Innocent Eyes

by Charlotte E Hart

  But then so is my life.

  The lights dull as I head to the other side of town. Macy’s Cavern is on the outskirts. An old colleague, Marcus Tannery, bought it three years ago after leaving his old life behind. He cleaned himself up, became legit, and now he spends his time entertaining us to the standards we require. Everything is on tap—girls, booze, drugs—as long as we’ve got the cash to pay for it. I have. Not that I need anything other than her legs wrapped around me and a little pain to bring on that whimper that comes from her lips. Fuck, that’s nice. She mewls the sound, lets it come from her as if she’s scared she’ll break, perhaps not giving a fuck if she does or not. A little more backbone, some toughening up, and she’d fit right in around here, be something worth the thought I’m giving her. She could become some kind of permanent fixture in my life, someone to have around and get into whenever I feel like it. Enjoy.

  The hell am I thinking?

  My dice are rolling in my palm by the time I pull up to the building. I don’t know why. There are no decisions to make, no problems to solve. Nothing I can’t work out a logical route for, but still they grind as I get out and pass the keys to the doorman.

  Several guests nod at me as I enter. We’re all the same clientele. Always are. Gangsters, as Emily would call us. Fucking gangsters. Makes us sound like my father would have liked to have been known. Shame he wasn’t quick or clever enough to hold that accolade in his day. Probably did for a while, I suppose. But then he let the booze take over, let his ego be stroked too high so he missed the ground beneath him being raked up and over.

  Nothing was ever more important than ego with him, still isn’t. He never cared for his wife or children. Never gave a damn for any of us. Still doesn’t to this day. It’s what caused his own failure, the fucking sentiment that nearly broke Cane. If you don’t do it to protect what you care for, what’s the damn point? That’s how I keep us strong now. I think of my obligations first, who I need to keep safe. Fuck whatever dirt I have to claw through to make it happen. People die every day whether I kill them or not. That dick just wanted the top-level wealth without the graft, barely able to stand the thought of messing his suit up to get the job done. Never could get his hands fucking dirty.

  Good job he left that shit to me. At least he learnt one thing from his mistake.

  He taught me well.

  Pulling at my cufflinks, I head through the hallways looking over the women and not feeling a damn thing for any of them. My dick’s aimed solely at the innocent eyes that should be waiting for me somewhere in here. She’s nowhere to be seen as I enter the main bar area and look around. There are too many bodies to see clearly so I weave through them, searching, only to come up with fuck all again. I look to the bar and see the regular barman sipping his scotch with a few other guys and lifting his chin at me. He points through to the other small bar, a smirk on his face as he toasts me and wanders off, shaking his head.

  The air clears as I enter the room, the smoke from behind filtering out. I gaze around through the new thinner crowd, this time able to see each and every frame on show. Still I can’t see her. I flick my head back to the main room, becoming irritated with my dick’s weep for entertainment, then hear a sultry giggle coming from the bar. It makes me spin back instantly, hearing the same tones in it that I heard from her on our river walk. And there she is, partially hidden behind Marcus who is hovering around her. My feet are storming across the space before I’ve thought, ready to beat the shit out of anyone who would dare go near her, especially Marcus.

  “You hoping to fuck her?” It’s the first thing I ask him from a foot behind his damn back. He turns on me, eyes level with my chin, and slowly looks up. “’Cause I’m thinking you’ll have to get through me first.” He chuckles and takes a step to the side.

  “She was worth a shot, Quinn.” He’s right, she is. Still, fucker can back right off with his charm and attributes. I stare at him and close the space to her, ownership pouring from every part of my frame. That’s what she is—owned. Mine.

  He chuckles again and tips his glass of amber at me, winking over at Emily. “You know where to find me.” A fucking growl leaves my throat at the thought, enough so that I barely contain the fist that wants to lash out.

