Before Page 2

  Those weren’t really her things.

  Kind of came with the territory, though.

  Models were expected to be a lot of things. Most importantly at this stage in Gigi’s fledgling career, available. Pleasant. Ready at a moment’s fucking notice. Her weight couldn’t—or rather, shouldn’t—fluctuate more than a pound or two as though it really made a difference on her tall, slender frame. She couldn’t cut her hair or change the style from the shoulder-length, loose dark blonde waves her mother agency settled on as the best look to showcase what they considered to be her ... strangely beautiful features.

  Sure, strangely beautiful was one way to put it. Growing up, the only thing she wished she could do was hide the freckles that always showed through her makeup no matter how much she tried to put on. She begged her mother to have the gap between her two front teeth fixed because no matter what, the full, round bow of her upper lip always showed it off regardless of what she did to hide it. Kids teased that her vivid green eyes, always wide, made her an alien because no one else had that color but her. Add in the flat, wide slope of her nose and eyebrows that were darker than the hair on her head, and well ... there was never a lack of jokes where her looks were concerned.

  Funny how the same features that she was once teased about were now the things that everyone promised would someday put her under the brightest of lights all across the globe. The right person needs to see that face of yours, her mother, Kimie, used to tell her, and still did, and they’ll find their muse, Gigi Rey Parker. Don’t you ever stop showing it off.

  Part of her felt like she was living her mother’s dream for her just as much as her own. Especially because her mother left her own budding modeling career to keep and raise the baby she became pregnant with at just twenty-one, and alone seeing as how her father had never been in the picture, well ... she didn’t want to let her mom down, either. Even if at first, her mom hadn’t wanted her to model at all.

  That was how, barely six months past her seventeenth birthday, Gigi found herself leaving her small New Jersey town for New York City. Where she then signed the rights to her future over to MGNT Modeling without truly understanding what it meant. Everyone else said she was beautiful—that she was going to be a star.

  So much so, that she wanted it, too.

  Three years later with an entire portfolio in hand, a few small runway shows under her belt, and a handful of magazine shoots, and she wasn’t any closer to seeing those bright lights than she had been when she first showed up in New York.

  The whispers from other models in the agency—it was hard to make friends outside of the modeling circle when every day revolved around making it—were starting to creep into Gigi’s own thoughts. Especially when she made it back to her Brooklyn apartment that she shared with her roommate because the day was over, and the only thing she had were the thoughts in her head screaming at her. You’re too old. If you haven’t made it yet, you won’t. Maybe you’re just ... not what people are looking for, Gi. I mean, look at you. Not that she ever voiced it out loud or said a word to anyone about those self-doubts and fears.

  If she did, they won.

  Instead, she kept on keeping on.

  Go-sees.

  Castings.

  Whatever she was told to do, she did it.

  Maybe that was why, as her roommate and for all purposes, best friend, squealed in Gigi’s bedroom doorway at the news she had just shared, all she felt was a sense of surrealism. She somehow managed to float back down to earth, her body becoming hers again as she nodded to the unspoken question coming from Cassie as the girl opened her arms high and wide like she was saying this is it, Gigi.

  Her mother echoed the silent sentiment. “You did it, baby girl! This is your break, Gi. I’m so proud of you.”

  Should she cry?

  Breathe?

  Gigi didn’t know.

  “They’ll want me to fly out to Paris soon, maybe a few days, or a couple weeks,” she said, voice faint. “That’s like ... not very long to prep and—”

  “Who cares? It’s Pierre Missioux,” Cassie crowed, throwing her head back in laughter as she crossed the room. Gigi didn’t even get the chance to respond to that before her friend wrapped her in a hug that ached as much as it felt like a congratulations. “The biggest haute couture designer in Paris. Do you know what that means, Gigi?”

  Sort of.

  Yes.

  No ...

  “You have to celebrate,” her mother said on the phone.

  “Yes. That’s what we’re doing.”

  “But—”

  Cassie cut her hand through the air as she took a step back from Gigi, offering no room for argument when she pointed at the phone and said, “Even Kimie said so.”

  The words came out sing-song.

  Gigi wanted to laugh.

  And cry.

  “Celebrate,” she heard her mother say. “You earned this.”

  “And who knows when you’ll have time to do anything after next week? Did you reply to MGNT’s email yet?”

  Gigi shook her head and finally sat down on the edge of her bed with the laptop still balanced between her hands. If she let it go, then her roommate would see how hard she had been working to hide the trembling in her fingers.

  The nerves.

  All that excitement.

  What happens now?

  Gigi glanced up.

  Cassie stood waiting with hands on her hips and a wide smile at the ready. “Definitely celebrating. I’ll call Matty—he’ll know a good place.”

  How could she say no?

  Gigi was still trying to catch up with everything else. Her entire life was about to change.

  • • •

  Gigi’s idea of a celebration did not include ending up at a dingy bar hosting illegal fights in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen but after slamming back a few of her favorite drinks—compliments of her friend’s boyfriend, no ID needed—it all looked a little better. Alcohol had that effect on people.

