the screen and drops his hand from mine. He clicks through a few more documents. “That’s what I’m trying to find out, little bird. Someone is out to hurt you, and I will stop at nothing to find out who.”

“What do you mean?” My heart hammers in my chest. “Did… did someone pay you to kidnap me?”

A wave of emotions I can’t keep track of crashes over me, making my head spin. How is this possible? Why would someone do this to me?

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