Painfully Sweet

Chapter 14

Luka P.O.V

"You did this to me," Zophisa groaned as I gave her a cup of tea. She woke up sick with a horrible cold this morning.

"What did I do?" I asked with a chuckle as I sat at the foot of the bed.

"I hadn't slept in 24 hours because of you!" she exclaimed.

"Nobody told you to stay in the gym until two in the morning working out," I shot back.

"I had to," she said with a cough. I just chuckled and shook my head.

"Why do you have a gun on the bedside table?" I asked, looking at the handgun that rested on the table.

"I have guns everywhere in here," she said nonchalantly as she took small sips of her tea.

"Is there a reason why?" I asked with my eyebrow raised.

"Do you know how much someone would pay to have my head alone? We are not little petty gang members who can just go around unprotected. When I lived in New York, my brothers had someone patrolling my apartment building to make sure there was no funny business going on, even when I wasn't there," she explained. 

"You lived in an apartment? That's not very safe," I observed.

"It was my building," she said emphasizing the my, "I own it and that's not the point."

"I didn't know you were a business woman," I said with a smirk.

"The money can't be dirty all the time," she said, sitting the cup of tea on the beside table next to the gun.

"That's true," I said with nod. She picked up the remote and clicked the television on. The news was on and we were the topic of discussion.

"If you're so famous here, how do people not know you run a mafia?" She asked as she loomed at the videos of us that were captured when we arrived yesterday.

"They do, I just haven't gotten caught. They can't technically prove I've done anything wrong. They've searched my house, my offices, my parent's house and nothing. I keep my lives separate," I explained.

"That's smart, where is your head of operations?" She asked.

"I am the head if operations. I don't get my hands dirty, I pay people to do that for me," I said.

"Aww, pretty boy can't mess up his manicure?" She mocked.

"I have more blood on my hands than you can ever imagine," I told her.

"You let me bitch you out, at this point I'm convinced you can't even fight," She taunted.

"I've killed men with my bare hands, I don't have to prove anything to you," I said flatly.

"But you do, if I'm going to be out here protecting myself I can take my ass back to New York," she challenged.

"Leave then, I'm not the one who meeds protection," I dared.

"You will if I leave," She countered.

"What are you talking about?" I said through clenched teeth.

"Do you think they were joking last night? Those are men of loyalty and their loyalty lies with me, not you. They take this shit seriously because they built their gangs with blood, sweat, and tears. Not everyone can inherit the life from their daddies," She explained. As soon as she was done talking she started coughing uncontrollably.

I rolled my eyes and stood up from the foot of the bed. She tried to sit up against the headboard but she was coughing too much. I walked around the bed to the bedside table and picked up her teacup.

"I don't understand why they thought this would be the best solution," I mumbled as I poured more water into the cup.

"I don't either," she said between coughs, "we can't stand each other."

"Stop talking and drink this," I demanded, dropping two cough drops into her warm tea. She glared at me as she took the cup from my hands. I watched her eye the tea suspiciously before glaring at me again.

"Drink it or die," I said with a shrug.

"I feel like I'll die either way," she mumbled as she took a sip. 

"If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead already," I assured.

"I think it's funny when you say that, as if the opportunity has been given to you," she said, tilting her head to the side.

"I could've done it yesterday when you were barking orders with Alessia," I said.

"You wish, I would've aired this bitch out," she said confidently.

"You're very confident, do you know that?" I asked.

"Of course I know that, I deal with me everyday," she said.

"Well, it's not cute," I told her.

"I've killed too many people to worry about being cute," she said as she sat her cup on the bedside table.

Just as I was about to make a comeback, her phone rang. She looked at it and rolled her eyes before answering.
"You better be dying," she said, clearly angry. There was A small pause before her facial expression went from angry to furious.
"Shut up!" She yelled into the phone, "I don't care what happened, fix it! And when you fix it, find out who did it. And when you find out who did it, kill them. Then when you kill them, take a nap because your black ass hasn't slept since I left! I swear to God if you don't handle this, I'm going to be on the next plane out of here and you don't want that." I watched her bark orders into the phone before hanging up.

She didn't take her attention from her phone for about ten minutes. "Son of a bitch," she yelled, frustrated. She picked up the nearest object to her, a teacup, and flung it at the wall, breaking it to tiny pieces.

"What happened?" I asked, leaning against the wall next to the bed.

"That bastard let one of those dumb asses loose all of our product for the month!" She stressed.

"How did he manage to do that?" I asked, getting angry as well.

"He says he got robbed at the pickup, but I don't believe him," see mumbled as she tapped away on her phone.

"Where's you're pickup point?" I asked.

"Don't worry about it," she answered, flatly.

"This isn't going to be good for either of us if we hate each other," I said, trying to be the bigger person.

"It would be worse if we love each other," she said, not looking away from her phone.