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I don’t know why, but I laugh.

“I wasn’t joking,” she says.

“I just wasn’t expecting a compliment.”

“Don’t laugh when you receive a compliment, dear. It makes people think you don’t deserve it. And you do, Sienna.”

“Uh, thank you.”

“Do you often sketch?”

“Yes. I love the seductive, misleading simplicity of it.”

The woman’s face lights up. “What a wonderful way to describe it.”

“Seductive, misleading,” Nico says. “This is all above my head.” He smiles self-deprecatingly at me. “My mother is the intellectual one. I’m one hundred percent brute.”

“Why can I believe that?” I say, walking away. It was supposed to come out flat. But it sounds flirty. It sounds like I’m challenging him to be bad. To me. For me. With me.

All the way back to the kitchen, I tell myself, my cheeks aren’t red on repeat. I don’t want to flirt with a mafia boss. I don’t need art critiques from his mother, though. That comment about shading really hit a sweet spot for me. I’ve been focusing on that aspect a lot recently.

But no – I can’t think like this.

If I were going to do the right thing and honor my mother, I’d charge out there with a steak knife.

Perhaps all mafia men aren’t the same. Maybe this one is different. But I can’t afford to take that risk.

ChapterThree

Nico

“She seems nice,” Mom says, when Adrian excuses himself for another bathroom break… he’s probably doing coke in there, a discreet key to the nose, thinking it makes him more insightful, cleverer. But it just makes him easier to read.

“Who?” I say.

“Don’t ‘who’ me,” Mother retorts. “That sketch was you all over.”

“As she mentioned, she didn’t sketch anything tonight. I’ve never seen her before tonight, so how the hell would it be me?”

“Easy, Nico. I’m not trying to fight.”

“I’m not fighting,” I tell her. “I just don’t see how or why a complete stranger would’ve sketched me.”

“Didn’t you notice how the features, the smile especially, had been added later? She hadn’t filled it in. It was your smile.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re turning into a conspiracy theorist.”

“In any case, she’s far too talented to be working as a waitress.”

“You sound like you’ve got a plan.”

“Nowwho’s paranoid?”

I shrug. But I can’t pretend that I’m unbothered by any of this. When that notebook fell out of her pocket, and during the banter afterward, I felt like a normal man. She wasn’t afraid to challenge me, to give me some serious sass. She’s hilarious. Talking to her made me feel alive.

“Even if I were interested, it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Why?” Mother asks.