“I begged him to go after you. He was already planning on it. But I wanted to make sure that he would. I showed him old pictures of us, videos of you and I going out before everything started happening, before Luca, before all of it. I showed him one of you dancing at one of your recitals.” Sofia takes a deep, shuddering breath, her expression almost pleading.
“I’m sorry if it was too much—if I shouldn’t have shown him all of that. But he’s only ever known you after—after you lost everything. I wanted him to see the Ana I became friends with, the girl who wasn’t afraid of anything, who laughed and danced and conned her way into every bar and club in Manhattan even before we were old enough to get in. I wanted him to seeyou. And when I did—” Sofia gives me a small, sad smile. “I think he fell a little bit more in love with you than he already was.”
I blink at her. “You think he’s inlovewith me?”
“Not love the way you’re thinking of it. But the beginnings of it. I think he’s infatuated with you, that he would have done absolutely anything to get you away from Alexandre and bring you back here. I think he wants you, desperately. But what Alexandre did—”
“—might have ruined it,” I whisper.
“Has he said anything? Has he—” Sofia breaks off as Caterina gives her another pointed look.
I catch it and shake my head. “It’s okay. He, um—” I lick my lips nervously, trying to think of how to say it. “After he brought me to the hotel in London and offered to let me stay here, I felt like—well, I felt like I needed to repay him somehow. So I—um—I went down on him.”
“Oh, Ana.” Caterina looks at me, almost sadly. “He shouldn’t have expected that—”
“He didn’t,” I tell her quickly. “He tried to stop me. I was in such a fog, after Alexandre—after everything. I felt like I needed to please him. He tried to tell me no, but I was insistent, and he finally…well, he kind of lost control of the ability to stop me, I think. I could tell he wanted me, and afterward—”
I feel myself flushing bright red at the memory of Liam laying me back on the bed, his strong hands pushing my thighs apart, his mouth between my legs. The way he’d licked me, the way he’dtalkedto me—the way he’d made me come.
“Did you—” Sofia’s eyes go round.
“No. But he, um—he returned the favor.” My face is flaming now, bright red.
“What?” Sofia almost squawks the word. “Was it good?”
“Sofia!” Caterina glares at her.
“What?” Sofia grins at me, and for a moment, I feel all of the time that’s passed since I dragged her to that club where the Bratva kidnapped her fall away. We’re just two girls in college again, me curled on Sofia’s bed while I give her all the dirty details of my latest exploit. Back then, she was a virgin, genuinely shocked by some of the things I got up to, and I was the one who was working on sleeping my way through Manhattan’s eligible bachelors.
Now she’s married to a ruthless mafia don, a man who has introduced her to all kinds of dark and delectable pleasures, and I’m the one who’s afraid to be touched. The one who can’t remember what it’s like to justwant,not to feel like I’m compelled to do something, not to feel frightened or unsure. To just take what I want, like men do, because I want it.
I think Liam wanted to give that back to me, before Alexandre. But now he’s just as unsure as I am, both of us wandering in the dark, each not knowing how to reach the other or what the right thing to do is.
“It was better than good,” I admit. “It was incredible. But I think he felt guilty about that too. He’s made a point of not touching me since we got back.”
“Maybe he’s waiting on you.” Sofia shrugs. “Maybe he wants you to choose him. Especially if he knows how you still feel about Alexandre.”
“I’m almost sure he does.” I tap my finger against the phone, looking at the shiny newness of it, the heavy black metal card sitting next to it. “Maybe you’re right. I just—I don’t even know how to choose things anymore.”
“Well, there’s only one way to start.” Caterina pushes herself up from the table, smiling gently at me. “Let’s go choose some things for you to keep here until you make up your mind one way or another.”
---
It feels weird to text Liam’s driver on the glossy new phone and have him respond only a few minutes later, saying he’s waiting for us at the curb. Taking the gilded elevator down to the lobby with Sofia, Caterina, and Sasha, and walk out to the waiting town car like it’s all ordinary, like this is a life I live every day.
Oddly, even though I know her the least, I feel the closest to Sasha at that moment because I can see that she’s as unused to all of this as I am. Caterina has had this sort of thing her whole life—she grew up with it, and Sofia has gotten more used to it in the time that she’s been with Luca. But I have never, in my entire life, texted a driver on my own phone and had him come pick my friends and me up, much less on a phone that someone else gave me and is paying for or held a credit card like Liam’s in my phone.
Our first stop is at a drugstore to get some basic things—deodorant, a hairbrush, hair ties, the kinds of things that I’ve always taken for granted that I’d just pick up on my weekly shopping trip or have around. I start to pick up some cheap body wash and shampoo, and Sofia smacks my hand teasingly, shaking her head.
“You have his credit card,” she says with a laugh. “You should get something you’ll actually enjoy.”
“I don’t know—I feel weird spending his money.” I really do, even if I know deep down that Liam isn’t going to care if I splurge on a twenty-five-dollar bottle of shampoo rather than the five-dollar drugstore version.
“He isn’t going to mind,” Caterina says gently. “He gave you the card for a reason. He wants you to get things you like, that will make you feel comfortable, so you feel more at home.”
I blink at her. “How do you know?”
“Because I’ve lived my whole life around men like that,” Caterina replies, laughing. “They’re not all as altruistic as Liam is being, that’s for sure. I feel like he genuinely wants you to be comfortable—that he doesn’t have an ulterior motive like most of them do. But it all boils down to the same thing, Ana. He gave you the card because he wanted you to use it. And I promise, no matter how much you spend, it’ll be a drop in the bucket to him. He has more money than you can spend in a lifetime.”