Lie to Me: Chapter 3

Past – February 2014

I stare at my cell as it rests on the counter, just like I’ve done every day for the last week.

Sloane O’Brien will be the death of me—and I mean that in the figurative and the literal sense.

I can’t get the girl out of my head. Five minutes with her and she somehow managed to flip everything upside down. She’s pure temptation, bottled up into a sexy as fuck package that should be labeled as poison.

I know I shouldn’t do it. I know I should stay far away from the Irish princess. I should keep my distance. I shouldn’t initiate conversation. I shouldn’t seek her out. I can’t talk to her again. And I abso-fucking-lutely should not text her.

I sigh and grab my phone from the counter, hovering over her name in my contacts. I should delete her number and move on from this weird feeling that tells me this is so much more than a random five-minute conversation with a random girl. Except when my finger hovers over the delete button, I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Ah fuck it.

Fuck. I definitely shouldn’t have done that.

I’m basically asking for an all-out war between two of the most powerful organizations in the city. I set down the phone and look over the coursework in front of me. Getting a business degree whilst also working for the family is fucking tiring, but this is the world I was born into. I’m the second born son of the most powerful man in the city.

Hell, in the goddamn country. My older brother will take over for him one day and I’ll be his second in command. Which also means that if anything were to ever happen to him, it would be up to me to step up in his place, while my younger brother, Enzo, would step into mine.

The kid might only be twelve-years-old, but I can already tell he’s going to be an absolute nightmare. He’s already fascinated by what we do and has already started begging to come out with us on jobs. Our dad waited until we were fifteen to start inducting us into the business—even though it was all basic shit at that age, I didn’t make my first kill until I was seventeen—and I can tell he’ll have a hell of a time keeping Enzo on a leash until then.

Luckily, our dad also made a tradition to buy us our own apartment when we turned eighteen, so I don’t have to deal with the backlash of Enzo not getting his own way anymore. I love him to death, but he’s a handful.

My phone buzzes on the counter and it’s honestly embarrassing how quickly I grab for it and swipe to see the message.

That text really shouldn’t make me as happy as it does. We’re only asking for trouble, yet I can’t seem to stop my fingers from typing out a reply.

Her reply comes instantly.

Fuck it. I’ve spent my whole life being the perfect son. What’s one little fuck up in the form of a little blonde spitfire that has me feeling more than I’ve ever felt in my life from only one encounter?

That’s my reasoning as my fingers fly across the keyboard, eager to reply to her.

Sloane and I have texted with each other every single day for two weeks. I used to wonder what the hell people found to talk about when they texted with someone so much, but now I get it. We talk about everything and nothing.

I haven’t taken the step to see her in person, though, and she hasn’t mentioned it, either. It’s like we’re living in this weird limbo where we know it’d be stupid to continue on like this, but we both can’t stop.

It’s addictive.

She’s addictive.

It’s late Saturday night and I’m at home in bed, because I’m anti-social as fuck, when my cell chimes with an incoming message. I ignore it, knowing it’s probably Luca wanting me to pick his drunk ass up. But when it goes off again, I know I need to check it. I roll over and grab the phone. My heart pounds when I see that it isn’t my brother, but Sloane instead.

I figured she’d be asleep already. We spoke this morning and she told me she was spending the day with her brother, Finn, but other than that, we haven’t texted.

Considering this girl is smart as hell and usually texts me using full words, never using an abbreviation, I’m gonna go ahead and assume she’s been drinking.

I rush through throwing on some clothes and leaving the apartment. The club she’s at is only a ten-minute drive from my apartment.

I make it there in five.

I leave my car parked on the curb outside the club. The family registration plate will alert anyone not to touch it.

I stand at the top of the steps inside the club, looking out over the balcony for Sloane. I had no issues getting inside the club once I told the bouncers my name. They’d rather risk their job letting in someone underage than risk their life saying no to a Romano—probably the reason Sloane was allowed in, too.

