Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 82121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
I don’t want it.
This room feels gross now. All that sex, only to still be right back where I was before I met him. Poor, desperate, pathetic enough to steal from a stranger. It doesn’t matter if the money isn’t for me. Nobody’s going to feel sorry for some loser girl from a crappy family with a worthless sob story. But at this point, I’ve gotten very good at taking all my shame and shoving it deep down inside of me, hidden away, buried under obligations and stress.
Nana needs the money. Jason needs it even more. If I don’t take that watch, they’ll suffer. And all for what? Because I’m too proud? Because Saul fucked me so good I’m ruined for other men forever?
None of that matters.
I still don’t want to take the watch. Stealing from him now would mean the ultimate transgression and it would mean that I’m officially too far gone to be salvaged.
Saul stirs. He takes a breath and rolls onto his side, away from me. Almost giving me tacit permission, like in sleep he’s letting this happen.
A guy like him won’t miss a watch. He probably has a dozen more just like it. But to me, that watch is everything. It’s the difference between making rent for the next few months and being able to afford Nana’s and Jason’s medications.
I bend over and pick it up.
Saul doesn’t move as I turn away, leave his bedroom, hurry out the front door, and summon an Uber with my phone. I get the cheapest one available. The watch feels like lead in my small clutch as I head back home.
Tonight taught me something important. There’s no such thing as rock bottom. There’s no such thing as a hell underneath it.
Because there’s always a way to get even lower.
Chapter 5
Saul
She’s gone in the morning. I expected it, but I’m disappointed. I’ve never been with a woman like I was with her. What we did that night left a mark on me, not just the bite-marks and the hickey on my neck, but a stain in my memory.
I can’t stop thinking about her.
It barely even bothers me when I realize my watch is missing.
Her name rings through my brain. Molly, Molly, Molly. Like the chorus to a song I’m trying to remember. Molly’s lips, Molly’s tongue, Molly’s hard nipples, Molly’s moans.
She set expectations, but sometime around the third orgasm, I forgot all about them.
But she’s gone. I try to find her, spend a few days hounding all the local Irish bars for a pretty redhead named Molly, and I find about a half dozen. None of those girls are her. I don’t want any of them. If my brothers notice anything’s off, they don’t mention it. Renzo’s busy running the Famiglia, Gian’s too madly in love with Allegra, and Carlo’s tumbling down his own hole pursuing his stupid, petty revenge. The guy gets shot one time, and he thinks every single Russian and all their Irish buddies have to die for it.
Meanwhile, I’m suffering without her.
That’s melodramatic. I’m aware. And I’m not normally an emotional guy. But I find myself back at the Sterling Duck, ignoring the stares, breathing in the cigar stench and the vomit reek, but she never appears.
“You’ve got to stop coming here.” Dante’s waiting for me one night two months after Molly changed me.
“Why? I love the atmosphere.”
“People are beginning to notice. You’re setting a routine.”
I wave a hand. “I’m rotating which days I show up.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re in a fucking war.” He shoves the door of his Lexus open and gets behind the wheel. I walk around to the other side and strap in.
“We’re winning,” I say as I stare out the window. The city flashes by. Our new territory, barely more than a bunch of crumbling row homes and crappy rundown bodegas.
“Barely, and you know Jasha and the Russians are looking for any excuse to come after you. Their backs are to the wall, which means they’re dangerous.”
I know he’s right. Dante doesn’t owe me shit, and if he’s here, it’s because people are talking.
Why would the underboss of the Rossi Famiglia spend time in some random dive? I can only imagine the rumors.
“I’m fine,” I tell him, and we both know it isn’t true. I’m a fucking mess and I know it.
“She’s not going to show up. You have to realize that.” He glances at me and shakes his head. “The girl’s avoiding you.”
I think of the missing watch. I’ve gone back and forth over the weeks, but I’m sure she stole it. I don’t know why—maybe she really was a pro and she felt strange about admitting it. Maybe that whole night was fake, one long, elaborate con to grab an expensive piece of jewelry, something she’d done before and I fell for it like an idiot.