Page 36 of Owning Nicci

She asked for the deal. She wanted to do this.The thought doesn’t make me feel any better.

“Anything else you can tell me?” I reach into my inner jacket pocket, sliding out the envelope of cash that I brought for Saul. “I could be inclined to throw in a bit extra.”

“As much as I’d like that, I’m afraid I don’t have anything else for you.” Saul glances at the envelope. “She was a socialite. Barca was a low-level gangster before he threw in with the wrong people and tried to reach too high. It’s not as if either of them belonged to one of the major families.”

I nod, nudging the envelope towards him. “Thanks anyway.”

It’s not as if I found out nothing at all—I think on the ride home, the burn of cheap whiskey still lingering in my throat. But largely, Nicci still remains a mystery to me. And the longer she stays mysterious, the harder it is for me to pry her out of my thoughts.

—

After our trainingsession a few days later, I hand Nicci a folded piece of paper. She’s leaning against the wall, trying to catch her breath, and she pushes a damp piece of hair away from her face, glaring at me.

“Give me a second,” she pants, and I smirk at her.

“Don’t you want to see the next Crow that I found? See if you recognize him?”

She narrows her eyes, reaching out to snatch the paper out of my hand.I should punish her for that,I think, but it doesn’t dig in like before. Instead, something rebels in me at the thought of trying to break her spirit further.

I like her fire. Her refusal to admit defeat. Her innate stubbornness. The idea of destroying that feels wrong, and no matter how often I remind myself that I put this all in motion, that I chose to buy her from her father and make her mine, I can’t help feeling that maybe…maybe I made a mistake.

What I need is to fuck her. Or fuck someone else. Clear my head. I’m not thinking straight—that much seems obvious.

“I do recognize him.” Nicci’s voice cuts through my thoughts, and I blink, refocusing on her.

“You do?”

She nods. “He was an errand boy for Barca. Marco Black. He would try to grab me if he ever got the chance, just inappropriately enough to make me uncomfortable, but never enough to get himself in real trouble with Barca.”

My jaw tightens. “Touching you at all wouldn’t have gotten him in trouble?”

Nicci’s face goes blank, as if she’s trying to hide her emotions from me. It makes me want to reach out and shake her, force her to reveal them to me, like a magic 8 ball that’s not giving me the answers I want. “As long as it wasn’t more than an ass-grabor ‘accidentally’ touching a breast, then no. Barca liked to let them think they could have me, eventually, if they worked hard enough. And he liked to make me squirm, make me think that he’d do it, if I pissed him off.”

My gut tightens. I’d kill any man who touched Nicci other than me. If Lucas hadn’t already been marked for death, I would have killed him as soon as I saw his hands on her. How Barca let that happen when she was his is beyond me.

But she’s mine now. Which means no one else will ever have her again.

“So what’s the plan?” Nicci waves the paper at me. “Where are we going after this one? I can do the seduction routine again, same as last time, depending on where?—”

“No.” I shake my head. “We’ll do it differently. He frequents a bar in Hell’s Kitchen. He’s there just about every night.”

Nicci narrows her eyes at me. Her demeanor has shifted, and even though her attitude is the opposite of the submissive behavior I’ve demanded, I don’t think she can help it. I can see the wheels in her head turning, her mind spinning as she works out how we’re going to tackle this problem.

In this moment, I realize, whether I like it or not, we’re partners. As far as she’s concerned, anyway.

And I like it more than I should.

“A bar is perfect, then,” she insists. “Marco will easily fall for a ruse where I pretend that I want to go home with him. You follow like before, and we’ll kill him.”

She says it smoothly, almosttoosmoothly, and I catch a small flicker in her expression. Lucas was the first man she ever killed—so far as I know, anyway—and I’m well aware that leaves a mark. But she also wants revenge, and I know that leaves a mark, too.

I leave it alone. I doubt she wants me to dig into her feelings about anything, and the last thing I need is a reason to care more about how she feels than I clearly already do.

Her eyes are still narrowed. “Why do you care if I try to seduce him?” she asks smoothly, her words quick as a striking snake. “Why does it bother you that Barca used me as an enticement for his men?”

I know he used you as a lure for others, too.It fits with what she just told me, further confirmation that Saul’s information, as sparse as it was, was good.

“Fine.” I bite out the word, my stomach twisting in knots at the thought of this man touching her. But that’s why Ishouldgo along with her plan, preciselybecauseit bothers me so much. At the end of the day, she’s meant to be mine to use as I see fit. If that’s as a honeytrap for these men, well, the difference between me and my brother is that those men are going to die. I have no plans to actually let them have her.

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