Furore (The Night Skulls MC #1)(4)
“Even if you’re correct, it’s none of your business.”
“Let me ask you something simpler then for the sake of your intellectual abilities, Miss Meneceo? Are you Italian?”
A muscle ticked in her jaw. “It’s obvious from the name.”
“And you write your first name with a J?”
“Yes,” she stressed impatiently.
With a smirk, I leaned a little bit closer, watching the guard approaching in my peripheral vision. “Allora, my dear Miss Meneceo, the Italian alphabet has twenty-one letters, but J has never been one of them.”
She blanched in a heartbeat, a hitch to her breath.
“Lazzarini, stand straight, and I don’t have all day. Gotta go,” the guard barked.
I took a blank piece of paper she’d missed from the desk and stretched two fingers at her, the ones I used to get a tight pussy dripping. “A pencil per favore.”
She obeyed without a word. Good girl. As I took the pencil, my fingers touched the side of her knuckle and lingered. The little gasp that escaped her mouth and the heat coming from her skin went straight to my cock. Bare skin to a naked flame, only I wasn’t afraid to burn or get burned.
She withdrew her hand quickly as the guard came to the desk and spied what I was writing. “Writing notes outside your notebook isn’t allowed, Lazzarini.”
I put down the pencil and waved my empty hands at him, moving away already. “Relax, babe. It’s just homework.” I glanced at her over my shoulder and nodded at the piece of paper as he grabbed my arm to push me outside. “Here’s your precious assignment…Jo.” Puckering my lips slowly, I whispered her name, and fuck me if it didn’t taste so sweet. “Ci vediamo,” I winked and whistled an old Italian tune on my way out.
CHAPTER 3
Jo
My hands twisted in the sheets as sweat dampened my hair. My eyes clenched along with my jaws while my head pressed into the pillows. A sob rose from my throat as my mind trapped me in a never-ending show of the night that had ruined my life fifteen years ago. “Please,” I whimpered into the darkness.
Bang!
Breathless, I shot up into a sitting position with a scream. My eyes darted around the pitch-black room, and I allowed myself to let out a breath, slow and deep, and then a few more until I calmed down. I was just a grown ass woman, alone in her quiet apartment, swimming in her sweat because she’d had a nightmare.
Even in my sleep, the world damaged my dreams with fear. I’d woken this way every day for the past seven weeks, and the grief that hit me every time was all too familiar. I turned on the bedside table lamp, but the light didn’t take away the pain of missing her…or the guilt of missing him.
For the few months we’d been together, the nightmares were afraid of Tirone. Even when they dared invade our nights, his murmurs would calm me down while his strong arms banished them away.
With a defeated sigh, I staggered to the bathroom. Flinching at the burst of lights, I glanced at my reflection in the mirror and frowned.
The eyes that I’d been hiding behind sunglasses for being too oddly bright to stay inconspicuous weren’t bright at all. I traced the dark shadows under them, my pale skin looking dull and lifeless.
I ran my hand through my hair—I’d been wearing it for so long that it started to feel as my own. I even slept with it just in case I had an unexpected visitor at night, in case I’d been found, like my mom and I were found fifteen years ago.
Blinking the memory and the tears away, I locked the bathroom door. Then I looked around, making sure no one was watching even when I knew for a fact I was alone, and took off the wig.
The cream blond strands fell from the tie and hung lank and dry past my shoulders. Instantly, my hand touched the place on my skull that had been fractured that night and had never healed right. While it no longer hurt physically, it brought a shower of piercing emotional aches that would never go away.
Bracing against the sink, I evened my breath, willing the pain away. I splashed some water on my face and looked back up in the mirror. Fifteen years in hiding made it hard to recognize myself in my own skin. I wished I could have worn colored contacts and dyed my hair permanently to transform into Jo Meneceo forever. But with my severe dry eye syndrome, contacts weren’t an option I could rely on for long. I wore them briefly for identity verification at the prison and sometimes at school when the weather was cold enough to handle the irritation then I took them off the second I could. That stubborn hair wouldn’t relax enough to take all the color. No matter what I did, those roots refused to be anything other than that stupid cream blond that, with those eyes, gave me away.
Even my body wouldn’t cooperate when I’d tried to shed some pounds to look any different from that chubby, eight-year-old girl that was supposed to die that night with her mom. Wigs and sunglasses had become my last lifeline to hide ever since I lost the only parent that ever cared about me and paid her life for it.
Letting out a heated, silent scream, I yearned for the only face that calmed me down and took the pain away. The one I lay bare before without hiding who I was. “I wish you were here,” I whispered, tears falling against my will. “I wish you didn’t leave me like that.”
It was wrong of me to think or feel that way. No matter how hard I missed or needed him, we were never meant to be together for long. We never stood a chance. I should be happy for him that he left. I shouldn’t be angry that he did without a goodbye. I didn’t deserve one.