Page 77 of Lies like Rubies, Part One

When we reached his car, he opened the door for me, like the gentleman he was, and then slid into the driver’s seat. “I picked a place that’s kid friendly because I thought Lizzie would be joining us. Is that still okay?”

God, yes. A public venue would keep me from falling apart as I confessed to my arrangement with Dante.

Once we settled in a quiet booth in the corner, and our food arrived, I took a deep breath and steeled myself for the heartbreak to come.

“Nick, I have to tell you something.”

He set his soda down and stretched his hand across the table for me to take. I lay my hand in his, scant comfort, knowing he’d snatch it away in a few moments. “What’s going on, baby?”

I pressed my lips together and took a deep breath. “The day after Sergio Accardi found me at your clinic, Dante Oscuro came to my apartment. Sergio owes Dante a million euro.”

Nick’s eyebrows rose to his browline. “That’s not chump change, baby. But what does that have to do with you?”

“Dante thinks—thought—I was Sergio’s girlfriend, that he could use me to get to him.”

“What does that mean, use you?”

I took a deep breath. “He promised to keep Lizzie safe if I did what he asked. He said he’d protect her until his business with Sergio is done and they both leave Yorkfield.”

Nick let go of my hand and clenched it into a fist on the table. “What did he ask you to do?”

I didn’t know how to tell him. When we met, I didn’t know games like the ones Dante played with my body existed, much less that they would shatter me.

“I told him I’d do anything for Lizzie,” I began, my heart pounding as I confessed, knowing that this was the end of our short relationship.

Nick waited, his body tense, as if he already knew what I was going to tell him.

“A few nights a week, I go to his hotel suite, and he—” I cut myself off. How did I even explain what he did to me? “He degrades me, and he humiliates me, and he has sex with me,” I blurted.

Nick’s eyes shot to mine. “He what?”

I turned bright red with embarrassment and humiliation. “He gets off on my tears,” I said as those same tears formed in my eyes.

“And why are you telling me this now?” Nick ground out.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as my heart shattered into a million pieces. “He wants you to join us on Tuesday.”

When Nick’s hand slammed down on the table, I flinched away from the violence of his fury. “He wants me to share you, to participate in turning you into a whore.”

No, Dante didn’twantto share me, but he would if it would hurt me, the fucker. I couldn’t read the expression on Nick’s face, only that he was utterly closed off to me. The bright light I loved so much in his green eyes extinguished as he stared at me.

“I don’t know what to say, Sofia. There’s a word for women who sell their bodies, and it’s ugly. What the hell are you thinking?”

Hot tears welled up. Dante was right. Nick was right. I was a slut, a stupid one, who’d sold the only thing she had of worth. Even though I was doing it to protect my daughter, the realization that Nick would never respect me again felt like rough salt in the open wound of losing him.

“Please,” I whispered, my heart shattered in pieces at the hurt and anger written across the lines of his face.

“I thought you wanted out. I thought you hated being entangled with the mafia, with the violence and the misogyny. But you jumped right back in with two feet, didn’t you? I don’t want that, not in the short term, and—” He met my eyes, the green dull, the lines of his face tight with anger. “And definitely not in the long term.” He dropped cash on the table. “Can you get home on your own?”

“I’ll call an Uber,” I said, trying to keep my voice from breaking, not able to take a full breath as the reality of losing Nick for good set in.

Nick nodded. He pressed his lips into a tight line, then slid out of the booth and calmly walked out of the restaurant, leaving me to pick up the pieces of my broken heart.

I pulled my phone out of my purse.

Sofia

It’s done.

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