CaraThe shadiest car rental place in the world gets the eighth credit card to work and lets me drive off in a thirty-year-old Nissan Altima that jolts and stutters as I cruise away from Chicago.I'm thinking about Eros the whole way.I should have my future at the top of my mind—I still don't know where I'm going or if I'll sleep in a warm bed or in the back seat of this dumpy car—and my stomach's beginning to rumble. Fortunately, I stole food from the Drake's complimentary breakfast table, but that won't last forever.I still can't get Eros out of my mind.It's not just the sex. I mean, yeah, it's the sex. That was really good sex. But it's also the way he looked at me, and spoke to me, and touched my skin, and later, the way he gave me his card even though I went full-on crazy on him with all that cash and definitely ruined whatever deal he was setting up with those union guys.He should've killed me. If I blew a meeting as big and as important as he said, a lesser man would've hur
ErosI drink the good, strong coffee and cross my legs. The diner is quiet at mid-morning after the breakfast rush and I'm only half listening to Lycus as he goes over the day's schedule.My mind's on the girl behind the counter with her hair pulled up in a messy bun, looking lost and overwhelmed and so fucking beautiful it's like a railroad spike in my chest.Cara glances over and smiles uncertainly at me. I don't smile back, which makes her roll her eyes as she gets back to refilling salt shakers.It's been a week since I paid off that predatory rental place and that asshole tow truck driver and used my connections to make the cops go away. Since then, I got her hired here, a diner run by a client of the Khazan family, a nice older Greek man named Demetrios. He manages the place along with his wife and daughter, two of the strongest and most intense Greek women I've ever met in my life, and that's saying something. I got her an apartment in a house owned by a Greek woman named Hermi
ErosShe whimpers when I peel her tights off. She's in one of those typical diner waitress uniforms with a skirt and a button-down front. Demetrios keeps it old school in his establishment, and in this moment, I love him for it, because I have easy access to Cara."Is this why you keep staring at me?" she says as I kiss her thinner thigh. She digs her fingers into my hair. "You've been waiting for the chance to corner me?""If I wanted to take you, I would've taken you at my pleasure." I lick her pussy from top to bottom and lap her juices up before kissing her again, making her taste herself on my tongue. She moans as my fingers do their work, teasing her."They talk about you, you know," she says as I move back down and lick her slowly, tasting her folds and loving every second of it. I murmur in Greek again, loving her honey on my tongue."And what do they say?" I ask.She pulls my hair as my fingers slide inside of her. "They call you the lord-like you're some medieval knight or w
CaraI bury my face in my hands in the alley behind the diner as Ophelia cackles with pure and unbridled delight. "I knew Eros Khazan was into you but I had no clue he was that into you," she says, and I want to melt into the street and disappear."It's not like that," I tell her even though it sounds totally hollow, because it's kind of hard to deny what she saw."Oh, it's not? So you just let random guys go down on you in the break room of my dad's diner all the time?""No!" I say and pull my knees to my chest. "Just Eros. Apparently. And only that one time.""Right, well, it sounds like he's into you." She sits down next to me, grinning her head off. "Seriously, Cara, he's been coming into the diner every day since you started and all he does is stare at you. How can you sit there and act like there's nothing happening between the two of you?""Because there's not," I say which is almost true. Things with Eros are complicated. He saved my life back at that stupid car rental place,
CaraI walk up the stairs on numb, wooden legs, and Hermia flutters behind me like a moth. "Maybe we should call Mr. Khazan, yes?" She sounds frightened, and I can't blame her. "He told me to call right away if something like this happened."Christopher can be terrifying when he's in a mood, and I can't blame Hermia for being nervous. If she saw my ex ripping my place to pieces then she must be panicking."I don't want to bother Eros," I say quietly. It's like my voice emanates from deep inside my body and I'm watching it from a distance.I know rationally I should get Eros involved, but I just found out that he's a Greek gangster and I'm feeling a little strange about him at the moment.I live in a building with five other units. It's an old, converted townhouse. Hermia lives on the bottom floor and while I don't know my other neighbors, they all seem nice enough.I reach the stop of the steps and pause outside of my apartment. The door is splintered and broken, the lock a mangled ru
CaraHot water rushes down my face. I stand in the shower and let it scald the horrible thoughts from my mind, the bad memories, the barely healed bruises.Christopher was here. He was here, in this apartment, ripping through my things for his own sick pleasure. I don't know how he found me, but my ex-husband has connections, the kind of connections I hoped wouldn't be of much use.But apparently, I was wrong.I should've left Chicago. I thought Eros was right—it's a big city. I could get lost here, disappear forever in this tiny little Greek neighborhood, and Christopher would never be the wiser. He'd be too busy trying to track me down back home in Philadelphia.But I'd never go back to that place. I'd never return to my parents and their dump of a South Philly row home with the rats in the basement and the leaking roof and the constant scorn and their anger. Mom hating Dad and Dad hating Mom, both of them locked in some sick duel to the death, a slow-motion murder. They despise eac
CaraEros puts a cup of coffee in front of me and folds himself into the opposite chair. We're in an upscale cafe a couple blocks from the apartment while his guys clean up the mess and repair the door. I accept it wordlessly and take a long sip, letting the heat and caffeine sit in my stomach and start to wake me up."Tell me about him." Eros stares at me with that intense focus like he's raking over my skin with scalpel, peeling me apart and studying what he finds. I squirm uncomfortably, and I don't want to tell him anything, but at this point I can't keep on hiding the truth from him.Because he's more like my ex-husband than I ever dreamed."We met when I was eighteen." I close my eyes and think back to those early, heady days. Christopher was a guy from the neighborhood, a friendly guy that everyone liked. He was handsome, and he had money, and my parents were always encouraging me to go out with him. They said he'd be good for me. They said I needed a decent man in my life.We
ErosI park in front of a decent townhouse in the Pilsen neighborhood directly south of Little Italy and University Park. It's a vibrant place filled with murals, restaurants, cafes, and Italians. Lots and lots of Italians.The Pavone Famiglia always had a presence in Chicago. Their roots went back generations, and they held on to the relatively small Little Italy for years and years. Mostly, their home base was Philadelphia, but they ran some rackets and made some books among their own people for the most part, and we ignored them for a long while. They didn't give us much trouble—we controlled better turf and outnumbered them ten-to-one—until the last few years. More and more of their members began moving out from the East Coast and putting down roots in Chicago, swelling their numbers, and pushing their borders in all directions.The block is nice, shady, and quiet. It doesn't look like the kind of place a mobster would make a home.But looks don't mean a goddamn thing in this busi