Page 27 of Meant for Her

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Page 27 of Meant for Her

Apparently, her daughter was the same.

26

HAYDEN

It only took Luca’s guys about thirty minutes to mount the Sinners sign above the restaurant door, and within the next hour, they had a sticker on the glass window below.

“You like it?” Luca asked as one of his guys used a scraper to remove air bubbles. “That’s your name up there.”

It seriously fucking was. The sticker was huge, taking up the full length of the shop front window, my name and ‘head chef’ printed right there for everyone to see. I stared at Luca. “I only just signed the contracts.”

Luca thumped me on the back. “Yeah, but I knew from our first conversation that you would. I had this printed a week ago. I was just waiting for you to come around before I had the guys put it on.”

I hated that I’d wanted this so bad I’d been that obvious about it. But there was no denying, Luca was handing me everything I’d ever wanted on a silver platter. Though my head screamed warnings, especially after seeing his plans to turn that back room into an underground sex club, I couldn’t bring myself to complain.

All I could do was grin like an idiot at my name on the front of a restaurant. A restaurant that was at least partly mine.

Pride swelled within me.

“You like it,” Luca said more as a statement than a question.

“I love it,” I admitted. I glanced over at him. “I need this place to be a success.”

“You and me both. Ninety percent owner over here, remember? You don’t make money, I don’t make money. The bank will have us out in under three months if we don’t have this place up and running and making good coin. You know how much I paid for this fucking building. It’s good, but it didn’t go cheap, so neither is the mortgage.”

I nodded, the reality of banks and mortgages and payments settling on my shoulders. “We should talk more about this club idea…”

Luca grinned. “Plans are on the table there, but I’ve got to go check on my other businesses. Tomorrow?”

It was getting late anyway. The shops around us were all starting to close, and Luca’s guys had already packed their trucks, ready to call it quits for the day.

I lingered though, not having anywhere else to go.

Like he could read my thoughts, Luca pulled a set of keys from his pocket, tied together with a piece of simple brown string. “Stay as long as you want. I’ll be around until we get her on her feet, but this place is yours now. Your name is right there on the window after all.”

A thrill ran through me as Luca pressed the key into my palm and I closed my fingers around it.

Mine.

This was mine, at least in some ways.

I waved off Luca and the others and went back inside, just standing there like a damn fool. The street outside was busy with people grabbing their last-minute items from the closing stores, and all I could imagine was at this time each day, we’d just be opening. People would be arriving in nice outfits, laughing and smiling with their friends as the maître d’ showed them to their tables. The waiters would bring drinks on arrival and present them with fresh, modern menus. Ones where I’d carefully created every dish. Excitement bubbled up inside me, and I pored over the floor plans again.

Luca’s scrawl on the rectangular room at the back, marked “sex club” drew my eye, and I sighed, but it was a little less heavy this time.

Restaurants failed all the damn time. I knew that.

This wouldn’t be one. If that meant we had to supplement our income with something else, then who the hell was I to complain? Luca might have had his finger in many an illegal pie, but my brother had done his homework. Luca also ran more than one well-established, legitimate business.

If he said we needed a sex club, then maybe we needed a sex club.

As long as I didn’t have to perform, then Luca could do what he wanted in the back there, and I’d keep to myself in the kitchen.

I could make snacks for people. Having an orgy surely would work up their appetite.

I sniggered to myself.

“Sinners!” someone shouted from out the front. An accompanying thumping of a fist against the clean glass window followed it. “Are you…fudging serious, Chaos?”