No.
I’d never been so rude to Vinn. I’d always been a tongue-tied, stammering mess, throwing myself at the nearly-ten-years-older man with an embarrassing lack of self-control, but I was finished with being nice. I didn’t care how bad it looked.
“Everybody here might scrape and bow to this asshole, but I won’t.” I tore my gaze from Vinn and glared at a horrified Michael. “I’m not a sycophant. If you don’t like it, my middle finger salutes you.”
I flashed it at them and strolled for the exit, elbowing past grinning men. A couple of them cheered as I burst outside into the streets clinging with a warm mist. I headed toward the subway, heart hammering.
“Li, wait!”
I kept walking.
“Hey.” Vinn jogged to my side. “You’re ignoring me now?”
“You’re not worth it.”
“Says the girl who used to be all up in my shit.”
“Yeah, well.” My face burned at the reminder. “Those days are over.”
“You’re telling me. I don’t tolerate—”
“Go nurse your wounded pride with someone else.”
He laughed. “When did you become so difficult?”
“About the same time I stopped giving a damn about you.”
“Liana.” He gripped my elbow, stopping me. “I’m not messing around. You can’t talk to me like that.”
“I’ll insult you however I want when you mess with my personal life.”
“You won’t—”
“And whenever you’re with another woman, I’ll be there to make a big stink about how their vagina isn’t the right fit for your cock and run them off.”
Vinn raised his brow so high that it was in danger of joining his hairline. I’d never said the word cock in front of him. If anything, he seemed amused.
“Have at it. I’d pay good money to see that.”
I snorted. “You might change your mind when you can’t get hookers to line up for you anymore.”
“You have a filthy mouth.”
“I’ve grown up, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Judging by his bobbing throat, he hadn’t. “Leo’s not your type.”
“How would you know?”
His mouth thinned. “What were you doing in there?”
“Looking for a one-night stand.”
A flash of warmth passed through his stony expression, like a match igniting kindling. “What was the plan? Leave with the first guy who paid you attention?”
“Yeah. So?”
I smirked when that seemed to infuriate Vinn.
“I should’ve let you take off with DiMaggio,” he said acidly. “He would’ve lasted about five seconds.”
“I doubt it. I’ve dated older men.” I hadn’t, but Vinn’s outrage tickled my stomach. “I think he would’ve been quite the ride. Handsome. Confident. Nice. A great flirt. Gosh, the things he said.”
“He’s lucky I didn’t hear them.”
“Would you have hurt him?”
“Of course.” He ground the word out. “That’s sick.”
He still saw me as a little girl.
A ripple of anger went through me. “I’m not a China doll. I won’t break if I go out with Leo DiMaggio.”
“No, but he will.”
I shot him a penetrating glare. “Not up to you.”
A shadow flickered over his face. “Liana, I’m trying to protect you.”
“All you did was massage your ego.” My gaze dragged down his body and flicked to his slanted eyes. “Makes a girl wonder why you feel the need to flex your muscles. Are you not measuring up in another way?”
“I’d tell you to go fuck yourself, but I’m sure you’ll be disappointed.”
“Hilarious.” I stepped around him, and he uttered a frustrated noise.
“How are you getting home?”
“The same way I arrived,” I threw over my shoulder, surprised that he still followed. “What are you doing?”
“You can’t take the subway.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Martial law. Mandated curfew.” He gestured at the walled-up businesses. “There’s a biker war tearing apart this city. Michael would lose his shit.”
“Leave me alone.”
He grabbed my elbow and yanked me into his chest. “Stop blowing me off.”
“It’s annoying, isn’t it?”
“Enough.”
He clutched my neck, startling me. Then he pushed. My back struck the wall, but the hand didn’t pin me there.
His eyes.
Fathomless, black, and fiery.
They wouldn’t let me go.
Vinn’s frosty demeanor rarely thawed. He was a beautiful, giant block of ice suspended in outer space. I used to think he was unbreakable, but I was mistaken—he was unreachable. It seemed that I’d provoked him into an unreasonable rage. The freezer burn spread where his touch lingered, and, as he closed the distance between us, heat consumed me.
“I’m the boss of this family.” He steamed with an anger never before directed at me. “Not your childhood friend.”
“Yeah. That’s been clear for a while.”
“I won’t hesitate to make an example of you.”
Whenever Vinn made an example of someone, they ended up in a funeral parlor.
I despised him.
I hated the thin chill clinging to his words, his instincts for brutality, the way he looked at me, his infuriating arrogance. Most of all, I loathed the heat spinning in my belly as he held me. When he was close, he bathed me in his fresh scent that recalled those summers at Salisbury Beach when I was too young for him.
My memories of Vinn were sweet. Reality was bitter.
He’d finally noticed me, but I hated him.
I had to finish this before he destroyed me, so I rattled off what I’d spend the week regretting.
“Vinn, go fuck yourself with the fat end of a pineapple.”
Three
Liana
I’d pushed him too far.
The set of his chin suggested I was in trouble. His tall figure stiffened, his stony features kindling with rage. His pupils had dissolved into the black pools that’d watched the end of so many lives, and his fingers tightened on my neck.
The gold chain cut into my skin, which struck me as morbidly ironic. I’d die wearing this stupid necklace, strangled by the very thing that had shoved me into Vinn’s path.
Hope.
“Perhaps you’re under the impression that you’re special,” he rasped in the dead voice I hated. “You can talk to me however you want. You’re Michael’s little sister. I’d never put my hands on you.”
“I don’t believe that anymore. You’re nothing but a huge disappointment.”
His mouth curved with a cynical twist. “What part of me isn’t living up to your expectations?”
My hand grazed his muscled chest and rested over his heart.
Vinn’s head jerked as though startled by the touch. He frowned, cold dignity carving into his face. He scooped up my hand and pinned it on the wall behind me. Our eyes clashed, and my stomach flipped.