The restaurant is an Italian in the center of Miami, old and traditional. It’s also empty when we arrive, and I’m not sure whether that’s intentional or whether it’s not popular.
We’re shown to a table at the very back, near a corridor that leads to the kitchens and restrooms. Six of Danny’s men take a table at the front of the restaurant as he pulls a chair out for me and takes my hand, helping me down. “Is it always this quiet?” I ask, looking around the restaurant.
Danny settles to my right of the table for four, unfastening the button of his suit jacket as the waitress places a bottle of water down. “We’re early by Italian standards.” He orders wine and takes my cloth napkin from my place, flapping it out and laying it across my lap.
“Who are you meeting?” I ask.
“A local businessman.”
I falter a second, studying his profile as he pours some water for me. His scar looks especially silver today, and not for the first time I wonder how he came to have the nasty wound. “So you’ll be talking business.” I accept my water when he hands it to me.
“We will.”
“I thought you don’t discuss business in the presence of the latest whore you’re fucking.” I bring my glass to my lips and take a small sip, watching as he holds back a faint smile.
Collecting his own water, he turns in toward me, resting his elbow on the table. “I believe what I said was, I don’t discuss business with the latest whore I’m fucking.” A small sip around another small smile. “And, as you’ve pointed out yourself, I’ve not fucked you.”
I pout a little, severing our eye contact to have another gaze around the restaurant. There’s too much satisfaction in his words, his tone, his eyes. Back at his mansion, I moved in and he pulled away. Then he went to his room and fucked that Amber woman. And what about the fact that he doesn’t like me being called a whore?
“Why are you frowning?” he asks, and I look at him, wiping all evidence of said frown away.
“I’m not frowning.”
“You were frowning,” he persists, nodding to the waitress when she places a bottle of wine down.
“Would you like to try, Mr. Black?” she asks, turning our glasses up the right way.
“No.” His answer sends her on her way without her asking if he would like her to pour. Danny returns his attention to me.
“I wasn’t frowning,” I confirm before he has a chance to challenge me again, because I just know he was going to.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I mimic. “And thank you for the clothes.”
“You like them?
“Yes, but why?”
“Because I can’t very well take you anywhere with no clothes on.”
Ah. So it is a problem if I parade around naked. “Maybe don’t take me. Or maybe you could return me to my rightful owne—” I snap my mouth shut as Danny cocks his head in question.
“Owner,” he finishes softly. “Right now, Rose Lillian Cassidy, I am your rightful owner.”
“How many women do you own?” I ask, bracing myself for the answer.
“Just one.” He takes the wine and pours each of us a glass. “You,” he adds, in case there was any need for confirmation.
“Then what about Amber?” I wince as soon as I’ve asked, wondering where on earth that question came from. He makes me behave stupidly, makes me say stupid things. I take refuge in my wine, downing half the glass.
His smile is truly epic, the sparkle in his pale eyes blinding. “Amber is the latest whore I’m fucking.”
What’s that pain in my stomach? “But you don’t care for her?”
“Do I look like the kind of man who would care for a woman?”
No. He looks like the kind of man who doesn’t care about anyone at all.
I look up when I hear the door to the restaurant open, seeing a middle-aged man in a black suit and a briefcase stroll in. He nods to Danny’s men, his movement jerky and nervous, and then makes a beeline for our table, his short legs working fast.
“Danny.” He dumps his briefcase on a chair and takes the other, wiping his brow with a handkerchief as he does.
“Gordon.” Danny swirls his wine casually, taking in the flustered mess of a man before us. “This is Rose.” He motions to me with his glass, and Gordon nods at me in acknowledgement, though he doesn’t make eye contact. One would think he had a nervous disposition, but, then again, he’s in the company of Danny Black. “Do you have my money?” Danny asks.
Gordon’s eyes jump across the floral tablecloth. “It’s just—”
“I’ll take that as a no.” Danny lifts his glass to his nose and smells, closing his eyes. It’s condescending and aloof. And the atmosphere just shifted from slightly uncomfortable to borderline unbearable. I glance over to the table where Danny’s men sit, each looking this way. “I lent you a lot of money, Gordon.”