Page 88 of Made to Sin

What car did I drive? None.

What was I going to eat today? Maria made my food.

Why was I working if I had everything? I needed money to run.

Why was I running away? I wanted to go to California.

It felt more like an interrogation than a conversation at some point, but I couldn’t blame him for being curious. His life paled in comparison as a full-time college student who was trying to earn some money to pay for tuition.

It was jarring to see people live plain lives when they weren’t affiliated with the criminal world. What would my life have been like if my father hadn’t gambled off his daughter? Would I have been in college too? What would I have wanted to be if I had my future ahead of me?

“Okay, are you ready? The doors are opening in two minutes,” Francisco said, grounding me in reality and reminding me that there was no point in imagining.

TheCosa Nostrawas the life I was given, and it was the life I was going to have to get used to.

I took in a deep breath. “As ready as I can be.”

The club was unsurprisingly packed within the first five minutes of the bouncers checking ID. As expected, the bar soon crowded too, and there was no more time for chit-chat.

My only goal was to make it through the rest of the shift without any more incidents.

Except that resolve miserably failed within the first hour. A drunk patron had leaned too far over the bar and spilled his entire glass of beer on me. I couldn’t tell what was worse, him wasting the new jug I filled or it ending up on me.

I quietly groaned, wiped the table, and refilled his glass.

“Francisco, I’m going to rinse off and get a new uniform. I’ll be back in ten.”

He was too busy preparing drinks to respond, but I couldn’t stand being sticky for another second, so I bolted downstairs.

I took a shower at ultra-speed and changed into one of the spares. Thank God for whoever designed employee bathrooms for this place because I would’ve clocked out on the spot if I had to work the rest of the shift with skin-tight, wet clothes.

I walked out with every intention of going back to bartending but accidentally got sidetracked by a conversation I didn’t think I was supposed to be hearing between Sofia and someone else. She sounded like she was upset, and I wanted to cheer on the person responsible. She had been nothing but a pain in the behind, so sue me for being petty.

While it might have been wrong to eavesdrop, it wasn’t the worst thing I’d done. Plus, if she wanted a private conversation, she should have done it in an empty room instead of the middle of the downstairs pavilion. Anyone could walk in at any moment, and I was proof.

Peeking my head out from where I was standing, I instantly regretted my decision.

Karma.

Sofia had her arms around Luciano. The part that made me want to claw out my eyes? His arms were around her too.

Envy tangled in my veins. We weren’t in an exclusive relationshipby any means, but how dare he threaten any other man I wanted to get with while enjoying other women left and right?

Taking a deep breath, so I didn’t do anything irrational, I waited to listen for more. Maybe it was self-sabotaging, or maybe I just came in at the wrong time. My naivety wanted it to be the latter.

Sofia’s face was covered in tears, something I never thought could exist. “Luciano, I’m in love with you. I have been in love with you since we were kids.”

Oh,seriously?

Out of any conversation I had to walk in on, it was a love confession.

Despite the nausea crawling up my throat, my ears perked up to listen for his response. A part of me said I didn’t care, that it made more sense for him to love her than to reciprocate my feelings. Yet another part wanted him to say he didn’t feel the same. That he didn’t love her.

He pulled away from the hug, moving to hold her shoulders instead. “Sofia, you already know that I will always love—”

Before he finished the rest of his sentence, heavy footsteps padded down the stairs and interrupted them. Sofia turned her face down, and Luciano guided them into his office to no doubt finish the confession.

You had got to be kidding me. If I didn’t hear the rest, that left my anxious brain to fill in the blanks. At the rate things were going, even a toddler could guess the next word.

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