“I’ll go looking for a lover then.”
I waited for jealousy to flare up, for a spike in my pulse, for something, but I felt absolutely nothing at the thought of Cressida being with another guy. “Be sure to find someone discreet.”
Her lips parted, her face twisted with fury. “You would let another man fuck me?”
“Why not? Because I won’t.”
She threw the glass on the floor, shoved to her feet and staggered toward me on her high heels. I raised an eyebrow, and she slapped me. The spike in adrenaline that had been vacant before came sudden and I grabbed her wrist, snarling into her face as I shot to my feet, “Never, never raise your hand against me again, do you hear me? If you weren’t a woman, you wouldn’t live to see tomorrow.”
I released her and she whirled around, stalking away. I released a slow breath. Almost every of our encounters ended in an argument. Maybe it would be for the best if she found some asshole to fuck some happiness into her. I knew she’d go on a major shopping spree with her friends tomorrow, to get over her annoyance with me.
My phone rang with a number I couldn’t forget. The only number except for my own that I could remember. A number I shouldn’t consider answering.
I stared at the phone for several heartbeats before I picked up.
“Yes?” I said. My voice was detached, business-like, definitely not a mirror of what I was feeling. Because inside of me?
An inferno of emotions was raging.
Anger. Longing. Frustration. Sadness. Too many goddamn emotions.
“Amo?” Greta’s voice was soft, small.
Fuck, that voice awakened something in me I couldn’t rein in. My dead heart seemed to jolt awake, my frustration and bitterness washing away with that one soft word.
But I steeled myself. This was Greta Falcone. “Why are you calling?”
She was silent. “I shouldn’t have called. I’m sorry. I’m not quite myself right now. I—”
“What’s wrong?”
She swallowed audibly. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Tell me why you called,” I ordered firmly.
Silence reigned on the other end. “I thought hearing your voice would help quiet the chaos in my head. It did in the past.”
She sounded broken, terrified. Not my fucking business. In the last year, her family had caught several of our soldiers and butchered them, only to send the pieces back to us.
“I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Last time we saw each other, I told you I wouldn’t save you again.”
“I’m not sure I need saving. I’m not sure I can be saved.”
My chest constricted. “Can you leave your home without anyone noticing?”
I couldn’t believe what I’d said.
“Yes,” Greta said quietly.
“I’m free tomorrow. I’ll catch the earliest flight. I’ll call you when I’ve landed and then I’ll pick a place for us to meet.”
“Okay.”
I stared at the spot where Cressida had sat not long ago then I touched the scar on my side that Nevio had left. One year of war and I was heading to Las Vegas to meet with the enemy.
I hadn’t told a soul where I was going. How could I explain this lunacy to my family or Maximus? They’d probably lock me in a basement until I could think straight again. Fuck, it’s what I would have done with anyone I cared about if they’d suggested this trip. I had the weekend off unless something major went down but the last few months had been calm, a cold war more than anything else.
Still, this could be a trap and the next step in our war, but I couldn’t believe Greta would be in on this, nor that Remo would use her like that.
Meeting someone in enemy territory in an abandoned hotel complex at the periphery of the strip was something that had all my instincts screaming, even if I’d picked the decrepit place. But the desire to see Greta again was stronger than my sense of self-preservation.
And if this wasn’t a trap, and Greta really trusted me enough to meet me on my terms without protection like this than she was even more lost than me.
I went in through the staff entrance at the back and the rusty steel door creaked when I shoved it open, with my shoulder because I held guns in both of my hands and a flashlight wedged between my teeth. I hadn’t wanted to risk taking the Famiglia jet, nor renting another private jet, so I had bought guns on the Darknet and picked them up on drive from the airport in a hiding place in a dumpster. I inched my head forward and peered into what must have been part of the laundry facilities of the place once. It was quiet inside except for my calm breathing. I stepped in and slowly crossed the laundry then a corridor and the kitchen before I made my way up a staircase. Again I cautiously opened the door to the lobby with my elbow, which had also been the casino of the hotel. Most of the slot machines had been removed and the carpet was missing in many places. It was dark inside, apart from the glow of my flashlight and another flashlight which laid on the floor in the center of the lobby.