We got along more than fine.
Bastian moved mountains for me when he needed to.
He wasn’t home much, but food was brought in most of the time for me. The days he was home, he cooked. Like, gourmet-meal cooked. He made pesto chicken with arugula and prosciutto one night, and I seriously almost took him to bed.
We’d lived together two weeks, and the man was pretty much a saint every time he walked in. He removed his shoes, was quiet if he returned at night, cleaned up after me and himself. He even let me watch the shows I wanted to. Georgie always had on the news and wanted to talk politics, and Jimmy wanted to watch porn and do things a teenage girl shouldn’t be doing.
Bastian was incomparable to the others. He was like a Stepford boyfriend.
“Want me to change the channel?” I asked one night while he scrolled his phone, sprawled out on the oversize chair near the couch. I realized that a historical romance with a duke telling the main character he wanted to marry her might not be his idea of entertainment.
“This is fine,” he mumbled, scrubbing a hand over his face and sighing as he slid the phone into his gray sweatpants. He’d changed for the night finally, signaling to me that he wouldn’t be going back out.
“Honestly, I can watch something other than a historical romance.”
“The cinematography’s spectacular, and the cast is talented. Plus, I’m intrigued with when they’ll figure out the identity of the writer.”
“You know already?” I asked.
He tapped his leg and smirked. “Google.”
I stuttered and sat up indignantly on the white sofa, pulling my cropped black tank down in a huff. “You were looking that up? I thought you were working! What the fuck, Bastian?”
One side of his mouth pulled up in a casual smile. “I like knowing outcomes, Katie.”
“That’s not fun at all.” I threw a pillow at him. “Don’t you think it would have been nice to guess with me?”
“Not interested.” He caught the pillow with ease and set it on his lap. His manly hand waved toward the television. “I don’t want to waste all that time watching something if I won’t like the outcome.”
“That defeats the whole purpose of the narrative, of the viewing experience.”
“Why waste time on trivial entertainment if you’ll be frustrated when the ending isn’t what you wanted?”
My jaw dropped in disbelief. I wanted to tell him that some things were best left as a surprise, that Google couldn’t write out an experience, especially not a personal one. Yet his reasoning, which I’d never considered, made a lot of sense.
“You’re bizarre,” I conceded as I crossed my arms over my chest and fell back into the soft cushions of the couch.
“I like to think I’m efficient and prepared.” Bastian unfolded from his leather recliner, chuckling. I shamelessly looked him over as he stretched and then walked toward me. He was a tall Italian drink of water, a perfect specimen of a man. His body moved languidly, like he was completely comfortable in his own skin. His broad shoulders framed his lean body, and I could make out the outline of a six pack underneath the T-shirt he wore. His bare forearms didn’t need to be flexed for me to see the strong muscles where his veins popped.
We were getting along brilliantly, obviously.
Except that we didn’t have sex.
He looked at me sometimes like he might try. I probably looked at him that way too.
Correction: I know I did.
I considered how our arrangement would change if it happened and didn’t quite care about that. The only thing that stopped me was the memory of Rome’s hands on me that night in the bar.
He’d burned something into me, imprinted on me, and left a mark I couldn’t erase. I was stained with the idea of him, and no matter how hard I tried to wash away the memory, it stayed.
“Katie, do I need to throw those damn things on your feet away?” Bastian grumbled as he stood over where I was lying on the couch, feet up over the back because sitting properly on his overly expensive couch felt way too cushy for me. I wasn’t that person.
“Only if you want a knife at your neck,” I said.
He knelt down to get level with me. “You will never hold a knife to my neck. You know this.”
“Maybe.” I swung my feet around and jumped up. I pulled at my black shorts, but they didn’t cover much of my ass, and my shirt didn’t hide much of my stomach either. “Maybe not. I’m willing to bet I’ll have an opportunity, though.”
He glared at me for a second and then laughed his ass off. “You’re something else, you know that?”
“If you say so.” A knock sounded at the door. I lifted an eyebrow. “Takeout?”
“You know it.” He nodded and went to get the food someone left on his doorstep. Perks of the mob.
I peered around him at the bag he set on the table. “What’s in it?”
“Food.”
“I’m starved. You leave me here to rot all the time.”
“I leave you here to go to work.”
“Your work is my work, right? My blood, your blood.”
“Not right now. You’re holing up for bait, and the intense bait dates start next week, actually. Do you know what you want to wear to the gala? We’re supposedly raising money for a charity.”