I spot Sloane in the middle of the dance floor, dancing with two other girls. She looks like she’s having fun, so I resign myself to watching her for now rather than interrupt. That is, until I see some little fucker come up behind her and grab her hips.

I can see her spin around and shake her head as I bolt down the stairs, but the asshole doesn’t take no for an answer, and is still giving her trouble by the time I make it to her. I grab the back of his shirt and pull him towards me, bending down to look him in the eye.

“If I ever see you anywhere near her, or hell, if I even see you look at her again, I’ll rip your fucking intestines out and hang you with them,” I whisper in his ear before shoving him away from me. I watch him scamper off before turning back to a wide-eyed Sloane who’s swaying on her feet. She stumbles towards me and I steady her before I dart my gaze around, looking for the girls she was just dancing with, but they’re nowhere to be seen.

Fuck it.

I bend and grab her under her thighs, flinging her over my shoulder. I let out a chuckle as she squeals.

“What are you doing?” she slurs.

“Taking you home.”

I stand and stare down at the early Sunday morning traffic littering the streets with a coffee in hand.

Sloane lives in her father’s mansion with him and her brother, so it wasn’t as though I could just take her home last night. If I had stepped foot even remotely near that property, I’d have been shot on the spot, never mind with a near unconscious Sloane in my custody. Which is why I had no choice but to bring her home to my apartment.

I have no idea what caused her to end up in the state she was in—and I don’t know her well enough yet to know if this is a common occurrence—but I couldn’t stop myself from needing to be the one to take care of her.

Once I got her into the apartment, she was all but dead on her feet and muttering incoherently, so I carried her into the spare room and tucked her in before going to bed myself. I had a two second debate on whether I should undress her and put her in something that would be more comfortable to sleep in, but I figured her waking up in an unknown space would be bad enough. I didn’t want her thinking anything more had happened, so I settled with removing her shoes and leaving on the scrap of material she called a dress.

Her footsteps echo down the hall and I turn just in time to see her stumble into the view, bleary eyed and wearing a weary expression on that pretty face of hers.

“Morning,” I grunt, still not comfortable with conversing with people. Though I have to admit, I like talking to her more than I’ve ever enjoyed speaking to anyone.

Her eyes widen when she spots me, and I head towards the kitchen to pour her a cup of coffee.

“Uh… hey?”

She follows me into the kitchen and takes a seat at the breakfast island.

“Hungover?” I ask with a smirk.

She seems to think over her answer before speaking. “Confused.”

“You were texting me, sounding fucked up. I asked where you were and headed down there to make sure you were okay. Then some asshole on the dance floor was giving you trouble, so I got you the fuck out of there. By the time we were in the car, you were pretty much passed out, so I put you in the guest room.” I tilt my head towards the room she slept in and slide a coffee in front of her before going to the refrigerator and pulling out creamer. I hand her that and sugar, too, since I have no idea how she takes her coffee.

“Thank you,” she mumbles. “Though you didn’t have to bring me here, you could have just taken me home.”

“And get myself killed?” I ask with a raised brow.

She frowns before nodding slowly. She knows that’s exactly what would have happened.

“Well, thank you, Romano. You’re a true knight in shining armor,” she says, her snark back in full throttle. I roll my eyes and get to work making us both breakfast.

It isn’t long before we’ve both eaten, showered, and we’re driving towards her family home. I debated getting her an Uber but… fuck that. I don’t trust people. We went back and forth on it and she agreed to let me drop her off on the edge of her family’s property, though I’ll be sticking around to make sure she makes it inside okay.

I pull up a few yards from the gate where there’s a blind spot in the cameras, according to Sloane.

“Thank you, for taking care of me and making sure I was okay last night,” she whispers as she unbuckles the seatbelt and I grunt in response.

“There’s something I want to show you sometime, would you be up for that?” she asks and I inwardly sigh, knowing I’m going to agree when it’s the very last thing I should be doing.

“Just tell me when and where. I’ll be there.”