On The Ropes (Tapped Out 3)

“It’s never simple with you.” Mia reached for the basket with warm Italian bread inside. Carly went all out for a meal, no doubt about it. My mother would’ve adored her. “And if you’re spending time with those men, either you’re lying to all of us about your intentions or you’re lying to them. There’s no way you can stand on both sides of that particular fence.”

“Mia,” Fox began.

“You damn well know I’m right. After what they wanted me to do—” She broke off and shook her head. Then she bit into her bread.

I leaned forward. “What did they want you to do?”

“Nothing.” She took a quick glance over her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. “Just forget it.”

“One has nothing to do with the other,” Fox said.

“You don’t know that.”

Fox quieted, because I supposed he didn’t.

Even though I had no idea what additional weight Marco and his men had put on Mia, she was right to assume the worst of me. I was the worst. I was doing my damnedest to become enmeshed with my enemy so I could end him.

Maybe that would mean ending myself. If so, it would all be worth it.

“You have no reason to trust me.”

“No, she doesn’t.” Carly returned to the table and set Jenna’s glass in front of her. “None of us do. Yet you keep sniffing around.”

“I wonder why that is.” Jenna stuffed a piece of bread in her mouth when Carly aimed a dark look her way.

“Fox is my friend. I take friendship very seriously.” The words were out before I had time to realize how fucking stupid I was being.

Wanting to convince them I wasn’t dangerous was idiotic. Coming to dinner in the first place was the king of idiotic decisions.

And why? Just so I could watch Carly?

Then she turned and sashayed out of the room with some excuse about “having homework”, and I realized, that, no, my most idiotic decision wasn’t coming to dinner to keep an eye on her. Nothing Carly did could be predicted from one moment to the next, and someone had to have her back. Since no one else at this table knew what she’d gotten herself into at the club—with the exception of maybe Jenna, who hadn’t given me one dirty look tonight, which made that possibility more unlikely—I had to be that person.

I had to be the one who simultaneously pushed her away and pulled her back in by confusing her with my attention. All because I wanted to keep her alive.

My most idiotic decision was ever allowing her to follow me to the club in the first place.

Nine

I didn’t want to go back to the club. To the pit of my stomach, to the soles of my feet did not want to ever walk through those doors again.

But I’d promised Nancy I would cover for her, and I couldn’t back out now. So I would go armed and prepared, and then I would give my notice and that would be it.

I’d be done with that place and all of the men who frequented it.

I just didn’t expect to be shanghaied outside my very own apartment building. I should have, but I didn’t.

Halfway down the block, the same route I took to the subway two nights a week when I headed into the club, I noticed the Escalade. It wasn’t surprising that it was parked on my street, since Gio had been at dinner. What was surprising was that the lights were on and the engine was idling.

And when I say surprising, I meant not at all, if I’d even given it a second thought. As if I truly believed he’d allow me to go to work under my own steam and without an escort. It wasn’t as if I was an adult who just happened to have a recording app I used for class cued up on my phone and a can of pepper spray and a set of throwing stars in my purse.

Mia would never notice the stars were gone. Probably. She was the one who’d taught me how to use them, so it was only fitting I’d borrowed hers.

This time, if anyone tried to push me, I would take action. That sick exhibitionist side of myself that found some kind of shameful thrill parading in front of those men had been put to rest.

If they tried it again, I’d be claiming someone’s balls.

Briefly, I considered walking past the truck as if I didn’t see it. Good luck with him following me down into the subway. Then annoyance got the better of me and I stalked up to the passenger window to rap on the glass.