Chapter 31

“Ut-oh,” Frankie mutters, his mouth full of bread roll. “What’s going on?”

Nico sits up straight to, his focus singularly on Christian now. I find myself doing the same.

Christian takes a deep breath and looks around at us before focusing on me. “You’re coming to the house tomorrow,” he says, his words more clipped and controlled then they’ve been all evening. “Dad wants to meet you.”

“Whoaaaa,” Frankie says, looking between me and Christian, his eyes wide. Nico just tenses at the other end of the table.

My hands twist in my napkin in my lap. “Why?” I ask quietly, terrified to meet Don Romano, whose reputation is…well, it’s far more brutal even than the Mafia King. “Did I do something wrong?”

Christian briskly shakes his head. “No, Iris, it…well, frankly, it has nothing to do with you, as a person. So don’t worry about that.”

Thankfully, that does help. I feel my hands loosen, just a little bit. “Then what’s it about?”

“It’s about me taking a woman from a rival family and hiding her in my penthouse,” he says, leaning back in his chair and speaking to me evenly.

My eyes go wide, a little. “Do…do they still want me? For what Steven did, the information they think I have?”

Slowly, Christian nods. “But obviously, that’s not happening.”

I bite my lip, wondering how much trouble this has caused him.

“Dad just…wants to meet you, Iris, okay? I’ve explained things to him as much as I can – the fact that you don’t know anything, that your boyfriend sold you beyond your control. Dad just wants to meet you to make sure you’re not a liability.”

“And does he know about…our history?” I ask, my voice quiet.

“No,” Christian says, instant. “And,” he looks around the table now, including Frankie and Nico, “I’d prefer it if it stayed that way. Yes?”

Nico sighs, rubbing an anxious hand over his hair even though Frankie just nods eagerly.

“Nico?” Christian says, his voice low.

“It’s a slippery damn slope, Chris,” Nico snaps, gesturing towards me. “I don’t like keeping secrets from my uncle – it’s dangerous.”

“This is all going to pass in a few months,” Christian says, holding his cousin’s gaze fiercely. “I’m going to make sure of that. No one gets hurt, no one gets in trouble. Yes?”

My hands tighten again on the napkin, because…well, I don’t really know what to say about any of this. Why, really, doesn’t Christian want his dad to know that we knew each other when we were kids?

And if it’s so important to keep it a secret, why am I going to meet his father?

“I’ll brief you,” Christian says, turning his attention to me now, “and make sure you know everything you need to know. In the meantime, though?” He lets his eyes quickly flick over me, over my yoga pants and the apron I’ve still got tied over my sweater, “we’re going to have to get you some real clothes.”

“These are real clothes,” I murmur, looking down at them.

“Iris,” Nico says, his voice dry, making me look up at him. “In our world? Those might as well be rags.”

I gape, a little, because…I mean, I thought this outfit was cute.

“You help her,” Christian says to Nico, standing up from the table.

I gape a little, watching him cross to his room. “But there’s still desert!”

“I’ll have some,” Christian says, turning and walking backwards as he smiles at me, “just…have to make some phone calls, all right?”

I sigh, disappointed and already a little bit scared for tomorrow as I stand up and start to clear plates.

“Don’t take that yet,” Frankie murmurs, reaching for the bowl of green bean casserole, “I’m not done yet.”

Laughing a little, my mind distracted, I hand the casserole dish to Frankie and clear the rest of the plates as Nico calls questions to me about my shoe and dress size, apparently placing an order without consulting me about my tastes. But I don’t really care about that – I don’t care about clothes as much as some girls do, it’s just…not something that crosses my mind.

Instead, I find myself completely distracted with questions about what tomorrow will bring.

The next morning, I wake up before dawn, totally wracked with anxiety. I toss and turn in my bed for a while, but when I can’t fall back asleep I just sigh and get up, heading into the main part of the penthouse.