“Sounds fancy.”
“Sounds like everyone who’s someone will be there, including Georgie and the men he’s working with.”
The skin at the base of my neck tightened like I was an animal getting ready to pounce. I wanted out of this place and back to work. I clapped my hands together and unleashed a smile for Bastian. “When do I have to be ready?”
Searching my face, he didn’t answer. He stepped close to me and moved one of my messy curls from the side of my face. “You’re damn pretty when you smile, woman.”
My eyes rolled hard. “Be serious, Bast.”
“I am serious. You look like one of those big feral cats, ready to move in for the kill. To someone like me, it’s beautiful.”
If my skin was a tad lighter, he’d have seen my blush. “Are you being nice because I’m in booty shorts?”
“I’m being nice because I want to. If you want me to be nice for that, I’ll be happy to just carry you to my bed now. Show you how much you don’t really want nice.”
Someone could have cut the sexual tension in that room with a damn knife. He glanced at my bare stomach, and goose bumps popped up right where he looked. I eyed the plump lips he would bite every now and then, like he was doing right at that moment.
“Tell me what’s in the damn carry-out bag before we make this arrangement way more complicated.” I shut my eyes to try to shake off my urge to jump his bones and pointed behind him.
He grunted and grabbed it. “Ramen from the restaurant down the road. Made special just for us.”
“Someone forget to pay this month?”
“Nah. Their family’s finances are tight, and I’m not in the business of collecting on every territory every month. Not the small ones at least.”
He pulled out a white linen upholstered chair from the massive oak table and motioned for me to sit down. I ambled over and nodded as I slid in. He scooted it under me like I was fragile or something.
“You aren’t supposed to pity the small guy,” I said. “You take what’s yours, or someone else will.”
“Who taught you that?” Bastian inquired as he pulled out our bowls of steaming ramen.
“Your father did.” Mario Armanelli ruthlessly collected, and every part of Chicago knew that.
“A good leader is feared, Katie. A great leader is loved. And an exceptional one is one you never thought you needed. This city will one day operate like that because I’ll make sure they can say, ‘Look, we did it all on our own.’” He didn’t sit but rounded the counter to grab two glasses for us and filled them with ice water.
Bastian and I never drank at home. I didn’t know if he ever drank at this point. He worked, and with his coming and going so much even in the middle of the night, I don’t think he wanted to risk inhibiting his mental state.
“Without their acknowledgement, you lose their respect,” I said.
“Or I gain their allegiance and they become stronger because they believe in themselves.”
I shrugged. Our leadership views never coincided. He was philosophical while I was animalistic. The strongest survived, and cutting out the weak or pushing them until they were strong seemed to be the only way. “Or you wasted time on the weak when it’s survival of the fittest.”
“It used to baffle me how enamored my father was with you at such a young age. He even told me you sat in on some of the calls, that you gave advice.” He rubbed his five-o’clock shadow. “Can you imagine, a seventeen-year-old giving the family advice?”
I let the silence seep in around us. Most of the family didn’t know why I was wise beyond my years, but I’d lived with my daddy. He’d taught me love and pride. Then I’d been put into foster care where there was none of that.
I wasn’t sure any of these men ever had love ripped from them, if they were ever loved like a daughter could be by her own father.
“Did you, Cade, and Rome grow up together? None of you were ever on the calls.”
“My father wanted me to see the business, to know the duties of a boss. The calls were social, more of a diversion for those tapping our lines.”
I nodded. “They weren’t that important, but they were to me. I knew it was a way in for me. Jimmy coached me to never say anything too outrageous. He’d tell me someone could be listening, ready to take me away from him.”
Bastian scoffed. “Not likely coming for you. But he gave you the right idea. My father strictly taught his heir to this mess of a family the bloody side of it.”
“Cade too?”
Bastian shook his head. “Cade got lost in the world of the internet. He’s free of responsibility. Rome and I saw everything while he saw next to nothing.” His voice was laced with pain.
“At least you had each other.” I tried to offer solace where I knew there was none.
“I didn’t have Rome. I’ll be honest with you because you look at him like you may be able to connect with him. Rome never connected with anyone. His mom was gone in a flash when he was born, and his father was our right-hand man for a reason. Our uncle was a sick, vicious thing that I wouldn’t call human. He turned in the end. Rome doesn’t say it, but he is the way he is because his father was who he was. And after all that time, we all thought we had him figured out. Rome may have hated him, but he thought he understood him too.”
