We all know duty better than we discharge it.
—John Randolph
ARIANA DE LUCA
I smoothed out my hair and clothes before I stepped out of the basement, then passed Dana on the way to the restroom. Her lips tilted upward as she watched me from her perch at the edge of the bar, a pen in her right hand and a complaint form in the other.
She’d lied.
Graham had a complete handle on things, and I’d only been retrieving the ice because we didn’t have a big crowd at this hour.
What a cow.
In the restroom, I fixed my hair and makeup, washed my cheek where Bastian had swiped my wetness onto, cursed the breeze from my lack of panties, and headed back out. Graham nodded to me as I passed him. I dipped down the stairs, my back aching with each step, and took in the empty cellar.
Nothing.
The buckets of ice had been emptied and sat stacked on the rack to the side.
I bounded the steps and ducked to the back of the bar. Dana passed, her smirk from earlier gone and a scowl lining her perfect features. I lifted the lid to the ice freezer.
Full.
What? Did Bastian…?
No, he wouldn’t.
Graham passed me and tapped my shoulder. “You’re welcome.”
“Oh.” Of course, it was Graham. I squeezed his hand and smiled. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
A throat cleared, and we both turned to face Bastian. “Whiskey. Neat.” He looked so irate for someone who’d just come in my mouth and watched me swallow it.
I turned to Graham. “I’ve got this.”
He nodded and headed to his end of the bar, where he pretended to be busy.
I kept my voice low as I spoke. “It’s not even five.”
“I don’t actually want the drink. I just want him gone.”
My eyes widened for a fraction, and I took in his face, wondering how in the world we got here. “Why?”
Bastian couldn’t actually be jealous.
He didn’t seem capable.
He adjusted his cufflinks, not bothering to give me his full attention. “Because you’re here to work, not fornicate with employees. Unless it’s me.”
“Are you trying to piss me off?” I leaned across the bar. “It’s not working. I find your jealousy… entertaining.”
“It’s not jealousy. It’s fact. You come here to serve drinks, not fuck every employee you see.”
“Is the hypocrisy lost on you?” I raised my chin and glared at him. “You nearly fucked me.”
Gosh, when had I ever been this crass?
He looked too entertained by the irritation trailing the length of my spine, and his eyes flicked to my lips before returning to my face. “I’m not an employee. I’m your boss, and if you cared about your job, you’d start acting less like an interrogator and more like an employee.”
Interrogator.
He couldn’t know my intentions, but the word still thrummed my pulse. Enough to make me back off. A little.
I cocked my head to the side and eyed him. “What’s got you so worked up?”
“Blue balls,” he said as if he hadn’t just come in my mouth. No way was he ready for another round already. His eyes dipped to my chest, drawing heavy breaths from me. “I’m going to head to my office, jerk myself off to the image of your lips around my cock, and come into your panties.” Good. Grief. “Don’t look so appalled. I know your bare pussy is still wet for me. I bet it’s dripping down your legs as we speak. You should control yourself before a customer sees. We wouldn’t want them to think you’re unprofessional.” He shifted his eyes to the door, where a group of enforcers had just walked in. “You’ve got customers, and I’ve got your panties to make a mess in.”
And then, he left.
The worst part?
I still wanted him.
I didn’t know how I could look Jenn in the eyes after what had happened yesterday, but it came surprisingly easy. Maybe because I laid horizontally on the couch across from her, splitting my time between staring up at the ceiling and peering at her sideways head.
“And that’s all the updates you have?” She cocked her head to the side and skimmed her eyes down my body, showering me with uncertainty, the way she did so well.
I should have told her about Bianchi and the way Bastian, Vince, and Gio had threatened him. Instead, I’d given her the lightest debriefing possible. Mundane day-to-day tasks. Silence on all fronts. Nothing to report.
It seemed like she suspected otherwise.
I nodded, spreading nonchalance across my features like whipped butter on a bread loaf. “That’s all.”
She let out a soft hmm before crossing her legs. “You seem different.”
I looked down. “Did I gain weight? The food at L’Oscurità is so good. I can’t help myself.”
“That’s not it, and you know it.” She tapped her pen on her chin, though her notebook laid somewhere on the desk behind her. “You’ve got this flush to you.”
“A flush?” My eyes shifted to the clock. Fifteen more minutes, and I could leave. I considered my options and decided I didn’t want to look defensive. “Hmm…”
“Hmm?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. Hmm. I mean, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that.” The smile I cracked didn’t elicit a reaction from her.
She just studied me from behind her horn-rimmed glasses we both knew she didn’t need but wore to be taken seriously on the job. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“No.”
“Wilks had a check in with the informant, who said there are rumblings of an Andretti in Romano territory. I’ll ask again. Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Jenn, just spit it out already. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I think you’re keeping something from me, and I’ll have to note this in your file.”
Would it kill her to look more remorseful?
“What? Jenn…” I straightened up from the couch I laid on. “You’re my best friend. You’d write me up for some crazy thought you have in your head?”
“It’s not a crazy thought. It’s a professional opinion. You and I both know I have to note down everything I see. I can’t make exceptions. Even for you.”
But I was her best friend.
I drew in a shaken breath. “This is insane. You could unleash a hailstorm upon me. They could pull me from this legend.”