I am gratified to see that the living room is finally empty, which suggests that despite his protests that it was unnecessary that Nico did indeed use the little bed that I got him. I smirk at my victory and start to make the coffee, pulling the half-eaten chocolate cake from the fridge and placing it on the counter.

I’ve always been an emotional eater, after all. And if I eat when I’m anxious?

Then this morning, I’m probably going to eat the rest of this whole damn cake.

“Cake for breakfast?” a voice asks, and I almost jump out of my skin, spinning towards Christian with the knife in my hands.

“Don’t scare me like that,” I breathe, pressing my other hand to my chest.

He laughs softly. “I wasn’t being precisely quiet, Iris,” he murmurs, coming to lean on the counter and sniffing the air, smiling when he smells the coffee. “You were just lost in your thoughts. As usual.”

“Yeah, well,” I sigh, turning back to the cake and finishing my cut, plopping a nice big piece onto a desert plate. “If you know me well enough to know that, then you should have been stomping a little louder into the room so that you didn’t scare the life out of me.”

Christian smirks. “Are you sharing?” he asks, lifting his chin towards the cake.

I raise my eyebrows and then shrug, cutting him a slice as well and getting a plate to put it on. “Frankie will be mad if you eat it all,” I say, pushing his slice towards him, “but…I guess you can have a piece.”

“Frankie can deal,” Christian says as he pulls the plate towards him and digs in. He did have a slice last night, as promised, but otherwise we didn’t see him – he spent the evening in his room, making calls.

I move to the coffee pot, a question stirring in my mind as I pour two mugs full, adding cream and sugar to mine but leaving Christian’s black. Suddenly, impulsively – perhaps as a result of the jolt of caffeine and sugar – I find myself courageous enough to ask.

“Christian,” I say quietly, casually, as I place the mug of coffee down in front of him. “Where did you go two nights ago? After we fought?”

I watch carefully as Christian freezes, his fork midway between the plate and his mouth.

Slowly, he raises his eyes to mine and I work very, very hard to keep my face straight.

He stares at me for a long, long moment and I can’t help smiling a little secret smile. Because…well, I don’t think he knows that I saw the lipstick on his shirt. I think he thinks he got away with it.

“Are you dating someone?” I ask quietly, leaning against the counter and looking evenly at him.

Christian returns the fork to his plate with the bite uneaten. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Am I not allowed to know?” My eyebrows go up. “You know all the embarrassing details of my love life. I can’t know yours?”

Christian narrows his eyes a little, contemplating me. “No, I mean why are you asking this now? In conjunction with where I was two nights ago?”

“Because,” I say, smiling a little. “You don’t usually wear so much pink on your collar, Christian. But when you came back that night…”

He huffs a satisfied little laugh, shaking his head at me. “Spy,” he mutters.

“Mafia King,” I counter, cocking an eyebrow, which just makes him laugh harder. “So?”

Christian sighs, picking up his fork again. “No, Iris,” he replies before popping the bite in his mouth. “I do not have a girlfriend. I have…women. Whom I see. Occasionally.”

“Oh,” I say, my eyebrows going up even as relief swells in me. I push the emotion away, not wanting to address it right now. “Well, aren’t we modern.”

He smirks. “Emotional ties are not…something that matches well with my lifestyle at the moment.”

“So are they like…” I hesitate, grimacing a little, not knowing how to phrase it. “Ladies…of the evening?”

Christian laughs outright now, taking a long sip of his coffee before answering. “You’re very coy for a stripper, Iris.”

I laugh, leaning forward over the counter just a bit. “That’s why I get paid so much money for it, Chris,” I whisper, grinning. “They pay more for the sweet, innocent ones.”

Christian laughs along with me, but shakes his head, looking down at his plate. “No, they’re not hookers or whores, Iris. Just…women, with whom I have an arrangement.”

“Please, Christian,” I say, still laughing a little, “I…have no idea what that means. How can they be women with whom you have an arrangement who are not whores? Or girlfriends?”

Christian just raises his head to look at me, fixing me with a level gaze.