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“Are you hungry?”
That is… not how I expected this to go.
I was ready for a death threat, at the very least.
But I’m now realizing that actually, yes, I’m starving. I’ve been too worked up to eat much of anything all day. And at my mom’s house, I was too busy to get even a second to myself. I hauled a dozen trays of sandwiches into my mother’s kitchen, I plated ham for fifty people, I refilled the ice bucket over and over, I ruined my sister’s and husband’s lives, and at some point in the middle of all that, one of the catering crew handed me a mint.
That’s my Christmas Eve dinner. One sad little mint.
My stomach picks that exact moment to say something about it, loudly, in front of the pakhan of whatever Bratva.
“I could eat,” I say.
“Then let’s go eat.” He nods up the avenue. “There’s a place off Fifth that stays open. I’ll take you.”
“No,” I blurt.
He raises an eyebrow.
This is a bad idea. I know that even as I’m saying it. But there’s only one thing in the world I want right now, because I don’t know how much longer it will be mine.
I want my own oven, my own key, my own counter to stand behind. I want to pretend, at least until the sun rises, that everything is going to be okay.
“No?” he asks, curious.
“I know a better place,” I explain.
For the first time all night, he grins without restraint.
“Then by all means,” he purrs, “lead the way.”
And that is how I walk the mob boss to my own front door.
12
KANE
“I could help you with that, you know,” I offer as Delilah struggles to turn the key in the lock of her bakery door.
“No thanks.”
“I can open a door.”
“So can I. It’s my door.” She puts her shoulder into it and jiggles the key in some secret combination that only she knows. “Also, you’d break it, and then I’d have a broken door and a mob boss in my kitchen instead of just a mob boss in my kitchen.”
So be it.
With a resigned sigh, I lean against the glass and watch her work.
This is not the night I planned. Not by a fucking long shot. If it had all gone the way I’d anticipated, I’d already be home, reclining on my couch and drinking much better whiskey than the swill I stole at Delilah’s mother’s house.
More importantly, Connor Boyd would have gotten the message, and sooner or later—almost certainly sooner—I would have gotten my money.
Instead, I’m standing in the cold on Fourth Avenue at ten on Christmas Eve, watching a woman who just ruined her life hissing insults at a deadbolt.
“… stupid, stubborn motherfucker… Think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you…? Piece of shit ass rusted clanking garbage son of a bitch… I’ll kill you, I swear I will…”
It’s been hard work not to smirk at her too much. She’s funnier than she gives herself credit for. The way she shrinks after every joke, the flinch like life is about to smack her back into the place it’s designated for her…