  “Thank you for keeping me company, Marcus,” she says. “You’ve been a real help.” Help? The fuck does that mean? I turn to look at her, wondering how Marcus could have been of any help other than giving her information. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. He bought me a drink and filled me in on some… things.” My brow rises at the shortness in her tone as I watch her clamber down from the stool. “I quite like them actually,” she says, tripping over her heels and crashing into my chest. “What are these again?”

  “Bellinis,” Marcus says. “Big ones.” I lift her back onto the seat, putting her down with a thud and listening to her light burst of giggles.

  “Oh, how very Prince Charming of you.” The fuck?

  “How many?” I ask either of them.

  “Two, so far,” he replies, her own mouth too busy gulping down more of the damn stuff. He chuckles and watches her with a smile, shaking his head at something. “Where’d you find her?” he asks. None of his damn business. “I’d say she’s a keeper, Quinn.” The fuck would he know?

  I tighten my hold on her, feeling her ass slipping off the chair again. “Doesn’t matter. You pair have a good night. Enjoy yourself.”

  Enjoy myself? I stare at him again. My dick agrees with the thought, but something about her carefree laughter, or about the fact that she’s drunk, makes me more interested in sobering her up.

  “What are those dice all about anyway?” she asks out of nowhere. “I mean, what grown man plays with dice all the time?” The fuck was that? I let go of her instantly, watching as she slides from the stool and lands vaguely on her feet.

  “Coffee, Marcus. Large,” I snarl out, grabbing her by the arm and leading her over towards the couches. “And two of the specials. Fast.” Marcus nods at me and turns away.

  She snatches her arm away. “Do you always get everything you want?” she huffs, her body brushing past me and heading for the sofa. “Well, I want more bloody Bellinis. That’s what I want.” I watch her for a while, wondering how the hell she thinks having more booze is going to help her situation. She’s too fucking cute, feet still tripping over themselves, her ass swinging to the beat of the music as she reaches for whatever bottle she can find behind the bar. I should fuck her across it, wipe the sass out of her mouth. “In fact, maybe you should have some, too, lighten that attitude up a bit.” I snort, amused at her analysis of me. She’s probably right. I could use a few drinks after today. I’d like nothing more than to get blind drunk. Drunk enough that the world spins for a few days and I can forget everything, remember what it was like when I didn’t have to protect everything. “I could ask how your day’s been, pretend this, whatever it is, is real.”

  She pours something into glasses, adding a cherry she’s found, then pours something else in and pushes one across the bar at me. “So, dice? Let’s try a conversation, shall we?” I narrow my eyes at the idea of explaining anything to her. “Or if you need something a little easier to start, how’s your day been, dear?” She beams at me.

  Angsty is how it’s been. And for some reason, the one thing I need to make that sensation fuck off is sitting right in front of me, her mouth sassing me as she tilts her body towards mine. I smile. She’s the reason for a lot of things and despite everything, I’ve enjoyed every fucking word she’s delivered in this mood.

  “You need to sit down and eat some food,” I say, turning away from her and heading towards the dining tables. “Maybe then you can have some conversation.” She laughs behind me, a sudden eruption of more sultry giggles making me smile and pull out a chair for her. “Ass, sit.”

  “Masterful,” she says, still giggling as she sways her way over.

  She’ll get a lot more than fucking masterful if she carries on much longer.


  Chapter Eighteen

  He smiles at me, that mega-watt beautiful smile that had me on the first date.

  I have no idea why he summoned me here, but I’m done with sitting in the corner and waiting for Quinn to decide what we’re going to do, or allowing his mood to dictate my life. Rody dropped me off at a bar and put me in the hands of a man who was happy to supply me with alcohol. It seems that was the perfect situation to get under Quinn’s skin.

  I stifle another chuckle as I think of his face when he found me at the bar with Marcus. The romantic side of me, the one that has blasted to the forefront of my brain with every sip of Bellini, is enjoying the respite and indulging in this version of a date. Although I can see that Quinn is less than impressed.

