“Maybe I can put a little pick and mix together for you and the girls," Davo says. “An easy G for a good night.”
There’s hope in his eyes, like he’s getting away with something. Davo thinks a thousand dollars is a lot of money. I guess to him it is. To my family, it’s a rounding error. My friends here are all poor. They think they’re rich girls, but they don't know what rich really is. Some of their fathers are senators, some of them have houses in the Hamptons. They’re all playing little league compared to my family. My mother was a literal princess. My father stole her in the eighties. Literally. It was pretty fucking dark, I guess, come to think of it, but they fell in love and I came along and mama has always seemed happy to me.
“You wanna taste? Just a little sample to get started with?”
He opens the bag and tears the corner off a tab with a laughing monkey printed on it, then holds the corner out toward me, stuck on the top of his finger. He wants me to lick it off the tip. It will be the most action he gets from me tonight, that’s for sure, but what the hell. I like to cocktease, even if I've never actually had sex. There’s power in seeing men want me, driving them to the very edge of desire and then letting them know they’ll never have me.
I smirk, open my mouth and extend my tongue, waiting for that slightly sour taste which means the good times are about to roll.
“Holy fuck,” Davo breathes to himself.
Boom!
I let out an involuntary shriek as the door to my apartment bursts right off the hinges and a man comes striding in as if he owns the place. He's huge. Dangerous. Angry.
And super fucking hot.
“Whoa!” Davo takes several steps back.
“Get the fuck away from her," the intruder growls.
“Chill, man, fuck!” Davo doesn't know how to handle what’s most likely a robbery. I do. You let them take what they want, then you claim insurance and your father ensures that they end up in pieces at the bottom of the harbor I can see gleaming through the floor to ceiling windows. Whoever this guy is, he just signed his own death warrant.
I stay sitting on the couch. I don't move for any man, not even one as massive as the one turning toward me and staring at me with eyes so dark they seem to go on forever. He has stubble in a goatee, just a slight beard, enough to look thoroughly lawless. His jaw is square and hard, just like the rest of him. He’s wearing jeans and a hoodie. Neither one looks right on him. He’s a man who would look better in a suit. White shirt, black slacks...
“What the fuck!?”
"Shut up, Mia.” He growls the words like he owns me.
“Uhm, excuse fucking you!?”
“Is this what you do? Drugs?” He grabs the drugs from Davo and shakes the bag at me in his big fist. The pretty little pills fly everywhere in a cloud of pink and yellow dust.
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I do,” I give him the full benefit of my glare. There’s no way he knows this, but my father is the head of a crime family so vast and so dangerous there is nobody on this planet stupid enough to touch me. I'm not afraid of him.
He gives me a vicious look, those dark eyes searing right through me like he fucking owns me, then turns his attention to Davo.
“Get out of here, boy.”
Davo looks over at me and makes the very stupid decision to try to be brave.
“I… I think you should leave, bro," he stammers. “This is.. uh... this is….”
I watch as the brute grabs Davo by the back of his hemp sweater and literally throws him out the door, two handed, both Davo’s feet leaving the ground as he’s hurled across polished Spanish tile. There’s a solid thud as Davo hits the far wall of the foyer, then the intruder slams the door shut as best it can on broken hinges.
We stare at each other for a long moment. He seems pissed. Fuck knows why. He’s turning out to be a complete psycho, and I'm alone with him.
"What are you, like, obsessed with me or something? Desperate, much?”
“You’ll speak to me with respect, Mia," he growls, pushing the hood of his sweatshirt back and running his hand through dark hair speckled with silver at the sides. I let my gaze drift from his face down to the drugs which are now scattered across my New Zealand lambswool rug.
“Why are you here?” I pick up my glass of Prosecco and look at the intruder with a cool gaze.
“I’m the one asking the questions.”