Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 59738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
I’m eager to get started, but apparently Crow isn’t on the same page. I’ve been here all night and the room is starting to spin. I’m tired, cold, and my stomach aches with a pervasive hunger that seeps into my bones. I just really fucking need this job.
A shadow falls over me, and when I look up, I find myself in the crosshairs of a pair of eyes so green they should be illegal. A shiver crawls across my neck as my eyes move over the towering stranger who just entered my orbit unbidden. He’s tall, built, and mysterious in a way that only a mafioso could be. I know before he even opens his mouth that this guy is part of Crow’s crew. He’s as Irish as the day is long, but he’s younger than the other guys I’ve seen lurking around here. Not quite as rough around the edges. His face isn’t as weathered, but there’s something colder about him. There’s a hardness in his features that tells me he’s not a man to be easily won over.
He jerks his chin in my direction, eyes narrowed as he examines me. “I’m Conor. Crow sent me to show ye the ropes.”
I sit up a little straighter, feeling small and unsure of myself under the weight of his gaze. “Hi. I’m Ivy.”
“Ivy.” He rolls the name over his tongue with an Irish accent dipped in sin. “That sounds like a made-up name.”
“Well, it isn’t,” I assure him. Even if it is my middle name, it’s still my name. I figured it only made sense to use that instead of my first name Elizabeth, which the Locos know me as.
Conor’s gaze cuts over my face with laser precision, and whatever he thinks he sees in me makes his lip curl in disgust. Heat climbs up the flesh of my throat and it burns with repressed hate for men like him. Men who think they fucking know me with one glance. I’ve seen it a thousand times over. They mistake me for weak. A skinny orifice with big boobs and no brains. The misconceptions are endless. I must be a user because I’m gaunt and lifeless, not because I’m starving. I must be a whore because I was with Muerto. Surely, I asked for it.
I’ve seen it all before. So Conor’s quiet judgment means nothing to me, or at least it shouldn’t. But for some reason, if I’m being honest, it stings a little more than all the others. Maybe I was wrong, but when our eyes connected, it felt like I saw something else in him. Something other than a mafia asshole.
Regardless, his opinion doesn’t matter. I have no interest in a guy like Conor or what he might think of me. The faster I can get the hell away from him and everyone else like him, the better off I’ll be.
“What do you need to show me?” I ask, my voice harder than it was just a moment ago.
Conor doesn’t budge, and neither do I. He won’t take his eyes off me, and I’m too paralyzed to move. He’s watching me carefully, waiting for me to crack while he picks me apart until I feel raw inside. My hands squeeze together in my lap in an effort to diffuse the tension, but all I really want to do is curl up in a ball and hide.
Finally, Conor turns and makes a flippant gesture with his hand. “Follow me to the back. I’ll show you where the dressing rooms are.”
I follow him down the hall, trying to focus on my surroundings, but instead, my gaze bores into Conor. There’s a pronounced swagger to his walk that tells me he’s confident in his abilities, and granted, he probably should be. He’s broad shouldered and built like a fighter, and I could almost bet he looks airbrushed underneath that jacket. His hands are so fucking big he could probably wrap them around my neck twice while he smokes a cigarette and strangles me with two fingers.
I wonder how many people he’s killed. And then I wonder something even worse. Is he banging the dancers here every night? Is that why he’s in charge? But one look at his stony jaw, and I know that can’t be right. He doesn’t look like the kind of man who gets enjoyment out of much of anything. He probably fucks like a Viking, tossing women aside when he’s done impregnating them with sons for his clan.
I shake myself out of it when he turns to me, and his eyes move over me with a roughness they didn’t possess just a few moments before. “I hope ye know how to fix yourself up. That mess ye’re sporting now isn’t going to fly.”
My jaw tightens, but I force a smile, reminding myself how much I need this job. “It’s not a problem.”