Let Me Love You (94)
“Maybe you hate Enzo.” I shook my head. “But that’s not why you helped them, and you did, didn’t you?”
His hands landed on his hips, and now his boldness facing Enzo the day before the attack when he picked up Chiara made sense. He thought his time with him was short-lived because he’d been privy to Alice’s plan.
“Your mother never had a heart attack, did she?” I took cautious steps closer. “Please talk to me.” I showed my palms, letting him know I wasn’t a threat. And hoped like hell he wasn’t one to me, either. Not with his daughter down the hall, at least.
“Money.” He shook his head. “Why else would I do it? I lost my shirt in the stock market last month, and the next thing I knew, I was being offered a chance to deal with my cash-flow situation.”
Money. That I believed as an excuse. Not love for me.
“I figured if they wanted to beat the guy up, he probably deserved it,” he rushed out. “I need to get out of here before he shows up.” He came my way, and I blocked him.
“Beat him up?” I cried, my hands on his chest. “No, Thomas. They planned to kill him!”
“Move,” he barked out, and he snatched my wrists and flung me away, but he’d done it with too much force, and I slammed into the dresser headfirst.
On my knees, breathing hard, a metallic taste filled my mouth. I wasn’t sure where the blood was coming from, but I pivoted to look over at him staring down at me.
“Fuck. Shit,” Thomas hissed. “That was an accident.” He took a knee, and I reeled my hand back and slapped him.
THIRTY-FOUR
Enzo
“Alice must’ve had someone tamper with the footage,” I told Constantine over the line after hacking the security cameras at my apartment building. “It’s been erased.”
My body was coiled tight, palms sweaty. But that uneasy feeling I’d had since New York had sharpened into a finely pointed knife now that I was back home, and I was getting cut with worry from every angle.
I’d yet to hear from Hudson, but my gut told me I was right. Everything had gone down so fast Thursday that I had missed something.
If someone had provided the three idiotas with a key fob, what if that someone had been Thomas? What if he was purposefully framed by Alice but also complicit in everything?
The key fob was a reach, but it was all I had to go on aside from a hunch until I heard from Hudson, and he was at the hospital attempting to get Jensen to talk. Well, write, since his jaw was wired shut.
“What if I hack the hospital records to see if Thomas’s mother was ever a patient? If he lied about that as an excuse to take Chiara away to get out of town, then—” I let go of my words at the realization I had an incoming call. “It’s Agent Lee. I’ll call you back.”
“I’m going to tell you something,” Agent Lee started once I’d answered, “but first I need you to promise you won’t act on your own.”
“Tell me,” I bit out. “Jensen knows something, am I right?” I had to assume Agent Lee had gone with Hudson to the hospital to question him.
A hard breath fanned out over the line. “Yes.”
“Who?” My heart pounded as I waited for him to give me the name, knowing that bad feeling and worry were justified. There was one more loose end. But was it Thomas?
“I put together a team in Charlotte to pick him up. They’re waiting outside his house, but he’s not home yet. His plane landed an hour ago, though, so he’s in Charlotte. I need you to let the Feds handle this one.”
“Give me his name, damn it.”
“Does the name Thomas—”
I never let him finish. I dropped the phone and rushed next door as fast as possible.
When I tested the knob, the door opened. No, fuck, she had this locked.
“Maria,” I called out, and my stomach fell at the sight of Chiara’s favorite stuffed animal in the living room.
I hadn’t felt this empty, this scared, since the moment I’d known Bianca was gone from the world, hours before my family had called to let me know what had happened.
No, no, no.
I ran down the hall and went still in the doorway of her bedroom at the sight of Thomas pinning her to the dresser, trying to stop her from hitting him.
“Let. Her. Go,” I hissed, taking slow steps with him near her, not wanting her to get hurt.
When Thomas shifted to the side, and I saw Maria’s bloody nose, my world stopped. Everything went silent.
“She hit her head,” he quickly rushed out in a panic. “It was an accident.”
Maria relaxed her arms to her sides as Thomas backed away from her. “Enzo,” she whispered.
“Go to Chiara’s room and lock the door,” I said in a low voice, staring at a man who knew he was seconds away from death.
Maria hesitantly moved around Thomas, but I couldn’t rip my gaze away from him as she quietly passed me.
Once I was alone with him, I cocked my head, studying him. Deciding how I’d kill him.
“Please,” he begged. “It’s not what you think. I didn’t know they were going to kill you. Just rough you up.”
I kept quiet. The dark chaos inside me had been reignited, seeing Maria hurt. The demons I’d worked to lock up only this weekend were about to rage free.