But Dean continued, undeterred. “I also don’t want you in my apartment. You won’t be fucking my ex-girlfriend in my bed anymore. You can take the apartment you gave Millie. It’s vacant now, anyway.”
I didn’t say a word, processing it all. My expression must’ve been crestfallen, because Dean’s smile only grew wider by the second.
“Shit, man, you’re going to do this, huh? For real.” He threw a foam ball at me.
I didn’t blink or reply. Goddammit, I was making a deal with this joker.
Dean got up from his chair and leaned into my face. “How far are you willing to go for this girl, Vic?”
I ran a hand through my hair, tugging hard at the roots. “Well, I think I’m about to find the fuck out.”
The next couple of days were busy. I signed the contract Dean’s lawyer had drafted (not his dad—a sorry bastard fresh out of law school who drafted a contract littered with enough loopholes and ways out for me to play with when the time came), and I moved my shit into Emilia’s apartment downstairs. Dean was scheduled to head to Los Angeles at the end of the week. We told his staff that I was staying in order to recruit two more lawyers to our New York branch and that I needed to train them. It was only a half-lie. This had been in the works for months now, but I was never set to train them in New York.
People bought it. Though I didn’t know why we needed to explain anything. They fucking worked for us.
Jaime lost his shit when he heard I only had fifteen percent left in the company.
And Trent laughed and said he didn’t feel sorry for me after treating him like an ass*ole when he confided in me about knocking up that stripper.
I gave Emilia two days. Two fucking days before I came for her. Finding out where she lived was no issue. Fiscal Heights Holdings still had to send her a paycheck for her last week of work, and our personnel head had her new address.
I decided to personally deliver the check, because I was nice like that.
Truthfully, I had no fucking clue what I was doing. I knew I was pursuing her, that I’d given up a lot to stay in New York for her, postponing my revenge on Jo and putting my personal goals on the back burner, but I didn’t understand any other part about this. I tried not to label what I felt for her. I tried not to read too much into it. As I said, Emilia was an impulse. Currently, all I knew was that I was acting on it. On my instinct. On my need. On something feral and basic.
She’d moved to a run-down neighborhood in the Bronx.
Her apartment was just above a Chinese joint that smelled of grease and sweat and had bathroom tiles on the walls. All around on her block, I saw old cars with busted windows and windshields. Gray wet trash lined the gutters, and string-thin, wide-eyed women carried groceries in a hurry to escape whatever danger was waiting for them around the corner. It was one thing to live in a zip code that wasn’t exactly desirable because you had cash flow issues, but a completely other thing to live in a neighborhood that looked like it had one of the highest crime rates in the city.
What the hell was she thinking? She and Rosie screamed prey. They were small, beautiful, innocent, and alone.
I waited outside the door that led upstairs for two hours before she came back home. It was boring as fuck so I spent my time reading emails and making phone calls. I stood out in this neighborhood like a sore thumb. But I didn’t give a shit.
Emilia approached the building, and when she realized that I was there at her front door, she rolled her eyes and sighed. “Go away, Vicious. You’re like a puppy begging for me to adopt you and take you home. Only significantly less cute.” She scrunched her nose.
I didn’t grace that shit with an answer, just pulled out her check from my breast pocket and handed it to her. She plucked it from between my fingers, her eyes skimming over it. There was a brief moment where I thought she was going to throw it back in my face, but then she must have remembered how poor she was.
“Thanks,” she murmured, slipping the check into her messenger bag.
“I don’t like you living in this neighborhood.” I took a step closer.
She crossed her arms as she took me in. “Then it’s a good thing it’s none of your business.”
“Since when are you so cold?”
“Since you barged into my life again and I was stupid enough to let you in—again—and I promised myself there won’t be a third time. What do you want, Vicious?”
That was a good question. I bit my lower lip and took in her little body, in her yellow-and-red checked coat.
“I want to fuck you again,” I admitted with a groan.
“Fuck me, or use me so you can avenge your stepmom?”
“It’s not about that. Fuck the money. Fuck my stepmom,” I said, realizing it was the truth. I didn’t care about all those things. Not when I was about to lose her.
If I hadn’t already.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’ll never ask you to do anything about it ever again. All I ask is for your time, so I can explain.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” She inserted her key into the lock and was on the stairs inside with the door shut before I had the chance to do my usual move of shoving my foot into the gap.
I banged my fist on the painted metal. At least the door looked sturdy. “Now that I know when you get back from work every day, I’m going to wait for you outside the subway and see you home safely.”
She laughed from the other side, a cold laugh that she’d learned and mastered because of me. Because of everything I’d done to her.
“If you want to waste your time, be my guest. I’m not going to forgive you. And even if I did, I wouldn’t want to be with you.”
“We’ll see about that.” I waited for another response, but this time there was only silence. I grinned quietly to myself. The push and pull was back. She could push all she wanted, but she was going to be pulled back to where she belonged. My arms.
I was still eyeing the door when a skinny white guy who was a veteran junkie, judging by his rotten teeth and lost eyes, shuffled for the door, holding a plastic bag. “You live here?” I growled.
He nodded, confused.
“Third floor. ’Sup, man. You lookin’ to score?”
“No, douchbag, I’m your motherfucking nightmare. Stay away from the girls on the second floor. Tell your junkie friends and anyone you know in this goddamn shithole the same thing.” I shoved five hundred-dollar bills into his hand. And fuck, why was it muddy? I didn’t even want to know. “For every day they’re safe and left alone here, you’ll get another hundred. Deal?”
His eyes widened in disbelief, his jaw falling. I don’t think he’d heard a coherent sentence in a while. “Sure, man. Sure.”
I turned around and walked away, hoping it was worth it.
It had to be.
I had a feeling it would be.