  “See that guy over there,” she heard Matty holler over the rising noise in the bar, “black suit, sitting by the big dude with dreads.”

  He nodded—didn’t point, she noticed—across the room from their current position. In the dimly lit bar, a makeshift boxing ring had been set up right in the middle of the scuffed, hardwood floor. Closest to the ring where two men were currently doing their best to beat the hell out of each other, tables filled with a melting pot of different people enjoyed the scene in front of them. More than once, she had noticed money passing hands from different men who approached the tables and then left as quickly as they came. And without much fanfare, either.

  Was it all that much of a shock there was illegal bets going on?

  Not really.

  She also noticed the fact that the people closest to the ring were served first, and were also the patrons who the servers returned to far more often than they did anyone else in the bar.

  The guy Cassie’s boyfriend pointed to, however, didn’t sit at a table like the rest did. Instead, he was one of the only people, other than the guest beside him, who sat in leather, high-back chairs with a small table in the middle for drinks that were regularly refilled before the glasses even had a chance to be emptied. He wore a suit, his cold expression didn’t change, and he rarely took his dark gaze away from the ring even when the man beside him became more and more animated the longer they spoke.

  Cassie nodded, sipping on the gin and tonic the server in a skin-tight dress had brought over earlier when they’d finally managed to gain the woman’s attention on her fifth stroll by their table. “Yeah, what about him?”

  “Mafia.”

  Her friend’s eyes went wide. “Really?”

  Matty nodded, grinning. “Yeah, friend of a friend knows the guy. Comes from the Marcellos. Trying to get on their radar is crazy hard. We’re a fucking blip but not for long, baby.”

  Gigi did her best not to roll her eyes at the way her friend seemed to soak up every sing
le word that came out of her boyfriend’s mouth. He was a big talker who liked to flex and name drop, but she didn’t think that he understood very much of what he spoke about at the end of the day.

  Still, her friend liked it.

  The bad boy.

  Late-night calls; vague details about where he had been and what he’d been doing while he was there; the money. When he had it, that was.

  More than once, Cassie had attempted to get Gigi hooked up with one of Matty’s friends. A guy from the crew, she liked to say. Hell fucking no. Her life was already a spectacularly busy mess without adding something like a guy with shady business into it, too.

  She wasn’t that hard up for dick, either.

  “What’s his name?” Cassie asked.

  “Andino—”

  “I’m gonna head to the bar and just order another drink,” Gigi said, pushing up from the uncomfortable wooden chair at their corner table. “Because I’ve waved at that girl five times, and the last time she even looked at me.”

  But still didn’t make her way over. It wasn’t like the server could pretend she hadn’t seen Gigi that time. No doubt, the black romper and leather jacket she had on that matched the three-inch pumps on her feet didn’t scream the same kind of wealth as the suits and dresses of the patrons closer to the ring. And that was exactly why the girls working the floor selectively chose who they wanted to serve at any given time.

  Bitches.

  “Oh, bring me back another of these,” Cassie said, waving her half-full glass of gin and tonic.

  “They won’t bother IDing you.”

  She passed Matty a look, but he was more concerned with ogling the guy in the black suit across the room that, for whatever reason, he seemed to have a fucking hard-on about. If the guy really was mafia, as he’d said, then she didn’t understand why he would even want to mess with that kind of trouble.

  Matty was bad news, sure.

  Not that kind of bad news.

  Whatever.

  It wasn’t Gigi’s business.

  “Sure, thanks for the info,” she muttered, stepping away from the table. If they cared or noticed that she left, well she couldn’t say because she didn’t bother to glance back over her shoulder.

  The phone in her clutch burned a hole in her mind as she made her way through an overcrowded floor to get to the far end of the bar. She managed to find one stool that wasn’t full. All it took was one good look at the three girls and one guy working the crowd gathering at the bar for drinks to know it was going to be a while before she would get her drinks. Not to mention, the constant stream of servers that returned with trays full of empties and ready for refills.

  Instead, her mind drifted back to the phone as she waited to be noticed and served. She wasn’t going to throw up her hands and shout at the bartenders who were already moving as fast as they possibly could like everyone else was doing. Besides, wasn’t there enough noise in the place without her adding to it?

  She thought so.

  Gigi resisted the urge to pull out the phone just to check the email about Paris one more time—like she hadn’t already done it fifty times since leaving the apartment. As if the email might suddenly disappear, and the dream that had just been placed into her hands would go up in smoke all because she decided to read the email again.

  Still ...

  It was there.

  Real.

  Actually happening.

  Soon, she would be on a plane to Paris, contracted to a satellite agency while working exclusively as a model for a major designer that for whatever reason ... picked her. She had so many questions. Starting with why and ending with how.

  Right then, all she could do was smile.

  “Has anybody ever told you that your face should be on magazines?”

  Gigi’s head popped up as a laugh burst from her lips. The man that had been working with the girls further down the bar approached her spot at the end, passing by at least twenty other people who gestured with a bit more ferocity at his blatant disregard for their shouts and demands. The white tee he wore stretched across the broad bands of muscle that made up an expansive chest. Rolled up at the sleeves, the fabric tightened to show off the way his strong arms and golden skin, dusted with dark hair, glinted under the pot lights that made up the backdrop of the bar when he placed them in front of her spot on the shiny top.

