He clears his throat, but I don’t look over at him. I know that the asshole is watching me, waiting for me to do something so that he can fuck with me.
“He needs to be taught a lesson,” he grunts.
Jerking my chin, I snort. “Agreed. Who is going to do that?”
“I’ll handle it,” he murmurs.
Leaving him standing there, I make my way toward Pippa. She stands as soon as she sees me. Today she’s wearing a pair of tight-fitting pants and a buttoned-up blouse tucked in. She looks sexy as shit, but I have a feeling she’s ditched her skirts and dresses because of that asshole cop.
“Massimo,” she sighs as soon as I’m close enough to hear her.
“Dolcezza,” I grunt as my eyes continue to take her in.
“Last time I was here, they told me that I could bring you some pictures. They also told me they couldn’t be too sexy,” she explains as she laughs softly.
Once she sits down, she pushes a couple of photographs across the table toward me. I think about shoving them in my pocket to look at later, but I don’t.
Flipping them over, my breath hitches at the sight. They aren’t indecent, but they’re sexy as fuck. She’s dressed up like a fifties style pinup model. Her skin is covered, but they have to be sexier than anything I’ve ever seen before.
“I had to get creative. I couldn’t do a picture of me just sitting in a room,” she rambles. “Rosana took them, she’s studying photography in school.”
“They’re perfect,” I rasp before I lift my gaze up to meet hers. “Absolutely perfect.”
Pippa lets out a shaky exhale before her lips turn up into a smile. “I’m glad you like them. I took them at home. I don’t know, I figured you were missing your place, so I wanted to give you a little of that too.”
I grin, shaking my head, knowing without a doubt that she took the sexy secretary one in my office. I shift in my seat also knowing that in five years, I’m going to fuck her in that sexy secretary outfit on my fucking desk.
“Keep those outfits, yeah?”
My world completely stops when she lets out a loud laugh. I watch her in awe, this is what I wanted from her. Uninhibited laughter, just like she had with her friends in the cafés when I would watch her from afar. I wanted this and I have it, finally.
“Yeah, Massimo, I’ll keep the outfits,” she whispers. “Thank you, by the way.”
“For?”
She reaches for my hand, our fingers lacing together across the tabletop. Her eyes focus on mine and they water as she watches me. Then she squeezes my fingers before she speaks.
“Giving me Rosana. I know you helped me with that and I thank you for it.”
“You’re not angry?”
She shakes her head, her lips curving up into a smile. “Not at all. I’m thankful, grateful to you and for you. I appreciate all you’ve done.”
I squeeze her hand, wishing that she could show me just how appreciative she is. Licking my bottom lip, I nod my head. We spend the next thirty minutes chatting. She tells me about her sister, what she’s up to and before we leave, I touch my mouth to hers and she tells me to be good so that I can come home soon.
Turning away from her, I don’t promise her that I’ll be good. I haven’t been. I’ve issued an order to kill her aunt and then to fuck with that asshole cop, plus there’s the little fact that I killed a man in the showers three days ago. There is no good in this life for this man that I am.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
PIPPA
Years.
They pass by in a blur. Each year that passes, I can feel Massimo slipping away from me. Not that I really had much of him, but the bit that I did in the beginning of this sentence, it’s gone.
The man that sits across from me, I don’t recognize him. He sits back, his chin up in the air as he looks down at me. His dark hair is stylishly clipped, his face clean-shaven, but his eyes. They’re not just black, they’re cold and hardened.
“Rosana turned eighteen,” I whisper.
He nods his head slightly. “What’d you buy her?” he asks.
“A diamond necklace from you, a new camera from me.”
“Good.”
He told me to buy her the necklace. Said every woman should start out womanhood with a diamond. I don’t know where he got that idea from, but it was sweet that he wanted to do that for her. I didn’t go overboard, I bought her a one-carat solitaire on a dainty rose gold chain.
“You’re over halfway finished,” I point out.
He flicks his gaze down to me, looking down his nose at me. There are no more tender gazes when we see one another, no more handholding and when he kisses me goodbye, he gives me nothing but a lifeless peck.
I have a feeling that my marriage is over before it truly has begun.
“Need you to visit Arlo for me. I haven’t talked to him in a while. I need an update on how everything is going on his end. Luca and I talk regularly, so do me and Vino. Arlo has been distant.”
“Do you have many dealings with him?” I ask, thinking about all of the call girls at his casino.
I know that Luca helps with that, but Arlo is the main one in charge, which was the reason I went to him several years ago when I had nowhere else to go. The woman at the front desk, Mia, truly runs the place but Arlo is in and out no doubt, with his fingers in dozens of pies.
“I have in the past,” he grunts.
“What do you need me to tell him?”
I really don’t want to say shit. Not to Arlo, not to anyone. I feel like I’m in some
