“Is it, though? They’re all just as bad. You know Georgie’s rap sheet. You’re still getting yourself into shit situations.”
“I’m aware. Mario doesn’t send me in blindly.”
“And still you slept with him?”
She laughed and then grabbed the bottle to pour more liquid into her shot glass. “We really doing this whole exchange? I don’t want to know who you sleep with in your free time.”
“Because who I sleep with isn’t a part of my job.”
She banged down the bottle to cut me off. “I don’t sleep with men for money, Rome.”
I tsked at her lie. “You’ve been Mario’s bait for years now. You think they don’t share some of your escapades with me? I have to know in order to do my job right.”
She winced, like me knowing her secrets physically wounded her. Her voice was small but strong when she glared up at me and replied, “What you think you know about me isn’t truth just because Mario says it is. I sleep with who I want, when I want, because I want. If it gets me off to control Georgie and his dick, then I do it. If I did that with the last guy, so what? I’m the best at this. I bring in the evidence and the information so that you can bring them to justice. You think I was a little innocent doll when I walked into that room with Jimmy years ago? You think he really was my world?”
I didn’t answer her. I watched her body tense, her short breaths, the way she ran a hand through that mess of curls. She hid most of her vulnerability from everyone, but I searched out those little movements that gave it away. She’d struggled with something saying those words, I just didn’t know what.
Her gray eyes were hard as stone when she glanced back up at me, all vulnerability gone. “Jimmy was going to die by your hand or mine. Mario let you have him first, but remember he slept soundly next to me. Every. Single. Night.”
I fisted my hand on the bar.
She glanced at it, knowing she’d hit a nerve. “I knew the exact time he would wake up to call hisfour, not three, other women. I knew where they all lived. I kneweverything. When he held a gun to my forehead the night before his death, I quivered under the barrel, but on the inside, I was laughing, Rome.” Her smile was as bright as a wolf’s on a dark night. “I’d emptied the bullets out of it earlier that day.”
I recalled how she’d laughed when she pulled the trigger in front of all of us the night she took her blood oath years ago. She was Cleopatra in sheep’s clothing.
She downed her shot and stood from the bar with dignity. I almost withered under her stare. She was a whole head and a half shorter than me, tiny in every place. She made a man want to protect her, but then she morphed into a vicious siren, ready to devour those who did.
She didn’t need protecting, and it made me want to protect her even more.
Or strangle her, depending on the day.
“One day, you’re going to encounter someone you can’t handle, Kate-Bait.”
“And what? You’ll swoop in to eliminate him?” she asked condescendingly.
“Don’t be so sure I or anyone else will be able to rescue you, doll.”
She scoffed and shoved back her hair. “Worry about saving yourself, Rome. I’ve never needed a knight to come rescue me. I ride in on my own damn horse, and if it happens to buck me off and disappear, I can walk out—guns blazing—on my own.”
She turned to leave. I should have let her go. I should have held my damn breath when she passed so I didn’t smell the scent of her that I was addicted to.
My hand shot out and gripped her elbow, yanking her close enough for me to whisper in her ear. “You’re not with anyone anymore tonight.”
She licked her full lips and glanced down at mine. “So?”
“So stay for a few.” I didn’t know why I was inviting her, didn’t know why I wanted her to stay.
“Probably not a good idea for anyone to see us hanging together as if we enjoy each other’s company or something,” she offered up as a reason.
“Who?” I shot back. “Our friends? You introduced me to all of them.”
“Oh my God,” she grumbled and pushed away from the bar. “I don’t have time to bicker with you.”
She glanced around as if racking her brain for the most ridiculous option she could come up with. “I’m going to go down the street to Crowned Ink.”
“No the fuck you aren’t,” I blurted. “How much have you had to drink?”
It wasn’t my business what she did on late nights by herself, but her walking ten blocks in the damn dark to a tattoo parlor seemed to be asking for more trouble than even I could ignore.