“But he didn’t?” I was on the edge of my seat, my heart beating fast like a hungry animal scrambling for scraps. I wanted to know Rome’s story more than I’d wanted anything in that moment.
“He shot his father when he tried to take my dad’s life, Katie. My uncle wanted the power and was willing to kill his own brother for it.”
“What?” I whispered.
He nodded solemnly. “Rome doesn’t trust anyone because he almost missed it. We all did. He saved my dad’s life by taking his own father’s. It’s a mind-fuck. And the damn power of this city did it to all of us.”
I shook my head in disbelief. My mouth opened and shut as I tried to form words and wrap my mind around what he’d said. Rome was seen as the monster, but he was the monster that saved them all. “Maybe I understand him because he knew what his life could be, only to have it ripped away just like me. I had the love of my father and lived a life full of joy and being cared for until he died. It was all stripped from me then, and I had to adapt. Adapting and changing is sometimes the hardest thing to do. I knew what love was and was used to it.”
He studied me. “True. I’ve always known this life, known what was coming for me. You both seem to have had a twist along the way.”
“And I can’t speak for Rome, but after my twist, I had to live a lot of different lives, none of which were good ones,” I said quietly.
He stared at me, and I knew he was waiting for me to admit more. He commanded a lot from just one look, and I knew he could break most into admitting anything with it. But he wasn’t looking at me that way. There was softness in his normally hardened features.
“Did you ever meet my daddy?” I asked after I took a bite of the ramen. “Aside from the time you all came to my house.”
“Only once that I remember. He was trimming bushes in pants and a long-sleeve shirt. His shiny bald head sweat bullets in the humid summer air, but he kept moving quickly. I remember thinking his need to finish was astounding.”
“He was always a hard worker.”
“And proud of his work too. I walked over his freshly cut grass that day, and he yelled at me for not taking the sidewalk. He was the help, but he told me not to walk over his freshly cut grass.” Bastian leaned back and chuckled at the memory. “I think he even scolded my dad for not teaching me better manners.”
I smiled, soaking up any information about my father I didn’t already have. “That would have been him. Proud as hell of his work always.”
“His work was just that and raising you. He must have been proud of you too, then.”
“I like to think he was proud of what I could have become, but not of what I was. He knew I got involved with Jimmy.”
“Mm.” He mulled that over as he stared at me. We were different in that sense. Bastian had always known where his life would take him. There was nothing else. “That’s a hard pill for a father to swallow. Maybe for any parent.”
“I’m sure your father worries about you too.” I wasn’t sure at all. Mario didn’t seem to worry about his sons much. I liked to think it was because of the respect he carried for them, knowing he’d raised them for their roles the right way.
“My father doesn’t care or worry much about anyone, Katie. My mother turned toward something else to numb her anxieties before she passed.”
“I see.” It wasn’t my place to dwell, and when he glanced away, I let him know he wasn’t alone. “My mother’s been gone a long time too. It’s probably better that way.”
“Yes, maybe.”
“Anyway”—I slurped up the last of my ramen—“I’m happy and full. Ramen hit the spot.”
I started to clean up the table, but his hand went to my wrist. “I got it. Why don’t you go relax, huh? I need to make a call anyway. Cade has been calling me.”
“Your phone’s not ringing.” I pointed to it lying face down on the table.
“I silenced it. We were eating together,” he said as if disgusted that I would think he wouldn’t.
“You realize this is an arrangement, right? I don’t care if you take a call while we eat. I don’t care if you—”
“You’re my guest.”
“I’m your bait, Bast.”
He rubbed a thumb over my wrist before he let it go and stood to collect the wrappers and bowls left from our food. “You’re never just bait, Katalina. I enjoy having you here. If nothing else, you make good conversation and are pretty to look at.”
I couldn’t even bring myself to roll my eyes. Bastian’s constant politeness was starting to rub me in all the right places. I was losing sight of everyone else in the world that wasn’t inside of this penthouse, and I was forgetting exactly why Rome meant anything to me when I hadn’t heard or seen him since I’d moved.
“Tell me something.” I stared him down. “Is this how you treat all the women you bring here?”
He let out a breath and went to throw away the trash. Then he was back in front of me, dragging one finger down my arm and up again to my neck where my curls hung loosely. He let them fall between his fingers as if memorizing the way they did. “I’m starting to think I don’t treat any woman like you, because there is no woman like you. You don’t bitch about anything, you don’t care to prepare for me to be back. You’ve worn ratty socks since you’ve been here, and you still look good enough to fuck on this counter right here. And to add to it all, you make for damn good company.”
