Chapter 96 - She swam right into my hand.

Rino

─𖤝─

I tried not to think about her after I hung up.

I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of my office, watching the city, traffic smeared red and white across the streets. People rushed, worked, sweat, lived, died but her voice still clung to the inside of my skull.

She sounded like a wounded thing pretending it wasn’t bleeding.

I shouldn't have enjoyed that.

I did.

The office behind me echoed with occasional muffled footstep or the whisper of the central AC. My desk lay in the center of the room, black marble, sharp edges, polished enough to reflect the city lights and the veins on my hands.

I turned back to my desk, the documents were neatly stacked, contracts, acquisition proposals, the façade of my “legitimate holdings.” A Lombardi-owned corporation that washed money cleaner than any priest’s hands.

I traced the rim of my glass with my thumb, top-shelf bourbon, aged twenty-eight years. Strong enough to bite, but smooth enough to make the bite addictive. Her breat