Sparrow by L.J. Shen Page B

was, the hotter she was for me.
    So I was the nastiest to her.
    That particular night, I was in no mood to do her, let alone go down on her. I hadn’t gone down on a woman in years.
    When I started for the door, she peeled her eyes away from my face, crawling on the floor, clasping my leg. “Don’t go to her,” she whined in decibels more fitted for a slasher film.
    My cum was still dripping down her full lower lip and onto Brock’s carpeted floor, but she didn’t seem to give a damn that her son was downstairs and could probably hear her. I shouldered into my jacket as I watched her squirming at my feet. Recently she’d started crying. A lot. Cried when we fucked, cried when we didn’t, and especially every time I left. Surprisingly, I didn’t enjoy seeing her like this. I seldom enjoyed the misery of the weak—it was the resilient that I wanted to bring to their knees.
    I spat out my toothpick, watched it roll under their bed and shook my head at her. “You’re a mess.”
    She sniffed, bending her head down. “It kills me that you’re with her now.”
    “Don’t butt into my shit, Cat. You have a kid to take care of and a life outside this cushy arrangement. We can stop if this is getting to be too much for you. I’m not the only person in the world with a dick. Your husband’s got one, too.”
    “No, no.” She got up to her knees, looking like Alice Cooper, the mascara running down her cheeks in chunky strikes. Her palms were pressed together and she matched my pace, crawling on her knees.
    Make no mistake, she loved this mess. Would never quit this affair, this drama, or me .
    “I’m good. I’m just…you know, with you getting married and…” Her eyes fluttered shut as she heaved a sigh. “You’re right.” She shrugged, forcing a cunning smile as she got to her feet. “It’s just something I need to get used to.”
    I would give her a piece of my mind about that slutty gift. But not tonight.
    When I walked out of her house, Sam was in the living room, watching a cartoon in the dark, clutching a teddy bear under his armpit. “Bye, Mr. Troy,” he muttered almost to himself, eyes still glued to Bugs Bunny and Road Runner.
    I grunted in response.
    I was the scum of the earth.
    The biggest scum on the planet.
    And still, I couldn’t help myself.
     

     
    SO, WHEN I GOT back home, poured myself a drink and heard Sparrow’s little feet climbing down the stairway, I decided I’d done enough damage for one day and spared her the truth about our marriage.
    She was trying to be nice, and I was trying not to resent her.
    The truth about our marriage was that I wanted nothing more than to be out of it. But as it happened, my father had made me promise I’d marry Abraham Raynes’s daughter.
    Until his murder, I couldn’t, for the fucking life of me, understand why.
    Raynes was a loser, a drunk, a man with no prospects, who never even made it to becoming a real mobster back in the day when every illiterate piece of shit was a legitimate part of the mob. He used to get the shittiest jobs the organization had to offer. My father let him work with the rookies. Abe extorted like a teenager, threatening people who owed us money, and he had some gigs as a bouncer and filled in for our errand boy when the latter was sick.
    My father always spoke fondly of Sparrow Raynes, Abe’s daughter. Which didn’t explain why, when I turned eighteen, he invited me to his office (something he very rarely did, despite us being close) and made me promise that one day I would marry her and bring her into the family.
    Marry. Sparrow. Raynes. The kid who was so off my radar, I wasn’t even sure I’d understood him right.
    But I loved my father fiercely, adored him and would have died for him, so I rolled with the plan. I was eighteen, and she was eight. It was twisted and barbaric, and it was my very first taste of the unfairness of life, but it would be years before I’d have to worry about it. I put that plan on the