“Most women can do all those things, Bastian.”
“I don’t think so. I think that’s why you’re coveted bait and why I have to make sure you’re never bait again.”
With that, he wrapped his arm around my waist and kissed me. I met him halfway, sure I could erase every memory of any man before him with the way he treated me.
His touch was softer than I expected. He let me control the kiss, and I wondered if this was how he would rule Chicago, letting those around him think they were controlling, that they were a partner, that they could work with him to be the best.
I wrapped my arms and legs around him, trying to pull more from him, absorb more for myself. I was chasing a feeling that only one man could give me and it wasn’t Bastian. He lifted me right onto his length, and I rubbed against it as he walked me down the hall to his room.
“We’re moving quick, Katie.”
“We’re moving with purpose. You have calls to make.”
I felt his chest rumble with laughter right before he threw me onto the white down comforter on his bed.
I glanced around his room. The whites flowed into warm wood tones and matched muted pictures on the walls. “Your room is welcoming.”
He didn’t take his dark eyes off me. “My room is here all the time. You in it, on my bed, willing to spread your legs, is not. So might be time to strip and look at my room later.”
I scrambled to my knees and looked at him through my eyelashes, sure the power had shifted my way in this moment. “If we do this, it’s probably going to change things.”
He nodded but started unbuttoning his shirt like he didn’t care at all. I lifted my top over my head to reveal an unlined lace bra. The stark white against my skin felt like a lie every time I put it on. It was one of the reasons I always wore it, like I could fool my body into thinking it was innocent again.
Bastian groaned as I dragged a hand over the lace and let my fingers linger on my nipples. He yanked his unbuttoned shirt off and unbuckled his pants at a rapid speed. Bastian was defined in all the right places, his skin tanned and taunt over his muscles. I wanted my mouth to water for him, for my desire to amplify, but there was nothing.
Nothing except for the need to feel in control of myself, to steer my longing for Rome to someone else.
“I’m not sure if I want you to strip the rest off or leave it on. Fuck, Katie.” He breathed it out like he could barely contain himself.
I wished I felt the same. My eyes scanned up and down him, hoping for a spark.
None came, not even when I studied the lips that were just on mine. His kiss had been nice, but I didn’t want nice.
I wanted ravenous, vicious, something close to monstrous.
Bastian smirked at me, his eyes dark and full of need. He moved toward me, his hand went to my thigh and slid up to my shorts where his thumb dipped into the leg opening. “No panties? Were you planning this?” he whispered near my ear.
The question had me jolting back. Rome had asked me the same thing, and it was at that moment, I knew this couldn’t go further.
I leaned back, my heart thundering too loudly in my rib cage to ignore.
“Fuck, woman.” His eyebrows slammed down, confused by my sudden recoil. “Do you want to do this?”
I smiled at him, but I knew it didn’t reach my eyes. “I want to but I don’t know if I can.” I’d used sex as a tool and weapon before. Whatever I had to do for the family, I did. It was my choice, but for the first time in a long time there was a hurdle I wasn’t sure I could jump over. I’d had Rome’s hands on me, wished they were there again, and only thought of him. My body didn’t want to cooperate, and I didn’t know how far I would be able to go while thinking of someone else.
He scratched his head like he didn’t understand. Then he tilted it. “If you can? You don’t have to sleep with me, Katie.”
I didn’t know why tears sprung to my eyes or why he grabbed my shirt to push it back over my head before pulling me close for a hug.
We sat there for a long time as I silently let the tears run over my face.
He finally whispered in my ear, “Tell me what you want.”
Those words would have had me drunk on the idea that I had the power over a man just a few weeks back. Yet, Rome had mixed me all up, made me think it wasn’t just about the power and the control. And Bastian hugged me like I was something more than just the bait, more than just the tool the family utilized.
I was starting to want more, feel more, be more. Of what? I didn’t know.
“I’m not sure I know what I want, Bast. But I have to figure it out before we go any further.”
He nodded and backed away, holding me at arm’s length. “We’ll be okay, huh? Let’s just get
through the next few weeks.”
He’d respected me, made it so easy and safe that I wondered if I should regret my decision.
To have lost so much of my innocence that I questioned protecting my mental health made me wonder what life would have been like had I attached myself to men like Bastian early on.
He left me that night feeling weighed down by a new burden of hope, hope for the future and fear that we wouldn’t be able to achieve it.
