Page 35 of Velvet Cruelty

For a second, he stares at me, and then he laughs. A rich, genuine laugh I haven’t heard before.

“Sorry,” I say again, wanting to disappear. “I shouldn’t have… Sorry.”

“Miss Whitehall, don’t take this as a slight on your beauty, but the two of us are not a match.”

I feel my face burn. If he’s not attracted to me, why was he kissing me? “What do you mean?”

Eli picks up his necklace from my blankets. It must have slid there while we were kissing.

“It means, I can trace my bloodline back to the House of Savoy. You are from a wealthy family, but I would be marrying beneath my name.”

“Oh.” I look at the dark ceiling. It’s not every day you’re told you’re not important enough to marry. Especially after everything with Mr. Parker.

He runs a finger along my jawline. “Do not mistake me, bella. You are a precious and beautiful thing and I intend to keep you as my own. We would have an arrangement.”

My mind goes to designer handbags and tropical holidays. “You mean like a sugar baby?”

That gets another surprised burst of laugher out of Eli. “How does a girl whose internet use was monitored by her ex-fiancé know what a sugar baby is?”

I don’t know what’s stranger. Hearing him say ‘ex-fiancé’ as though it’s all settled, or that he thinks Mr. Parker was spying on me. But of course he does, he was spying on me. Him and Bobby and Doc and Adriano.

“I’m waiting for an answer, Miss Whitehall?”

I swallow. “A girl at my school was on a sugar baby website. My friends and I talked about it sometimes.”

“Ah. Well I suppose no amount of surveillance could stop teenage girls gossiping.”

“Does that mean you do want me as your sugar baby?”

He looks amused. “You’d be my lover.”

The word sends a shiver through me. “Oh.”

“You’d have your own apartment. Your own car, your own money. We would see each other often. Go to dinner and to parties and on holidays. Everyone would know you were mine.”

“And… what would I do when I don’t see you?”

“Whatever you feel like, bella.”

The scary thing is I already know what I would do. The same stuff I planned when I was going to be Mr. Parker’s wife. I would cook, exercise, dance, watch true crime documentaries, hang out with Margot and Zia Teresa…

Zia Teresa. Her lined face appears in my mind as clearly as if I was looking at her. Zia disliked Italian men. “Arrogant,” she said whenever some dark-haired boy whizzed past in a sportscar. “Mama’s boys, every last one and that doesn’t make them sweet. It makes them come home at four in the morning stinking of alcohol and another woman’s perfume and lying through their teeth. You’d be better off married to a kitchen sink.”

I always thought she was being silly, but none of her daughters married Italians. What would Zia Teresa say about Eli Morelli?

“Look at this swaggering peacock, walking around like he’s the king of the world. He’s a criminale! You have a little think, January. Why is this mascalzone following you around offering rubies? What do you have that he wants?

I look across at Eli. “Why would you give me a necklace that’s so important to your family?”

He turns his head to one side, as though trying to see where the question came from. “Because you will look beautiful in it.”

“I think maybe you’re not giving it to me. I think maybe it’s a loan.”

“A loan for what?”

“My body.”

He rubs his jaw, but doesn’t say anything.

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