  Black hair, shaved down to a well-groomed buzz, had a blue tint and only added to the sea-color of the stare that flicked over her features and then chanced a glance down at the low dip in the front of her romper. The man had no shame that he was checking her out, but she didn’t really mind all that much, either.

  He wasn’t hard on the eyes.

  It didn’t hurt to look at him.

  Not at all.

  And since he seemed content to drink in a good gulp of her, she did the same for him. Standing at least six and a half feet tall behind the bar, he towered higher than even the shelves of liquor behind him. Strong lines made up a face that didn’t have a hint of boyishness anywhere—not in the scruff that dotted a jaw and cheeks carved from stone. He was all man, all over. A thick brow quirked up when her stare slammed back into his, and a sexy grin stretched his thin lips wide to show off the white teeth that made up his smile.

  And God.

  What a fucking smile it was.

  “Well, have they?” he asked.

  Gigi had enough sense to swallow before she spoke, lest her next words come out in a girlish rush of hormones and stupidity. It wasn’t often a man could make her tongue-tied, and certainly not by only his approach.

  But here she was.

  Suddenly, this celebration was looking way better.

  “It’s not the first time I’ve heard that line, actually,” she replied.

  A laugh burst from his mouth, and yes, she somehow managed to feel that sound all over her body. The noise of the bar began to disappear all around her as the good-looking bartender with a body that looked more suitable to be in the ring than behind the bar leaned in. Edging a bit closer to her, he used his free hand to toss a yellow-checkered bar rag over his broad shoulder.

  The action had her swallowing.

  Again.

  Because she’d noticed his fingers. Their length, the roughness of the digits like he used them a lot, and then their proximity to her when he dared to point one at her.

  “But the better question,” he said, “is whether you’ve ever actually been on a magazine, hmm? Something familiar about that face.”

  “Really? Because everyone likes to say they’ve never seen one like it.”

  Those blue eyes of his blinked.

  Then, he smirked.

  “Maybe that’s it—never seen anything like it.”

  It also wasn’t the first time she had been told that line, either. Except there was something about the way he said it and how his tone dipped at the end. Like his gaze roving down her throat when his tongue peeked out to lick along the seam of his bottom lip.

  “Hey, are you gonna get us a fucking drink or—”

  The bartender held up one large hand to the left, his palm stopping all of two inches away from the face of a beefy guy leaning across the bar top. “I’m only mixing for front tables tonight—fuck off to the other side of the bar before I move you there.”

  Gigi grinned.

  He hadn’t taken his eyes off her.

  “I’m Gigi,” she said.

  He opened his mouth to reply, but the announcer standing at the DJ’s booth just a few feet away from the boxing ring stopped him from saying anything at all when the man’s voice filled the speaker. His attention drifted to the man as he straightened up to his full height, allowing him to easily stare over the crowd of people.

  “Next fight—Lev Arsov versus Draven Kinley. Ten minutes to start—one ten-minute round. Betting begins now.”

  His gaze came back to her, sharper and sexier than ever. This time, that grin of his was a little more sinful and tempting.

&nbs
p; But also dangerous.

  “Looks like I’m up next.”

  Gigi’s head snapped to the side, and she was sure her face reflected the shock radiating through her gut in that moment. He was just a bartender, right? “What?”

  He winked. “Lev Arsov—that’s me. Stick around, Gigi. See what happens next.”

  And what might that be?

  Three

  SOMETHING WAS up.

  Lev knew it the second he stepped inside the ring to fight. Not because he recognized the name of his opponent or even saw the guy before he was in the ring himself. No, he knew something was up because Nickie, who always stuck to the shadows during the fights, made his way to Lev’s side as he neared the ring.

  Just long enough to lean in and say, “Andino wanted me to let you know he’d make it worth your while to end it in a knockout within three minutes.”

  Then, his boss was gone.

  Just like that, Nickie slipped back into the crowd while Lev was left searching for the back of his boss’s head or any other sign of the man. He found none as he slipped under the ropes. His gaze scanned the front tables and soon he landed on the man who had apparently sent the message to him in the first place.

  Andino.

  The mafia Capo sat cool and unbothered in his leather chair; his guest beside him wore a grin as he tried to gain his companion’s attention. Andino simply sipped on a glass of whiskey Lev had poured for him twenty minutes earlier. He shook his head at whatever his companion said to his right, but those cold, dark eyes of his nailed straight into Lev.

  Rarely did the man speak to him.

  Not when he served his drinks.

  Not when he tipped.

  Never.

  Right then, however, Andino tipped his glass in Lev’s direction and then nodded subtly. Just as fast, his attention finally swung to the man at his side, and he rejoined a conversation that he clearly had no interest in entertaining in the first place.

  Yeah.

  Something was definitely up.

  “Fight starts in two minutes!”

  Thing was, Lev didn’t have time to consider it.