On second thought, that shouldn’t have been a bad thing. I could finally take a break and catch some distance from Bastian, but if I were being honest, I didn’t want to. What a mess.
Jenn shrugged and set down her pen. “I’m not writing you up. I’m making a simple note in my report. It’ll be eyes only for Wilks.”
“But—”
“The alternative is to lie on my report, which would risk my job.” She popped a brow up, reminding me of the strict business psych professor at Degory that everyone hated. “Are you asking me to risk my job?”
No. I’d never ask that… but it occurred to me that, if it were a Romano in this situation, speaking to another Romano, there’d be no discussion. Loyalty to one another came first. They blurred the lines without thinking twice when it came to protecting one another.
As my best friend, I’d thought Jenn would at least hesitate before doing something like this. This struck deeper than the confines of our friendship. It struck a chord in my life, in every day I’ve spent living. I’d thought having this duty as a law enforcement officer and protecting my country would fulfill me.
It didn’t.
Truth was, I knew my colleagues did amazing work, but I personally didn’t feel like I protected anyone, and even though I had hordes of colleagues and a best friend who I knew, deep down, truly cared for me, I felt lonely. But tending bar at L’Oscurità, that loneliness had slipped away, and I hadn’t noticed it until now—sitting before someone who was supposed to be my best friend but unable to recognize her.
She stared at me. I stared back, cataloging her unforgiving features. Each second that passed deepened the rift between us until the fissures became too broken to mend. I wanted to grab some thread and stitch together the pieces of our friendship. I also wanted to run away and start fresh, in a place I didn’t have to question everyone’s motives. Where I could just live and be me, whoever that was.
I’d once joked that we could run away to the Caribbean together, except this time, when I pictured it, I didn’t see her beside me.
Jenn sighed, stood, straightened out the wrinkles on her corporate America pantsuit, and reached out a hand to me. A fucking hand. Like we were standing in the Oval Office or something.
“I think we should call it a day. It was lovely to see you again, Ari.”
I took her hand in mine, and she latched her grip tightly as she shook. My eyes darted around the room, wondering what the hell was going on, waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out from under her table to tell me I’d been Punk’d.
But nothing happened.
And it wasn’t until I walked out of the building and made it to L’Oscurità for my shift that I realized one of the many things that was off. The vase I’d given Jenn a few years ago for Christmas had been replaced with another.
She hated that vase. That was the point. A gag gift, something for her to laugh at every time she replaced the floral arrangements she was obsessed with and saw the way they clashed with the bile-yellow porcelain.
But she’d never replaced it, and it stood as a token of our friendship year after year, a testament to the distance between us that could expand but never quite keep us apart.
Turned out, that had been a lie, too.
Avoiding Bastian didn’t lessen my lust. It clawed its way up my body, moving from my core to my head, filling me with crazed thoughts. I no longer recognized this woman who couldn’t control her desire.
Hell, I think our attraction surprised us both. Because I hadn’t seen Bastian with another woman since we’d met, and me? I’d wake up each night, soaking wet from dreams of what would have happened had Dana not interrupted us. Would he have fucked me rough and fast or slow and long? I’d never know.
I didn’t know what I’d expected after what had happened in the basement, but it wasn’t this. Him acting like he couldn’t care less that I’d had my lips wrapped around him, his Prince Albert stabbing the back of my throat. Me wondering when I’d have an opportunity for it to happen again, followed by a litany of destructive thoughts that, if I thought about it, stemmed from whatever the hell was happening with my friendship with Jenn. One of many reasons legends weren’t supposed to have contact with their friends.
I turned away from Bastian for the twelfth time since my shift started tonight, forcing myself to focus on finishing my shift and leaving without another impromptu… whatever that was in the basement.
Graham nodded his head in Bastian’s direction. “What’d you do?”
I used my towel to dry off a beer glass, then handed it to him. “What do you mean?”
He passed me another wet glass. “He likes you. He doesn’t like anyone.”
I set the glass down and met Graham’s eyes. “He doesn’t like me.”
“No?”
“Nope.” Rolling my eyes, I returned to drying the glasses.
“Then why’d he carry a hundred and fifty pounds of ice up the stairs for you in a fifty-thousand-dollar, one-of-a-kind suit?”
I froze. “That wasn’t you?”
He laughed. “I like you, sweetheart, but not that much.”
I shook my head and pushed aside the hair from my face, searching Graham for any signs of deception. “But you said, ‘you’re welcome’ the other day. Why else would you say that?”
“Because you were in the basement for a really long time. I covered, like, thirty minutes of your shift, Ari.”
“Oh.”
But that meant Bastian actually carried the ice up for me, and that meant Bastian had a heart buried somewhere in that asshole exterior. The consequences of that proved fatal.
Graham tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Come to think of it, wasn’t Bastian down there with you? I saw him leave after you did with the ice buckets in his hands, but I don’t remember seeing him enter after you left.”
I racked my brain for an excuse. “Yeah, he yelled at me for being late the other day. Gosh, he’s such a jerk.”
I was never late, but Graham was, so he wouldn’t know that.
Graham took the last glass from me. “Hey, well, he did bring the ice up for you…”
I didn’t need the reminder.
It was easier to write Bastian off when I thought he had no depth, when I thought he was just a jerk I couldn’t stop lusting after. But when he did nice things without taking credit for them?
This dangerous territory scared me.
And the truth was, it should.