I shook those thoughts away, thinking instead of the revenge romance I had waiting for me at home.

I could think about Soren Vale some other time.

CHAPTER TWO

Saff

Life went back to so much normal for so long that I almost forgot all about the plan to become a fake businesswoman.

Until, of course, my new cell Renzo had given me solely for dealing with legitimate business stuff started to ring.

I was so shit at playing my part that I swiped to answer before Bastian pulled it out of my hand with an exasperated look.

“Hello? Yes, this is Miss Amato’s phone. Who am I speaking to?”

Leave it to Bastian, a former street kid who’d spent years in prison, to have better manners than me.

“Tomorrow?” he asked, looking at me. I gave him a shrug. “She might be able to fit that in. What time? Three? Yes, that will work. What’s the address?”

Bastian snatched my other phone out of my hands, typing on it to, I imagine, get the address down before he forgot it.

“She will be there. You too. Bye now.”

“’Bye now,’?” I asked, brows raising.

“Businesspeople don’t just hang up like a certain someone,” he said, giving me a knowing look as he passed me back both my phones.

“I’m having a meeting with Vale?”

“He wants to discuss the deal at his main office. But I imagine he is also going to want a tour of the venue. So you might want to get your lazy ass over there to check it out, so it seems like you actually own the place. Or do you have some serial killer who falls in love with an undercover FBI agent to read about?”

I didn’t snap at him for two reasons. One, I knew I wasn’t lazy. I worked twice as hard as any of the men to get the same level of respect on the streets and among other crime syndicates. Two, well, I had been lazy about the whole nightclub thing. Sure, I’d signed the paperwork with Renzo. I’d even bought myself some “respectable” clothes with the help of Elian’s girl, Elizabeth. I figured her experience as a former political campaign manager meant she had a finger on the pulse of what was appropriate to wear to professional events.

Other than that, though, the closest thing you could say I’d done to research was participate in book club, where we read a romance about some cold hard rich bitch who owned a bunch of companies and was having an affair with the man who wanted to buy her out.

To be fair, it was more coital reverie than, you know, plot.

We’d spent almost the entire book club discussion ranking the various sex scenes in order of both sexiness and believability.

We were shocked to realize there were twenty such scenes.

In a two-hundred-fifty-page book.