Page 61 of Scars He Gave Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 2)

Tomas has been stressed. He won’t admit it, but I can see it in his face, the slump of his shoulders, the way he rubs his temples when he thinks I’m not looking. He left my office with my ruined panties in his pocket and the kind of passionate hunger in his eyes that gets me all hot and bothered.

But by the time he returned to the apartment that night—so late I was falling asleep on the couch waiting for him—he was a different man entirely. He looked haunted. Furious. Every time I asked what happened, though, he just shrugged and shook me off.

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do,” I tell him again and again, but he doesn’t believe me. He just shakes his head, says nothing.

He spends hours locked in his office. I hear him speaking on the phone in a low, hurried voice at all times of day and night. Sometimes he leaves without explanation, storming out with his gun gleaming in its holster and storming right back in later with the fury in his face looking more and more intense.

After three days like that, I can’t take it anymore. I meet him in the hallway as he’s whirling back in after another one of his unexplained trips. He doesn’t even notice me standing there until I put my hands on his chest.

“Tommy,” I say as gently as I can. Something is tearing him apart inside. Is it Flash Bomb? The Italians? Me? Something else entirely? I don’t know and it’s driving me crazy. I wish he would share the burden with me. Maybe I could help somehow, in some way.

He doesn’t look up at me. “I told you not to call me that.”

I try to grab his chin to make him meet my eyes, but he lurches backwards. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “You can trust me.”

“Not this. This is different. Just…” Finally, he looks up at me. “Just let me handle things in my own way.”

I sigh. That’s as much as I’m going to get out of him. “When was the last time you ate?” I ask him. He looks gaunt, skeletal.

His stomach rumbles right on cue. He laughs mirthlessly. “I don’t know,” he admits.

I grab his hand and slip my shoes on at the door. “Take me to dinner then,” I say. He hesitates for a moment, looking at me. Then he sighs and his grip relaxes. Together, we walk out into the night.

* * *

When we arrive at Meritage along the harbor, we don’t even have to ask for a table. The maître d’ bows as soon as he sees Tomas and leads us through the dining room to a table set for two with a candle lit in the center and a bottle of champagne already chilling in a bucket next to the table.

Something about the ambience seems to settle whatever demons are torturing Tomas, at least a little bit. Neither of us say much as a fleet of servers brings over dishes without us ever seeing a menu. Just a shy smile here, a soft glance there. Tomas keeps sighing, and with every sigh, the slump in his shoulders eases somewhat.

After a while, I start to chatter. Anything to fill the silence. Tomas just watches me, a half-smile flitting on his lips.

“I know this is all serious and there’s a lot at stake, so I don’t want to sound like an uncaring bitch. But this is some of the coolest work I’ve ever done. We’ve reconfigured and redirected the entire structure of the virus and deployed it against the Italian systems. It looks like it’s still at work on your stuff, but it’s all smoke and mirrors.”

Tomas drinks his wine and keeps flashing that infuriating, mysterious half-smile at me.

“What?” I say finally, catching myself as a self-conscious blush rises to my cheeks. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

His voice is soft and low, so much so that I have to lean forward to hear it. “You are at your most beautiful when you care.”

I nearly choke on my wine. It’s such a strangely sensitive compliment that hits right at everything I’ve always been insecure about. Like he can read my mind perfectly. Like he understands me inside and out.

“Thanks, I think,” I mumble awkwardly. “Just nerd stuff anyways.”

“Don’t do that,” he lashes at once.

I do a double-take. “Don’t do what?”

His voice softens again. “Don’t minimize yourself. Your intelligence. Your drive.”

“Oh.” Silence takes over for a few minutes.

The impulse to say something I haven’t ever said out loud rises in me after a while. “I want to own my own firm one day,” I say. I keep my face down towards the roast duck on my plate like I can’t bear to look at Tomas while I admit these ambitions. “I’m smart enough. I’m capable enough. I can do it.”

Tomas says nothing, until at last, I force myself to look at him. That half-smile grows a tiny bit warmer. “Then do it,” he says gently.

What is it about that tenderness from this man that makes me want to leap across the table and mount him right here and now? We’re in a white tablecloth restaurant with dozens of people and staff around us, but if he keeps looking at me like that and saying these soft, gentle things, I might just go through with that urge.

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