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Her pupils were so dilated only a sliver of dark brown surrounded them. A wave of displeasure ran through me. It sucked me back to age fifteen when I found my mamma’s lifeless eyes wide open.

“Who?” My question was indifferent, but I already knew.

Her gaze narrowed. “Christian.”

“It’s none of your business who I invite to my apartment, Gianna.”

I wouldn’t have invited him if I’d had a legitimate reason to do so—and more than Elena practically drooling over him yesterday. The asshole had a pretty face, and it annoyed me more than I cared to admit that it had interested Elena.

“I don’t want him here, Ace.” She watched Christian talk to my uncle Jimmy with a sour expression.

“Ask me if I care,” I answered dryly.

Gianna had hated Christian since the moment she met him. The FBI part was at the top of the list of reasons why, but she was also the agent’s opposite in every way. She scoffed at his perfectionism, while Christian grimaced at her lack of decorum.

Elena’s soft laughter filtered through the room, hitting me in the chest.

My jaw tightened.

Lorenzo was not that fucking funny.

“That’s the wrong sister you’re staring at. The right one is over there.” Gianna pointed a white-painted fingernail at Adriana, who sat on the couch next to Benito with her legs pulled up beside h

er. “She’s probably recovering from your threat of rape.”

I let out a dry breath when Adriana giggled at something on Benito’s phone. “She looks real traumatized.” There was something cold and fearless about her, but apparently the idea of sex with me was unappealing enough she believed she would die from it. Maybe it was a good threat I could keep in mind, because I thought I might need a strong one with her.

Truthfully, I’d thought about sleeping with Adriana a complete total of zero times. All thoughts of sex had been about her sister, especially after she’d arched her ass against me yesterday in the universal way all men understood as a go-ahead.

She hadn’t been shy about letting me know she’d let me touch her, but I couldn’t help an inkling of awareness from settling in when she’d placed her hand on mine and I’d felt that ring of hers. She loved some man. Wore his cheap ring on her finger like it was a diamond.

Bitterness had run through me. She wanted to get off and she was going to use me to do it. When I realized that, I’d felt something I had never felt in my life: like I was expendable. And that pissed me off.

Nonetheless, Do you respect me? had followed me around all day and night in that soft, sweet voice of hers. Everywhere I fucking went.

There was always some vice that eventually killed a Russo.

Irrationality. Idiocy. A penchant for unprotected sex with cheap hookers. My father’s was monetary greed.

I was beginning to think mine was Elena Abelli.

I wanted to fuck her and ruin her for anyone else. I wanted to crush her wings and then put them back together again so she’d become dependent on me. I wanted her to need me. That dark, possessive, and dangerous feeling crawled through me every time she crossed my path.

Elena Abelli was my vice, and fuck if I’d let it kill me.

However, the urge to try to fuck her out of my system was consuming me, regardless if she wanted me to be someone else. It was an itch I needed to scratch. And when I was done with her, she’d never remember another.

Gianna shook her head while looking down on me, although she was a foot shorter, even in her heels. “That’s an awful idea,” she said.

“What?”

“Sleeping with Elena.”

Jesus.

Elena’s papà stood three feet away, though he was too deep in conversation to have heard.

“Gianna,” I warned.