Sold to the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Novel(82)
“I will give you some time to consider my offer,” he says with an air of finality.
As he opens the door, I jump up and ask him, “Wait, I don’t even know your name.”
He turns and looks at me hard. “Ivan.”
“I-I’m Katy,” I respond, as if he doesn’t know.
“I’ll be in touch,” he says, and with that he disappears through the VIP door.
I slump down onto the couch and sit there in stunned silence for several minutes, my brain running in a thousand directions at once. Then, finally, I walk out of the lounge and up to the bar, where Natalie is standing looking rather pale.
“What the hell was that about?” she asks in a fervent whisper. “You okay, short-stop?”
I tap the bar with my nails and she quickly pours me a shot of bourbon, which I toss back immediately. Licking my lips, I reply quietly, “I don’t fucking know. I’ll get back to you on that. Uh, could you do me a massive favor, Nat?”
“Er, yeah. What?”
I slide my purse strap over my shoulder and turn to leave. “Watch the club tonight, huh? I-I think I need a night off. Sorry.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. You got it, boss.”
Charles and Ashton both give me slightly panicked looks as I pass by, and I can’t offer more than a simple, sheepish half-smile in response. But they’ll be alright. My crew is shockingly self-sufficient, and they can handle themselves for a night.
Me, on the other hand…
Neglecting my umbrella, I walk to my car in the rain, hardly even cognizant of the water soaking my clothes and hair. I drive home in silence, even more confused now than I was when I left this morning.
* * *
I feel like I’m pushing my way through a dream as I make my way up the stairs to my apartment, turn the key to my door, and enter the place I’ve called home for the past few months.
My eyes pan the living room as I walk through it, but it’s like my eyes are seeing everything through a fine mist, like the world is just a little bit out of focus.
Once again, that same question is haunting my every thought: why is this happening to me?
I slip my shoes off on the way in, and I set my purse down somewhere, but none of it really registers in my mind.
Why can’t I just have a normal life? Why couldn’t my dad’s failing club have passed to me with no strings attached? I could have sold it to the business douches at the club for a tidy profit and move upstate, maybe finish college and settle down for a quiet life at a desk job somewhere.
That wasn’t going to be my life, though.
Maybe I ripped a bunch of people off in a past life, I decide with a laugh as I make my way around the living room, staring at all the crap Natalie and I had dragged out last night.
What even is some of this junk? Looking around at all the possessions I had to sell, a pointedly empty feeling hits me from the pit of my stomach.
I hate having to deal with the Amber Room, but at the end of the day, it’s the only asset I’ve got.
There are some old designer clothes strewn about in boxes, some paintings that served no better purpose than maybe a conversation starter for guests, and some old jewelry I only ever wear for work in the first place.
My job is my life.
The anger that’s been burning low in the back of my mind flares up again, and I give one of the boxes of crap a sharp kick.
I don’t even know what to be angry at, really. Should I hate myself for letting myself get into this position? At my dad for dumping this on me? At Ivan for suggesting that I...that he…
I can’t ball my fists any tighter as I stomp into my room and slip out of my work clothes, just wanting nothing more than to be comfortable right now.
My bedroom is one of the few safe places I have left.
I flop back onto the soft mattress, spreading my tired bare limbs out on the comfortable sheets I worked so hard to keep clean.
“You will be my woman for a year, a servant to my whims and desires,” I repeat Ivan’s words at the ceiling, mockingly exaggerating his accent and making a face.
Who the hell does he think he is?
The voice in the back of my mind reminds me that he might be the only thing standing between me and getting pimped out by Oskar and his gang of goblins.
The back of my mind is an asshole.
I turn over and bury my face in my pillows, wishing I could make all this tension just...go away, if only for a little while.
But as I’m lying there on my stomach with the thought of Ivan hovering in my mind, my imagination can’t help but drift back to that first night we spent together over three months ago.
After seeing what kind of body the guy has, not even that suit he was wearing today could keep me from remembering what’s under it. Those rippling muscles, the look of absolute assuredness in his eyes that he would have total control of the bedroom for the next hour. I remember running my hands over those tattoos of his before he pressed that rock-hard body against me.