Page 58 of Pretty Dark Vows
I shrug. “Nope.”
She laughs, and some of the pain in her eyes bleeds away a little. “Oh, so you were immaculately conceived? Come on, Dante. Fair’s fair. Give me more than that.”
I grin. “Mom was never in the picture, but guess I turned out okay anyway, just like you. Except in my case, my dad gets the credit. He’s the one who raised me.”
Raised me and trained me up well before he died, but she doesn’t need to know about that. My father’s death wasn’t pretty, and when I avenged it, I made sure the man who took him out paid for that—but guess going out the way Dad did wasn’t exactly surprising for a trained assassin who had as many enemies as he did kills by the end.
Riley cocks her head to the side, studying me. “You love him.”
Loved. Past tense. Kind of rattles me that she sees through me so clearly, though.
“Blue and purple, huh?” I say, changing the subject as I gesture to her hair with my fork. “I like it.”
She touches the messy locks, tangling the strands around her fingers in a way that’s sexy as fuck without meaning to. “Thanks. I dyed it for better tips.”
I smirk. “Bet it worked.”
“Fuck yeah, it did. It makes me look more mysterious and glamorous or something.” She chuckles, then glances away, still playing with a lock of her hair. “It makes it easier,” she adds quietly.
My brows furrow. “Makes what easier? Stripping?”
She nods, then shrugs. “It gives me sort of a ‘character’ to slip into when I’m on stage, so I can keep a little distance between the real me and all those shitbags who come to watch.”
I think of how she looked on stage that night, and how she looks to me now. There’s no denying she was sexy as fuck, drawing the attention of every red-blooded man in the shitty strip joint… but it’s nothing compared to how gorgeous she is in her jeans and loose-fitting, casual top, sitting across from me in this diner.
I’m glad I get to see this side of her, instead of just the character she puts on when she’s stripping, and I get a sudden urge to tell her something real about myself. Something beyond just the charmingly dangerous persona I show to the world.
“You know, I was actually with another gang before I joined the Reapers,” I say, and Riley’s brows shoot up in surprise.
“And?” she prompts after a minute.
Even if I don’t think West Point planted her, there’s no way in hell it would be smart to give her too much detail about my history. I grin, leaning back and casually draping my arm over the back of the booth as I shrug and deflect her question.
“And the Reapers won me over,” I tell her. “Loyalty is…”
I trail off, not quite sure how to finish that sentence. There’s no description that quite does justice to that word.
Loyalty, or the lack of it, is what got my dad killed. It’s a concept I thought I understood when I was younger, but didn’t. Not until Maddoc showed me what true loyalty was meant to look like.
“It’s everything,” Riley says, finishing the sentence I left hanging and jolting me out of the unwelcome trip down memory lane.
My eyes snap up to meet hers. They’re fucking gorgeous. A deep brown that’s warm and mesmerizing, like melted chocolate.
“Yeah, it is,” I agree, because even though that still doesn’t quite sum up the word, it’s as close as either of us will get.
There’s a long moment where she holds my gaze, then she shakes her head and stabs at a piece of sausage with her fork. “So you’ve been involved in… this life for a long time, then?”
“Yeah.” I click my tongue against my teeth. “For most of my life, really, in one way or another. Even before I was officially a member of any gang, I crossed paths with them a lot. I’ve never had a nine to five, let’s just put it that way.”
“Right.” She snorts, digging into the food again with gusto.
She really was hungry, and I like the way it feels to fix that. I also like how hard she tries to keep her walls up as we talk, as if our conversation is a game of chess, although I like the moments when those walls come down even better.
We keep chatting as we eat, talking about mostly random bullshit, and then Riley pauses and bites her lip, putting her fork down. “I, um...”
“What?”
Her cheeks go pink, a lighter shade than back at the house, and I commit that color to memory too. “I need to use the bathroom,” she says, looking simultaneously annoyed and flustered that she needs to spell it out. “I’m not asking for permission or anything,” she clarifies quickly, defiance flashing across her face. “I just want you to know I’m not going to try to run.”