Page 2 of Blood We Steal

Maybe they were ice cold.

I wasn’t sure which, but neither meant anything good for me. And I certainly couldn’t look lower either and risk seeing the mouth that I’d dreamed of for so many years. I shifted again, and this time not with fear.

Instantly, I was taken back to that night. The first and last time Rubin had touched me. He’d been standing so close I could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. I’d been sure he was going to kiss me.

He didn’t.

He’d cleared his throat and reminded me of what my job entailed, pointedly ignoring what it did not, pulled his hand away like I was radioactive, and never, not once, had he touched me again. That was the only time I’d ever seen him uncertain. Even when the judge had announced his sentence, life without the possibility of parole, he’d looked as serene as the cloudless sky.

Even now, after everything, Rubin’s rejection stung almost as much as the fact that I still dreamed about kissing him.

But that didn’t matter now. Nothing did.

He finally broke the silence. “I’m Mr. Marku now?” He leaned back in the warden’s chair, the move so blatantly casual that I knew it was a put-on. As was the way he stretched his long, powerful legs and settled them on the corner of the warden’s desk. He wore the heavy white canvas with CITY OF ATLANTA stenciled on the back, but those shoes… Handmade in Albania, probably by a man who had been doing the same thing for fifty years, just like his father before him, and so on, and so on, and so on.

That was important to Rubin. Roots. Honor.

Besa.

The code he structured his entire life around—the one that I had betrayed.

I met his eyes then, his gaze so fierce, I had to do something. I chuckled, the sound reedy and nervous, but I’d see it through. “You brought me here to ask a question. You could have called.”

Rubin didn’t move an inch.

“Or better yet,” I said with a sigh, one that I wished I could pull back, “you could have just had Damian ask me. I’m sure you’re responsible for his visits as well.”

Rubin’s jaw ticked.

It would have been imperceptible to other people, partially hidden by the half-day’s growth of dark hair on his cheeks.

But I saw it. And just as quickly, it was gone, the icy mask that hid the monster he was back in place. “I asked you a question, Simone.”

I forced down the lightning flash of anger and held on to the worthless hope he hadn’t seen it. When I was sure my expression was as serene as Rubin pretended to be, I responded, “I don’t work for you anymore, Mr. Marku.”

Then I stood.

He did too.

But where I moved abruptly, standing so fast that the chair I had been sitting in wobbled and then finally landed back on all four legs with a quiet thud that I barely heard over my pounding heart, Rubin stood smoothly. Even the warden’s chair, which sat on wheels, stayed stable, allowing him to rise as gracefully as he sat.

My cataloging of him was a poor imitation of his of me, but I refused to let that stop me. I gathered every bit of nerve I could muster and took him in.

His gaze dropped to my feet, and his nostrils flared with his exhale as he read the name on my sneakers, a brand I was sure he’d never heard of and wouldn’t have been caught dead in.

He should have looked ridiculous in those stupid fucking shoes and a jail uniform. He didn’t, though. Rubin wasn’t obscenely tall, only a few inches taller than my own five-nine. The baggy, shapeless inmate uniform hung on his body, but did nothing to hide the power of it or the fact that Rubin was substantial in a way that had nothing to do with his physical presence.

A physical presence I had to get the fuck away from, and now.

Aaron and Nana had told me I was smart, and maybe today, I would finally prove I was. Because as much as I needed to be away from Rubin, there was nothing on the planet that would allow me to turn my back on him. There wasn’t even a guard outside the door, and if there were, he wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help me.

No, like always, I had to help myself and that meant getting out of here.

I stepped back, my gaze still on Rubin.

He stepped forward.

I stepped back again.