Page 28 of Sin & Secrets

Claudio sits up a little straighter. “All right.”

“I will strike off your remaining one hundred and one thousand dollars…in exchange for a hundred and one nights with your darling Miss Cassandra.”

8

CASSANDRA

“You’ve got to be fucking joking.”

The words explode from my mouth before I can stop them. Even Teo looks up from his book to stare at me in surprise.

How was this the best idea Rocco could come up with? Trade me for Claudio’s debt? It’s hard to feel relieved that he kept his word when the solution is somehow far more revolting than the problem.

“Miss Cassandra,” Rocco begins, but I don’t let him finish.

“I’m not some kind of commodity you can barter for!”

“Cas,” Claudio glares at me. “Don’t speak to him like that.”

But I ignore him, too enraged to mind my tongue.

“What happened to, ‘She won’t do shit for you’?” I mock his words from the other night, hoping to strike a nerve. “What happened to condemning coercion?”

Rocco merely watches me, amusement dancing across his stupidly beautiful face as he twirls the opal fountain pen across his fingers. “And here I thought you were willing to beg for it,Angioletta.”

That stupid, stupid, stupid nickname sends a pang of longing through my entire body. As it has done every waking second we’ve been apart.

Even in my dreams, I find myself back in that room, imagining all the things I’d let him do to me if only he hadn’t stepped away. I imagined all the desires he would whisper in my ear that I would, oh-so-willingly, beg to fulfill for him.

It might have been the only thing that kept me sane as I fell asleep next to Claudio, who had hit me the second he noticed the bruise on my neck.

I’d endured all of it, the names he threw at me, the pain, to fulfill my side of our bargain. To lay low until Rocco announced his intentions.

But when I look at Rocco now, I see that alluding to what happened in that room serves another purpose than just pissing me off. It reminds me of the oath he made.

Both not to touch me again and to free me from Claudio.

“Or was I mistaken?” He asks with a pointed look. He may as well have said, ”This is your last chance to back out”.

I might not like his methods, but the fact remains. He’s trying to help me.

And I need to play my part.

I let color flush my cheeks as I look back at Claudio. “I never said that.”

“You slut,” he snipes back.

It’s not the first time he’s said it these last few days, but it still makes me wince.

From the fireplace, the sound of paper ripping tears through the moment.

“Sorry, am I interrupting?” Teo asks innocently as he discards his book and pockets the page he ripped out.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Rocco sweeping something into the trash can by his feet.

“As charming as this little exchange has been,” Rocco snatches our attention right back, “I have places to be. Lazzaro, you have my offer. Cassandra, should he accept, can I presume you will be as agreeable as you were the other night?”

I have to bite my tongue while I formulate an appropriate response.

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