“The last time I put on a dress for you, you were playing a game with me—one I didn’t appreciate, especially when …” She lets her voice drift off, but I know she’s remembering how she woke up. She takes a deep breath, her hand crumpling the blanket underneath her before slowly releasing it. “But feel free to leave without me. Have a great night.”
I step closer to the bed. Her foot twitches, but she stares defiantly at me.
“This isn’t negotiable.”
She gives me a smirk, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You haven’t given me any information on my daughter. Why should I do anything you want?”
I pounce around the bed, quickly enough that she barely has time to inch closer to the headboard. I put my hand on the side of her neck, my thumb pressing up against the bottom of her chin, soft enough not to leave any mark, but hard enough that she knows she is fully at my mercy. I lean down, our faces so close that I can see the alternating shades of dark brown in her eyes.
“Balducci, let me tell you something you might not yet realize: you don’t have a goddamn choice.” I stroke the curve down from her chin to her neck with my thumb. She doesn’t break eye contact. An irritatingly brave woman. “You know what I’m capable of. You know that you have no leverage. I tracked down your daughter just to show you I could. If you want to actually turn her into a pawn, that’s on your conscience. It won’t bother me in the slightest to get her involved.”
Tick. Tock.
I can hear nothing but the sweeping second hand of the clock in the corner and the pounding of Cassandra’s heart.
The tension in her arms slowly loosens. The fire starts to fade from her face. Her left hand settles over mine as her right hand touches my wrist. She carefully lifts my fingers from her neck, one by one, until I am no longer grasping her neck and my hand falls softly onto her shoulder.
“Who are you?” she whispers. “It would be nice to know something about the man holding me captive.”
The change in her tone and the tenderness in her touch is disorienting. She’s switching personas—trying to be the investigative journalist, easing her way into my private thoughts.
I can always give her enough rope to hang herself.
“If I can check your phone, you can ask whatever the fuck you want,” I say.
She hands me her phone with a shrug. I check it for any recording apps. I scan through her messages too—nothing incriminating. Anything she’s keeping on here is well-hidden. I glance up at her. She hasn’t brought up the incident with Fedot and the pepper spray yet. She may not know I sent him to follow her. There’s another advantage I have over her.
I toss the phone back on the bed. “All clear. The floor is yours, princess. What do you want to know?”
She tilts her head, an affect that strikes me as cute before I smother that thought dead in its tracks. “What’s the scar on your neck from?” she asks.
I run my fingers over it. “It was a minor incident. A man didn’t like how I spoke to him.”
“You? Piss someone off? I never would have guessed,” she drawls. “Still, it couldn’t have been so minor if it left a mark like that.”
“You haven’t seen my other scars.”
Her head tilts, her eyes drifting down my body. I can still feel the ghosts of where her hands were pressed against my chest while she was fucking me. When her eyes rise up to my face, heat adds a nice blush to her cheeks.
She pulls her knee up toward her chest, a barrier between the two of us.
“What about your tattoos?” she asks. “I noticed some near your wrists.”
I unbutton the cuffs of my shirt, pulling them back to show some of my tattoo sleeve. “Those are mostly hidden as well.”
“But do they have any meaning behind them?”
The consummate journalist, constantly digging. I’ll force her to find the right hole. “Some of them do.”
“What about the snakehead?” She points to my left wrist, where the head of the black mamba is exposed.
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s only meant to cover up a scar.”
Her knee starts to lower and she leans forward the slightest bit.
“You don’t seem like the type to cover up a scar,” she says. I roll down the sleeve. I might as well give her this one. It’s not worthwhile information, but if she’s half the bleeding heart she pretends to be, she’ll sink her teeth into it.
“One of my foster mothers had issues,” I say. “She started raging against one of the younger kids. I intervened.”
Her forehead furrows. “That’s … sad. I didn’t … I just never saw you as the type to take the hit for someone else.”
“How do you think I became what I am?”
“Guns,” she says. “Lots of guns.”
“I’m not your father,” I say. “I earned my title the right way.”
She looks down at her hands. When she looks back up, there’s no trace of anger over my insult.
“So, you grew up in foster care?” she asks.
“Until I was fourteen.”
She leans forward, hugging her knees. “And then?”
“Then I lived on my own,” I say.
“I mean, what exactly did you do to become the boss of—”
“That’s enough about me,” I cut her off. “Tell me about you. How the fuck did you give up your child and not try to find out what happened to her?”
She flushes. “That was my father’s decision. He didn’t want anyone to be able to blackmail our family over it. Clearly, that didn’t work.”
“I can’t imagine you rolling over for anyone. So, you abandoned your child—”
“I didn’t abandon my child. I gave her up for adoption.”
“—And you went skipping off to Cleavers College,” I continue. “You spent six years there. You returned. And you still didn’t look for her.”
“You know what?” she says, folding
