Page 33 of Keep Him Like Secrets

“Would you do me a favor?” he asked as he walked me to the door.

“Okay…”

“Can you text me when you get home, so I know you got there safely?”

Alright.

This time it was my heart doing a little clench.

Which was even more unnerving.

“Uh, sure. Okay.” I stepped inside the car.

“Saffron,” he called.

“Yeah?”

“Right when you get home.”

I wasn’t prepared for the simultaneous heart and sex clench. But there it was.

“Okay.”

Before he could say anything else, the doors slid closed, and the train was shooting off.

Soren wasn’t exactly wrong to be suspicious of the guys who, upon closer inspection, looked closer to twenty or twenty-one and almost immediately started to glance over at me.

I hated that he had such good instincts.

And was even more curious about what his life was like before becoming some nightclub mogul because of them.

“Today is not the day,” I said, moving over toward a seat. “And I am not the one.”

“Oh, please, what could you possibly—” the bolder of the group—all swagger, no brains—said as he moved closer.

“If you so much as think about it,” I said, casually sitting down and crossing my legs, “I will cut offyourdick and shove it downhisthroat,” I said, pointing for emphasis. “Then cut offhisand stick it upyourass.”

To drive home how willing I was to do it, I reached down into the bodice of my dress and pulled out my knife from where it was sitting between my breasts, the metal warm from my skin.

I flicked it open.

“Want to know how a little thing like me got to be a capo in the Lombardi crime family?” I asked, slowly getting to my feet and stalking closer to the leader of the group. Who suddenly looked close to making the train car smell even more like piss than it already did. “Or are you going to be good little boys, sit your asses down, and study your goddamn feet?”

Unsurprisingly, they went with the latter option.

I wasn’t naive; I knew it was the family name, not necessarily me, that made them decide to behave. But a win was a win, and I would take it.

Besides, I knew the threat wasn’t an empty one.

I’d done arguably more unhinged things in the name of my family and reputation. Or my own personal safety.

Even if I was glad to make it out of the subway without getting blood all over Soren’s nice jacket.

“Of course,” I said, reading the signs as I made my way up the steps and onto the street.

Only I would take the train right into the worst neighborhood in Brooklyn just to get away from Soren and my overwhelming urge to sayscrew itto my job—and common decency laws—and demand he fuck me right up against the wall at the platform.

Not in the mood for another trip underground, I flagged down a cab that took me all the way back to where we started from, dropping me off outside my apartment building.

---