Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95956 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95956 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
His driver is parked out front, waiting, but Calvino pauses on the sidewalk. He pulls me toward him and I’m surprised as my hands fly up to his chest and he holds my waist tightly.
“Smile, Gracie,” he whispers, “and kiss me back like you want to suck my cock as soon as we’re in that car.”
He buries his mouth against mine. I struggle for half a second until a flash goes off somewhere nearby and I realize what he’s doing. The bottom feeders are hungry and he’s giving them a meal, and quickly I succumb to the kiss, tasting him, letting him take me and hold me, and I don’t have to fake it.
This is the easy part, kissing him, because this is the only part I like.
Everything else?
God, he’s a bastard and an asshole.
But he’s a bastard and an asshole that can kiss me like he was born to bite my lower lip.
We break apart and I’m flushed and breathless, dizzy from the wine and heady with desire.
“Good girl,” he whispers, running a thumb down my lip as his other hand grips my ass tight.
Another flash. Fucking hell. That picture’s going to be on some mafia-stan blog and plastered all over B-tier gossip rags in an hour.
“Anything else, master?” I blink rapidly, looking in his eyes, fluttering my eyelashes, playing up the innocent coquette.
It works. He looks at me like he wants to suck my clit until I scream.
“That’ll be all for now.”
He slaps my ass again as I climb into the car.
Fucking prick.
Chapter 8
Calvino
I let the whiskey scald my throat and warm my belly as I roll my shirt sleeves up and flip through the dossier spread out on the black coffee table in front of me. The pulse of Crystal Lake’s club music pounds just outside private room three and Diego leans back in his seat, chewing on a straw and taking small sips of straight gin.
“Thorough,” I say, nodding to myself. “Very thorough. I assume there’s nothing else.”
“She’s exactly what she appears to be,” Diego says with a shrug. “Boring, small-town girl. I got you what I could. College transcripts, high school transcripts, names of her associates. Hell, I even talked to her fucking middle school art teacher. Gracie Murphy is an average girl from a nowhere town.”
“And yet here she is,” I murmur to myself, looking at a photograph of Gracie from high school: her red hair’s longer and she’s wearing sweats with the school logo on them and smiling big as she holds up a track baton and drapes her arm around another girl that looks vaguely familiar. “Is this the cousin?”
Diego cranes his neck. “That’s her. They overlapped in high school for two years and ran track together.”
The cousin is pretty, though not like Gracie. I find it hard to imagine this was the girl that came to LA trying to make it, but no wonder she ended up gone, just another dreamer sucked up into the bleak orbit of this failed and rotting town.
“I’ll admit I’m disappointed, but also relieved.”
“What’s your game with her, Cal?” Diego watches me like a hawk. He’s too clever and it’s obvious I’m up to something, but I haven’t told him the details yet. Nobody knows about my suspicions, nobody at all, because to voice them out loud is to put that out into the universe, and I can’t take the risk, not until I’m sure.
“She’s my girlfriend,” I say with a wink and a smile. “Isn’t that enough?”
“The only long-term relationship you’ve ever had has been with your right hand and your dick, so yes, I don’t believe you one bit.”
“I hate to disappoint you then. And I’m a lefty.”
“Well, whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re being careful.” Diego stands up and shakes his head. “She’s boring as boring gets. Though I will say, there’s some dark stuff in there. The stepfather apparently isn’t a great guy according to some rumors I heard floating around.”
“How bad?”
“Pretty bad. And her mother’s not much better. I spoke to her on the phone and she was a little bit rough, to put it lightly.”
“Very good work.”
“I do what I can.” Diego grins at me as he walks to the door. “I just hope you don’t destroy her in the process, although I wonder if you even could. This girl’s dangerous considering what she did to Vince.”
“I know that.” I meet his gaze. “But we agreed we weren’t going to talk about the sleeping situation anymore.”
He mimes zipping his mouth, locking it, and throwing away the key.
The door opens and Grace sticks her head into the room. She looks at Diego then at me and smiles awkwardly, holding her empty drink tray out. “Came to see if you boys need anything.”
I quickly gather up the dossier and shut the folder. “Diego was just leaving.”