“We’ll handle your car.” One of the men beckons me up the stairs, and they hem me in, one on either side. The guns stay out.
They escort me to a set of oversized double doors set into the front of the porch. I can’t tell if they’re painted black or if they look black. Either way, the effect is the same. No uninvited guests. I’m expected, at least. They were waiting for me. But now I have to convince Leo Morelli to make a deal with me. I have to convince him to let my dad out of that contract.
It doesn’t feel good to be going in with a clutch purse.
They open the door for me and we step inside, into a wide foyer. My heels click on hardwood that shines in the glow of sconces inset in walls with wallpaper—
I’m a Constantine. I still do a double take at Leo Morelli’s walls. Dark velvet damask, it looks like, and there’s a glint of gold in the patterns. Real gold? I can only imagine how he’d look at me if I asked him. Of course it’s real gold. I can hear him saying it. I’m not a fraud, like the Constantines.
“This way, Miss Constantine.”
And now his security has seen me gawking at the wallpaper. Good.
We take a right and leave the foyer through an archway as wide as the front doors. My heels pinch my feet, but the pain grounds me. I need my wits about me for this meeting. I can’t be flying outside my body, paralyzed by the enormity of the risk I’m taking. No. Don’t think about that. It makes me lightheaded.
The first man stops at the third door and knocks. His expression remains professionally blank. Maybe I’m imagining the new tension in his shoulders.
“Come in.”
I didn’t imagine it. His suited shoulders let down a fraction of an inch and he opens the door. “Mr. Morelli, Miss Constantine is here for you.”
Leo’s unmistakable laugh floats out into the hall and runs a sharp nail down the ridge of my spine. “Don’t keep me waiting.”
I take the first step toward the door but the other guard stops me with a hand on my elbow. “Your coat, Miss Constantine.”
My coat. Yes. My coat. I can’t keep it wrapped around me like armor. The point of putting the sexy dress on was to give myself leverage, not hide it beneath a peacoat going soft at the seams. The guard takes my purse while I get out of the coat, and then he holds his hand out for it.
It’s hard to let go. But every second that Leo Morelli waits pounds in my ears. No time to get hung up on a coat. No time to get hung up on going home, and how badly I wish I was there with Cash now. Friday nights are for popcorn and shitty TV, not making deals with the devil. “Thank you,” I tell the guard, a beat too late. He motions toward the door, and I go in.
To call this room an office would be funny. Almost flippant. It is an office, with thick carpet on the floor for my heels to sink into and a fireplace heating the air so even a naive woman with a thin, sexy dress on would be warm. This is a magazine office. The ideal office. One wall is taken up with built-in bookshelves. The other is dominated by the fireplace and the two low armchairs in front of it.
The middle is taken up by Leo Morelli’s desk.
And Leo Morelli.
The window behind him is rendered black by the firelight, but the man himself looks burnished. Like the fire is his friend. Embers reflect in his dark hair, and shadows play across his clothes. He’s not wearing a suit. I expected a suit. Something as expensive as the coat he wore when he hurt those vagrant men for me. But he sits behind his desk in a charcoal sweater, writing something on a sheet of paper in front of him. I didn’t know I could feel underdressed in the presence of a man in a sweater, but I do.
He looks up from his paperwork and if I thought his dark eyes were captivating and terrifying in the moonlight—Jesus. That was nothing compared to the glow of the fire. “You’re early,” he comments.
“I missed you.” I pretend my knees aren’t quaking and go to sit down at one of the chairs by his desk and run my fingers over the elegant curve of the arms. Another surprise—it’s not a hellishly uncomfortable seat. Or at least it wouldn’t be, if I didn’t have to sit up so straight, and on the very edge. “We were having an interesting conversation.”
Amusement lights his eyes, but the laugh he lets out is harsh. “Yes. It’s always entertaining to watch Constantines squirm.”
My face goes hot. “I love my dad. That’s why I’m here.”
He gives a dismissive wave of his pen. “No need for theatrics, Haley. Tell me what you’re offering so we can get on with this.”
“Name your price.” My pulse is too big for my body, my breath too shallow. “I’ll do what it takes to get him out of that contract.”
Leo scoffs. “You’ll do what it takes? I don’t think you can, sweetheart. I stand to make a fortune off your father and humiliate the entire Constantine line. That’s a win-win situation for me.” He tosses the pen down, bored. “And I can have any woman. You’re not the worst I’ve come across, but special? No.” His eyes follow the neckline of the dress. “You’ve got decent tits. A nice size. Big enough to tit fuck, but I’ve seen better. You have pretty thighs, at least from what I can see in that dress, but nothing to write home about.”
I want to burst into a cloud of ash and disappear into the fire. “I’ll do anything.”
He narrows his eyes and points at his cell phone, perched there on the desk. “There are a hundred women who’d get on their knees and suck my cock if I called them right now. I’m Leo fucking Morelli. Who are you?”
Compared to him? Nothing. I don’t have anything to give him except myself. But if I let myself shrink, if I let myself cower, then I lose. I lift my chin. “Is that what you want? For me to suck your cock? For me to get on my knees?”
Forget college. Forget exams. This is the real test, and I’m going to pass it by surviving this moment, this awful, tense moment. Leo Morelli could demand that I get down on my knees on his plush carpet and let him fuck my mouth. He could, and I would do it, and the possibility is worse than the demanding.
Waiting is a knife to soft skin, and he knows it.
That’s why he lets that smile slip slowly over his face so I can see his perfect teeth. Leo Morelli knows that he is devastating to look at, so beautiful it hurts, and he also knows that I can’t stop looking at him or he will have won everything.
“No, darling. For what you’re asking, it’s going to cost a lot more than a blowjob. You, in my bed. For a month. That’s the deal.”
Relief twists itself up with fresh embarrassment. Thirty days of Leo Morelli is a lifetime. An eternity of his voice, confirming my worst fears—that I’m nothing to write home about and never will be. That I’ll always be on the outside of my own family. That I’ll always be marked by this deal with him, forever and ever, even if I can convince him to keep it a secret.
I don’t let the tears show. I don’t let my chin quiver. I grit my teeth to keep myself steady and upright. “I’ll stay with you a month, and you’ll let my father go?”
His cruel eyes test me again, lingering on my face, on my chest, on my throat. A new terror pulls goose bumps from my skin. He could still decide not to go through with it. Send me out of here with a single word to the men outside. Dismiss me, and hurt my father, and ruin everything.