  “So, how was your day?” I prompt, serious about making this an actual date.

  “Complicated.”

  “Complicated good, or complicated bad?”

  “A little of both. More of the good, perhaps.” He shows me that smile again, and I struggle to stop my stomach flipping over at how good he looks. And the more he smiles, the better. The man I first met is showing his face more and more frequently.

  “Here you are.” A woman delivers two large mugs of coffee to the table and doesn’t hide the sexy grin she offers to Quinn. I shake my head at her lame attempt to win his attention, not that he appears to look.

  “If you don’t want to talk about your day, how about you explain those dice?”

  A frown creases his brow. The more he resists telling me, the more I want to know. As if it’s a secret puzzle piece to Quinn that will help unlock another part of him.

  “What do you want to know?”

  He’s stalling, but I’m not going to let that stop me. I pick up the bucket of black coffee and take a small sip, hoping my willingness to play along will encourage his loose tongue. The thought of loose tongues has me smiling before I’ve thought. I cough, trying to organise my inappropriate mind fog. “Why do you have them? What do they mean to you?”

  He pulls them from his pocket, as if needing to check that they’re still there.

  “Two steaks, with red wine and shallots.” Marcus interrupts us. I’d love to be annoyed at the intrusion just as I’m getting somewhere, but I can’t. I’m starving.

  “Thank you, Marcus.” I give him a warm smile of thanks, but it seems as though my being friendly to any member of the opposite sex annoys Quinn. As I look at him, he’s staring daggers at Marcus, the v between his eyes deeper than ever. “You can stop looking like that. I was being polite. Marcus has been nothing more than a gentleman, which is more than I can say for you most of the time.” His sudden smirk is disarmingly sexy, killing any element of bite I had in my comment.

  “If I’d known alcohol was the key to bringing you out of your shell, I would have plied you with the stuff earlier.”

  I sink my fork into the succulent steak and begin to cut, shaking my head. “Well, it worked for you the first time, didn’t it?” I counter, before taking a mouthful.

  “If you’re not careful, that’s exactly what will happen here. Gentleman be damned.”

  “Not until I get to the bottom of those dice.” He halts his knife and fork for a beat before continuing. “I mean it, Quinn. You’ve opened up to me before. Is this so hard to do?”

  “No, you’re the only fucking person I’ve talked to about any of this shit. It’s strange, considering talking to someone. It isn’t something I do.”

  “There’s nothing strange about it. You just open your mouth and let the words fall free. You might feel better afterwards?” He looks confused, the meat hovering around his mouth before he bites into it and leans back in his chair.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because I think you carry a burden around with you. Like a type of armour against the world you work in. I want to know more about the man beneath it.” I move my hand to cover his, and for a split second, he lets me. Our eyes meet and lock together. A chaos of thoughts and feelings mix in our eyes as we stare at each other, and I long for him to give me another little piece of him. “You don’t have to carry it alone.”

  The last sentence causes a shift from our moment, his hand pulling away from mine before I can keep it there.

  “Whatever burden you think I might carry is nothing to do with you,” he mutters, looking back to his food.

  The silence continues for a while as we eat, making the air uncomfortable, and I hate the feeling. It makes me edgy again, fearful of what’s coming next. He was coming back to me, that man I first met, and now he’s gone and I don’t know how to reach him when he closes down on me like this.

  My eating becomes more of a nibble, and I try to meet his eyes occasionally. He barely responds, certainly not with conversation, but eventually a smile begins to creep across his features. It’s small, boyish even, making me smile in reply as I slice through my steak.

  “You keep coming for me, don’t you?” I raise my bowed head, looking at him from beneath my lashes. “Ballsy, I’ll give you that.”

  “I’m just trying to understand you,” I reply, looking back at my vegetables and smirking at some kind of near breakthrough.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re—” His knife and fork clatter to the plate suddenly, almost making me jump out of my skin. He smirks.

  “I prefer jumpy. It suits you.”

