Chapter 7

Cecilia's POV

The words landed like a fist to the sternum.

I sat there on that cold bench outside Terrence's shop, phone still pressed to my ear, the gray dawn pressing in from all sides, and I didn't say anything for a moment. Couldn't.

The plastic wrap over my fresh tattoo pulled against my shoulder blade with every shallow breath, and somewhere behind me I could hear the buzz of the needle starting up again for whoever had walked in after me, and all I could think was: of course.

Of course he knows.

Of course he's coming back.

"Jinx." Danny's voice came through the speaker, quieter now, careful. "You still there?"

"Yeah." I cleared my throat. "I'm here."

"He heard about what happened tonight," Danny said. "You stepping in for that new girl and getting yourself grabbed in front of the whole floor. He thought you put yourself in a stupid amount of danger over someone who was not your problem."

My hand twitched.

I stared at the empty street in front of me, at the thin layer of snow that had settled overnight over the grime and the tire tracks, and I let out a short, quiet laugh that didn't feel like laughing at all.

"He heard about that," I said. "Wow. He really does pay attention, doesn't he."

"Don't do that," Danny said.

"Do what? I'm being sincere. It's almost touching. My father, keeping tabs on a minor altercation at a nightclub from however many miles away he currently is." I paused. "That's practically a greeting card."

"Cecilia."

He only used my actual name when he was serious, and the sound of it now made something small and stupid tighten in my chest.

"He wasn't happy about it. He doesn't understand why you insist on doing this when you don't have to. His words, not mine."

"His words," I repeated. "Right. Because it's such a mystery. Why would anyone choose to earn their own money instead of sitting in a glass box on the forty-seventh floor waiting for someone to decide what they're allowed to do that day."

Danny exhaled, long and slow, the sound of a man choosing his battles. "He asked me why you're still working the floor. Said something about how you could be living like a proper young lady instead of hauling bottle service at two in the morning." A beat. "Again, his words."

"He says that every time."

"He called me directly this time, Jinx. Asked about you specifically. Wanted to know you were alright after the incident."

There was something almost tired and almost fond in Danny's voice.

I didn't say anything to that.

There was a version of me that wanted to, the version that was seven years old and had thought Dante Moretti was the safest person in the world, and that version still surfaced sometimes at the worst possible moments, inconvenient and embarrassing and completely impossible to fully drown.

"He also told me to keep an eye on you," Danny continued, and his voice shifted slightly, back into the register he used when he was delivering information he knew I wasn't going to like. "Personally. While he's away. Which means, and I need you to hear this clearly, I cannot approve your leave request."

There it was. Wrapped in the softest possible language, delivered with the most reasonable possible tone, but the shape of it was the same as it always was: you don't go anywhere he hasn't decided you can go.

"Danny," I said.

"He cares about you, Jinx. In whatever way he's capable of. I do think that part's real."

He paused, and when he spoke again his voice had dropped further, the way it did when he was choosing every single word.

"But it doesn't change my answer. You come in tomorrow. You work your shift. You stay where I can see you. Those are his instructions, and honestly, right now, they're mine too."

I pressed my thumb against the plastic wrap over my tattoo until I felt the sting of it through the bandaging, sharp and grounding and real.

Outside, a garbage truck rumbled past two blocks over, and somewhere a pigeon made a noise like a small complaint, and the dawn kept coming in gray and thin and completely indifferent to any of this.

"Fine," I said. My voice came out flat and even, which I considered a personal achievement. "I'll be in tomorrow."

"Good girl."

I hung up before he could say anything else.

For a long moment I sat there on that bench and I thought about ten million dollars.

Just ten million and you're done.

I went home, slept for four hours, and woke up already calculating.

My usual strategy was a specific kind of ugly: too-pale foundation, clumped mascara, liner applied with the apparent intention of frightening small children, a look that said sad and harmless and please don't look at me too closely.

But tonight I went in a completely different direction.

I found the darkest foundation I owned, several shades too deep for my complexion, and I applied it thick and flat with no blending at the edges and no warmth added back anywhere.

I drew my brows in heavy and low, gave myself a blunt, shapeless lip that made my face look wider than it was, and finished with a muddy brownish eyeshadow that aged me by a decade in the most unflattering possible direction.

No shimmer. No definition. Nothing that caught light or invited a second look.

I stepped back and looked at myself in the mirror for a long moment.

Even someone who knew my face would have had to look twice.

Which meant that if I happened to run into a certain green-eyed man tonight, he would have absolutely no reason to look twice at all.

Good.