“Roman!” Her eyes lit up, and she muttered a quick goodbye before turning off the stove and pulling a chair for me to sit down. My childhood house was very…Russian, from the flowery pale wallpaper, heavy curtains, and quilted everything to the kind of heavy carpets you could roll bodies in. In her defense, Sonya Protsenko gave everything a modern twist, so our house looked like a funky IKEA display room. “How are you doing, my darling sun?”

I took the glass of vodka she had offered me, planting a soft kiss on her head. She was dwarfed by my six-two frame, the top of her head barely reaching my shoulders. “I’m drinking vodka in the middle of the day with no shirt on and hanging with my favorite girl. Nuff said. You?”

“Couldn’t be better.” She took a seat across from me, leaning forward and cradling her drink between her fine fingers. “What’s new?”

“I met a girl.”

“You met a girl?”

“I met a girl.” I couldn’t really talk about Jesse with anyone. Beck was an idiot, Hale was a frenemy, and Gail and Edie were chicks, and it just felt like a whole new level of pussy to consult them. Mom was a safe bet because she’d never say shit to anyone else. Other than Aunt Luba, and I guess I could live with a few relatives on the other end of the planet knowing about Snowflake.

Mom asked more questions, and I ended up telling her everything. About the gang rape and the sex tape and all the other shit that made Jesse’s life sound like a Netflix show.

Thirteen Reasons Why I’m Going to Kill Emery and Co.

I was telling Mom how I was helping Jesse get out of the house more when she put her hand on my bearded cheek and looked deep into my eyes.

“I love you,” she said, and I went uh-oh in my head, because that sounded like the beginning of a speech that I’d hate.

I rubbed my index finger over my front teeth. “You’re not too bad, either.”

“But,” her voice rose, cutting through my shitty joke, “for the sake of being honest, and as a rape victim—please don’t take this the wrong way. I’d never replace you, never not have you. You’re my fate, my blood, the sunshine upon my skin.” She took a shaky breath, closing her eyes. “If you get into this girl’s life, you cannot leave without a trace. You know that. Right, Roman?”

I blinked at her with a mixture of annoyance and rage. “I’m not an idiot.”

But did I really know that? I had a six-month contract with Darren. A month of it was already gone. I’d never stopped to think about the consequences of my deal with Darren, because I figured I would just continue my relationship with Jesse as if nothing had happened. But it wasn’t so simple, was it? I was deceiving her, lying to her, and, in a sense, really fucking her over, making her put her hard-earned trust in someone who didn’t deserve it. It was the first time it dawned on me that I would have probably done this favor to Darren even if there weren’t a huge chunk of money involved. It was sobering, but hell, it was also very fucking depressing. I didn’t do emotions. There is little to no room for them when you fuck for a living.

“Make me proud, Roman. Do the right thing by her.”

I promised her that I would, and when I came out of her house, my heart cracked open. I felt the blood of a savage, rapist mafia rat pumping in my veins. They were like snakes beneath my skin. I wanted to tear them out of my body and dump them on the ground. To fall on my knees and bleed to death.

Because most of the time, I didn’t feel like a good person.

But today, I felt like a bad person.

The kind of bad Jesse didn’t need in her life.

The kind of sun that didn’t caress and nourish life, but burned shit to the ground, turning everything to ash.

The next thing I did was pretty goddamn stupid, even by my standards, and trust me when I say I’d done some stupid shit in my lifetime.

I went to see her after her shift.

If you’re trying to find the logic in that—don’t.

Everything in the situation screamed for me to take a step back. I needed to gather my wits and try not to be pussy-whipped by a girl whose pussy was more forbidden than incest. But, of course, what do you expect from a dude who sold his cock to the highest bidder? Exactly.

I contemplated texting Jesse beforehand, but she never checked her cell phone. So I went to her house after taking a shower and a piss, bypassing my weekly hookup with a forty-two-year-old realtor who’d helped me with my hotel refurbishment. I punched her doorbell a dozen times, walking back and forth, waiting for her to answer. I wanted to make sure she had a good first day. Gail said she was quiet and attentive—wasn’t that the definition of Jesse?—but the overwhelming, out-of-nowhere notion that I should have been there for her consumed me.