My eyes snap to the elevator.
Red.
Green.
Pink.
It's only a glimpse. An inch of space between two sliding doors, filled with blonde, sparkles, and heels. But it turns out, I'm no better than my brother, because an inch is all it takes for my spine to jerk straight.
Self-disgust wraps around my neck like a noose. I'd rather be stabbed in the groin ten times over than in the same boat as Rafe, but just like him, I can't look away.
The doors slide all the way open. A pool of gold light spills out onto the concrete, and when she steps into it, my muscles harden to stone, because—
That. Fucking. Dress.
It's the first thing I notice and the only thing I see. Not that there's much of it to see. I've used more fabric to polish a damn gun.
My blood heats and my gaze thins, carving a line of fire down the length of her. The neckline is as low as the hemline is high, and what little there is in between clings to every curve and dip like it's been vacuum-sealed to her body.
A hot hiss escapes my nostrils. Christ. She's poured into that thing like hot honey.
I glare until the sparkles make my eyes sore, then palm my jaw and look up at the craggy ceiling for relief. Of all the fucking things to curse, I choose my father's name.
Ten rules, yet none of them were relevant to civilized society. I never learned how to share, say sorry, or play fairly. Every lesson revolved around anger, and though I learned how to channel it into my fist or trigger finger, I never learned what to do with it when it didn't fit the crime.
I was taught that unwarranted anger is as good as any. But despite my fucked-up childhood, somehow my prefrontal cortex developed just enough to recognize the difference.
Did I know it was unwarranted when I caught Rafe's lackey undress Her with his eyes? Yes.
Did it stop me from clawing said eyes out with my car key and tossing his body, heart still beating, into the same body bag as Kelly O'Hare?
Of course not.
Guess I've never cared for the distinction.
My gaze drifts back down to locate her. She's still hovering in the entryway, flanked only by Tayce and Penny—thank fuck. But even though she's not hanging off some cunt's arm tonight, the mere idea of her hanging off anyone at all makes my skin burn.
The memory of yesterday's tender ride sparks behind my eyeballs like a blown fuse.
Her drunken grin, her fingers flying across her cell screen in earnest. There's no doubt about it—the girl was drugged up on another man's attention.
Side effects must have included a heavy case of delusion.
It's the only explanation for why she had the nerve to suggest I had a crush on her.
The thought curdles in my chest. Me, of all people. A crush of all things.
If she wasn't as high as a kite when she said it, then I'd love to know what I've ever done to give her that idea. Couldn't have been because I threatened to cut out her tongue or because I strung her up in my garage like a freshly slaughtered lamb.
And if it was, then, fuck, guess she's more of a psychopath than I am.
I take a sip of whiskey to give my hands something to do.
I glare at her over the rim of the glass, watching as she peers around the room with a wide-eyed curiosity.
She runs a hand along the length of her ponytail, then smacks her lips together.
The piano is loud, the laughter louder; I can't hear the pop her lips make, but I feel it like a bullet to the groin.
Another gulp of liquor, just to numb the pain.
Fucking crush. Sure, she's objectively beautiful; anyone with eyes and a shred of mental capacity can see that.
She's got that all-American girl-next-door thing going on.
You know, if the girl next door was of the curtain twitching variety and always knew whether you were coming or going.
She'd probably slip passive-aggressive notes about the state of your lawn under your door too, signed with a smiley-face and a kiss.
She trails Tayce and Penny through the club, and because the girl's a magnet, my eyes move with her. Arms stiff at her sides, she weaves between tables, careful to keep a wide berth, as if she's read in a gossip magazine or something that gambling addictions are contagious.
But watching her brings this weird lump to my throat and turns my whiskey sour. Only when a drunken cheer shoots across the room and she clutches her heart-shaped purse to her chest do I reluctantly realize what it stems from.
She doesn't belong here. Hell, she doesn't belong in the dark at all. She looks like cotton candy dunked into an ashtray. An angel who took a wrong turn on the way to heaven. She looks like she knows it too.
Something primal and protective stirs beneath my skin.
It's making me consider dragging her out of here by her silk ponytail and flinging her far away to some distant sunny place, where darkness and panic attacks and other men can't touch her.
I'd keep her as happy and as perfect as the day I met her.
My gaze slides down to the top of her thighs.
I'd keep her dressed in rags, too.
Christ. I slam down my whiskey glass and give it a rough shove so it's out of my reach. No more of that crap tonight; it's turning me batshit crazy.
Aware that my glaring will only feed into her stupid "crush" idea, I busy myself with loading cards back into the automatic shuffler. But I don't have to look to know she's closing in, because I can feel it.
She's like a lit match, her heat licking up the side of my neck, flames crawling higher with every click of her heels.
Maybe if I weren't so tuned in, or maybe if it wasn't so out of place in this cave bar, I wouldn't catch the sound of her laugh.
For the second time tonight, my eyes snap up. They lock on a hand wrapped around her upper arm. It flashes red, green, red again. I trail along a suited limb to find its owner—a server. The drinks on his tray are trembling, and she's inspecting her dress. He must have bumped into her.
It's not a threatening grip, more of a steadying one. And maybe if I were in a better mood, I'd consider letting it slide. But as he walks away, he makes the mistake of stopping. He glances over his shoulder, and runs an eye from her bare back right down to her ass.
With an odd sense of calm, I finally understand why Rafe blew O'Hare's brains out, and why Cas is thirty seconds away from going nuclear.
Visconti men don't need to love something to hate seeing it in someone else's hands.
Guess it's just not what we were born to do.