Page 42 of Ruin Me With Lies

If there’s one thing I remember about this one, it’s that he’s a lickerish foodie.Which makes my response easy.“You say that about everything I’ve seen you put in your mouth.”

The others break into chuckles and nods of agreement, even him.“True that.”

As we eat—talking, jabbing, jeering—I study every face at the table.Every posture.Assessing.All while throwing in a well-timed jab or two, never missing a beat.

Not hard to do.Men’s group conversations are usually chaotic and unfocused, a mess of overlapping voices, bouncing from topic to topic with no clear thread.Perfect for me to listen, observe, and decode.

Once everyone is full, sated, and relaxed, their guards down, I ease in.“Any of you on rotation at Liquid Blue?I’m being temporarily assigned to work the bar.But I’ve never been up there before, so I’m hoping I’ll see a familiar face.”

“Nah, we’re off those rotations once we become Uppermen,” one of them replies.“The Soldati and Mid Troopers handle the clubs.”

“Man, Ihatedthose rotations,” another groans.“Was like the Garden of Eden.All that ass and tits everywhere, but you can’t evenlook.Gotta be watching for threats instead.Shit was torture.”

“Yup,” someone else chimes in.“You let a piece of ass distract you for even a minute, and—” He clicks his teeth and slashes a finger across his throat.“That’s it.You’re done.”

“Rough,” I say with a laugh.

“Wait,you’reworking the bar at Liquid Blue now?Isn’t that Tina’s gig?”

The question comes from the one I’ve been assessing the closest.He’s seated at the far end of the table and has been quiet and detached the whole time.

Until now.

“Who?”I feign ignorance.“No idea who that is.All I heard is that the bartender got zapped for being a rat or something, and now my ass has to fill in.”I gesture to myself.“Look at me.Do I look like I can cut it behind a bar?”

The men laugh, feeding off my self-deprecation.

“Just don’t be giving away free drinks to every tits and ass that flashes a smile at you,” one warns.“Boss doesn’t mess around with his dollars and cents.”

I’ve never corrected their immediate assumption that I’m a lesbian because that works in my favor.To them, I’m another Tazi.

Just as abruptly as he spoke, the quiet Upper shoots to his feet.“Hey, I’ll meet you all back on patrol,” he says.“Need to go handle something while there’s still time in the hour.”

“Yo, don’t take forever like you did last time,” one calls after him.“I’m not getting reamed out for you again!”

As the conversation shifts to wild stories from their Soldati days, I lean back in my chair and pick my teeth with a toothpick.

I think I’ve found my culprit.

~

WHEN I GETback to my room, it’s to the unwanted visual of Luca getting a sloppy blowjob.

“Jesus, Luca,” I groan.“Don’t you have your own place for this shit?”

To be fair, he’s been crashing here almost every night since he escorted me to the villa.At this point, he’s practically my roommate.

The woman scrambles to hide her face, but there’s only one bobbed blonde with purple highlights in this place.

Eleni.Tazi’s wife.

“Keep going,” Luca urges her, throwing me a wink.“She’s chill.She won’t talk.”

Grabbing my laptop, I toss him a reprimanding glare and head back out.

Once outside, I slide into a golf cart, drive to an empty, sloping stretch of land, and call Lorenzo.

He answers on the first ring.“Raya.”