“I’ll argue all I want. This is stupid!” When I stomped my foot to emphasize my point, he stared down at it. Before I knew it, he’d burst out laughing. Rome, my serious lone wolf, bent over and laughed his ass off at me. “Are you kidding me right now?” I pursed my lips so I didn’t join him. I probably looked ridiculous standing there with my hands tied in a ball gown and heels.
The whole thing was preposterous.
A giggle slipped out, and he glanced up with tears streaming down his face. “I can’t believe I got you commanding me even tied up and at my complete mercy.”
Our laughter grew and grew. I tried to stop, but it would just explode from me again and again. “Oh, my God. I can’t stop.”
He shook his head and didn’t turn toward me. “If I look at you, I’ll never be able to quit.”
That had me sliding to the beige carpeted floor and rolling with laughter.
He grabbed me by the waist and sat me up against the footboard. He studied me as if to make sure I was comfortable giggling there, then sat next to me, shoulder to shoulder.
We let the joy bounce around the walls. I took in how relaxed I was in the middle of his panic room, a room that would basically be my prison cell if I agreed.
I wanted control of everything. I felt it deep in my bones, yearned for it everywhere I went. The world had been cruel to me, and I, in turn, wanted to be cruel to it.
Yet, sitting on that floor next to him, I didn’t really want anything more at all. I sighed. “How long do you expect me to stay cooped up here?”
“Just a day or two. I’ll be back every few hours.”
“What if you’re not? Why here instead of out there?”
“I don’t trust that someone won’t come looking, and I need you hidden until I iron out the details.” I opened my mouth to ask more questions, but he held up a hand. “Katalina, I’ll tell you once I have the facts.”
“I don’t like being at anyone’s mercy, Roman.” I admitted to him the one thing he had to know by now.
“Because you’re clawing your way around the world, Cleo. Sometimes, you need to let someone else rip it apart for you. It’ll be a nice change, huh?”
“And this is for me, not to get rid of me?”
“Don’t insult me, woman. I could have done that easily tonight more than once.”
I nodded. Outmaneuvering Rome wasn’t ever in the cards. He’d been trained by his own father, and I knew from the stories that he’d been the best.
“Maybe so.” I said what I had been told so many times. “You’re not your father, though, Rome. Would he have holed me up here?”
“I don’t know what he has to do with this.” He eyed me curiously.
“I’m trying to figure out if what you’re doing is smart or stupid. Is it easier to kill me or go looking for whatever information you think is out there about whatever you won’t tell me?” I shrugged my bare shoulders.
Rome glanced at them and got up to grab a throw off the bed so that he could wrap me up in it. Just as he was closing the front of it around me, he whispered, “My father would have killed you. Probably long before tonight.”
“Why?” I breathed out.
“He didn’t like complications. He hated them, actually. Instead of a woman potentially messing with my heart or his, she would be dead.”
“Sounds ruthless.”
He set the edges of the throw over my chest after I was tucked into it like a caterpillar in a cocoon. “Ruthless doesn’t always get you to the top. He got cocky, cocky enough to step out of line with the family.”
“I’m sorry you lost him, Rome.”
“Why? His death is a good reminder that even those people who have been steady all your life can be the ones to completely change. He taught me a lot—nothing good, really, except to trust myself and no one else.”
“Not everyone will change like him.”
“Sasha lied too. Everyone does. If you’re a survivor and life puts enough obstacles in front of you, you’ll do what you have to.”