  I smile at that, for some reason happy with the thought as I close my own cutlery and lean back on the chair.

  “I’d say you enjoy both, Quinn.”

  He pulls in a long breath and stares, his eyes never flickering away from me. They’re the type of eyes that would have made me look away before. I still might sometimes, but not at this moment. We need this. I need this. I need it to make sense of the feelings forming in my heart and what I’m starting to think of as us.

  “Sometimes it wasn’t easy,” he says.

  “What?”

  He chuckles, his smile widening. “You ever done anything wrong?”

  I frown a little, not understanding the question.

  “No, I don’t suppose you have, have you? Never hurt someone. Never had a run-in with the law. Never had to beat a man to get information out of him. Torture him.”

  My eyes glance around, worried someone can hear him. He snorts, dismissing my concerns as irrelevant. “You think you’re not surrounded by men who’ve done worse?” I shake my head, suddenly understanding what he’s saying as I glance again at the people around us. “None of us are born this way, Emily. We’re made. Formed.”

  I nod and blow out a breath, waiting for more and trying to hold my head up regardless of the topic. Any snippet of information, good or bad, is a way of getting inside his head. It’s about him opening up and letting me in.

  “It wasn’t easy at first. Some things were harder to do. The dice helped me choose. Still do.”

  “So the numbers…”

  “Not the numbers, the fall of fate.”

  “You’re saying that you...” I stall my mouth, barely able to get the words about murder and torture out. “That you do what you do based on a pair of dice because you can’t make a decision on right and wrong?” He snarls and drops his eyes, shaking his head.

  “Right or wrong for whom, Emily?”

  “For humanity.”

  He smiles at me so broadly my insides flutter, hardly able to contain my infatuation with his handsome features.

  “And there are those innocent eyes again. Cute.”

  The condescension in his tone makes me glare, unable to stop his comment making me feel belittled in this room. It’s not like I grew up in this like he did. I don’t know how it all works, or why. It’s all horrific as far as I can tell.

  “Calm your ass down,” he says, still smiling at me. “I’m just saying that my sense of humanity is my family alone, nothing more. Threatening them, or me, is like taking a chance with fate, Emily.” He gets the pair of dice out of his pocket again and lays them in the m
iddle of the table, a pair of sixes upwards. “I guess it all became like gambling to me. Serious threats are easy to deal with at the table. Someone pulls a gun, you pull one back and defend yourself, but the minor ones, the ones you have to make decisions about, guard against future threats based on? They’re harder to determine.”

  I don’t understand, but then I’m no gambler. A point proved by my useless attempt in his casino. I frown and cross my arms, annoyed with my own naive view on the topic.

  “Sometimes, I just had to let fate decide the right route forward. Give me a steer through my own indecision.” He shrugs his shoulders. “You want an answer, there it is.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You run what you do, and you do what you do, based on fate?”

  “Not all the time,” he says, getting up. I follow his movements, willing the conversation to continue, while hoping he doesn’t give more than I can take. “If you’d been in my office two hours ago you’d understand that. I’m going to get another drink. Wait here.”

  He walks across to the bar. The woman who delivered our coffee is only too happy to serve him immediately. She’s all fake boobs and inch-thick makeup. From here, it looks like she applied it with a trowel.

  I stand and march over to join him. If he’s getting another drink, I want one, too.

  “Hey, so, what are you ordering?” After the conversation we just had, I need to change the subject and move it to safer territory.

  Quinn looks at me, his eyes drawing together at my question. “A shot. You’ve had enough already.”

  “Really? Since when did you get to decide what and how much I get to drink?” I lean against the bar and wait for his answer.

  “Be careful, Emily.”

  “Oh, come on, Quinn. You brought me to a bar. I can have a drink.”

  The woman behind the bar comes back with a glass filled with clear liquid and places it in front of Quinn. The look she gives me leaves no room for misinterpretation. Her nose scrunches up as she looks down at me.