Jim leaned in slowly, his pale eyes as dead as stone. “If I tell you anything, I’d have to kill you, Vin. And that would be a buzz kill for the both of us.”

So that tat wasn’t just something the guy had seen on a wall in some two-bit piercing and body art parlor and gotten it inked onto himself because he thought it was cool. Jim was the real deal.

“I am so curious about you,” Vin murmured.

“I suggest you get over that.”

“Sorry, my friend. I’m a tenacious motherfucker. Lest you think I just won the lottery to get all this crap you’re gawking at.”

There was a pause, and then Jim’s face broke into a small smile. “So you want me to think you have balls, do you.”

“Believe it, my man. And word to the wise, they’re as big as church bells.”

Jim settled back in his chair. “Oh, really. Then why are you sitting on that ring?”

Vin narrowed his eyes, anger flaring. “You want to know why.”

“Yeah. She’s an incredibly gorgeous woman and she looks at you like you’re a god.”

Vin tilted his head to one side and spoke what had been banging around his head since the night before. “My Devina went out last evening wearing a blue dress. When she came home, she immediately changed out of it and took a shower. This morning, I pulled the thing out of the dry-cleaning hamper and there was a black smudge on the back of it—like she’d been sitting somewhere other than on a neat and tidy chair in a bar. But more than that, Jim, when I lifted the dress to my nose, I smelled something on the fabric that was a lot like men’s cologne.”

Vin measured every single one of the guy’s facial muscles. Not one of them moved.

Vin sat forward in his chair. “I don’t need to tell you that it wasn’t my cologne, do I. And it might interest you to know that it smells a hell of a lot like yours—not that I think you were with her, but a man wonders when his woman’s clothes smell like someone else, doesn’t he. So you see, it’s not because I don’t have balls. It’s because I wonder who else’s she’s been touching.”

CHAPTER
10

Well, wasn’t this a fucking party.

As Jim stared across the desk at his host, he realized it had been a long, long time since he’d met a man he’d been impressed by—but Vin diPietro did the trick. SOB was calm, cool, collected. Smart as shit, and not a pussy.