“Your tenaciousness is what most likely makes you a great investigator, but with what I do, if you don’t follow orders, you could put your nose in the wrong place and it could get you killed. I wouldn’t know what you had done because I didn’t give my approval. I couldn’t take the necessary steps to ensure you were safe.” Dario’s stare refused to allow her to look away from him. “I won’t lie to you about what I do. You have to know what you would be getting into. The people who work for me have to be loyal to us. If they aren’t, they don’t live long. It’s that simple.”
Brielle’s teeth bit down on the side of her lower lip and she chewed on that spot for a moment. More little goose bumps began to rise on her skin, an automatic response to the way Elie was running his nails so gently back and forth along the sides of her breasts and dipping underneath and then back up.
Elie bent his head to her bare neck, lips to her ear. “Be ma petite chatte, bébé, I do find it sexy when you rub against me the way you do.” He followed the wicked enticement with a bite on her earlobe, his teeth closing on the thin skin and pulling back for a moment before releasing her.
She arched her back more for him, an automatic response to his command, rubbing her back along his chest, doing the same with her bottom along his thighs. He widened his thighs just a scant inch, forcing her thighs apart at the same time. The stretchy robe was accommodating. He decided the robe was going to be one of his favorite pieces of clothing. His hand slipped around her breast to find the opening. Her skin was smooth. So damn soft.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying, Dario,” Elie said, sounding all business. “You want my wife to work exclusively for you and her loyalty should belong to you but you’re aware I’m a rider and, by extension, an adopted member of the Ferraro family. So, my first loyalty has to go to them. You can’t exactly ask my wife to divide her loyalties between the families. That wouldn’t be fair to her.”
His fingernails very, very gently ran over the top of the curves of her breasts. He brushed little strokes tracing the curve down around her nipple as if painting. The fabric of the robe stretched over the back of his hand, rubbing with every slow, subtle movement. Brielle shivered. He wished he had put the clamps on her before he sent her to dress in the robe. They would have been perfect under the stretchy fabric. He would save that idea for another evening.
“I wouldn’t ask your wife to divide her loyalty like that. I have another investigator, Elie. Bernado is a good man and has never once done a single thing to indicate that he might ever turn on us. Having said that, you know me. Valentino is the man I trust one hundred percent. After him, I don’t know. I like to hedge my bets, so to speak.”
“There’s a man by the name of Carmine Catani in your organization,” Brielle said, her fingernails suddenly digging into Elie’s thigh. “Dario, I should have told you right away. I haven’t had a chance to investigate him so I shoved him into a corner of my mind, but he definitely is betraying you. He sent the photograph of Elie to Santoro.”
There was a small silence while Dario continued to hold her gaze. His face seemed to harden even more, settling into even crueler lines. “Did you forget to tell me because you knew I would kill him for his betrayal?”
“No, he sent Elie’s photograph. I would have gone after him myself.”
Elie heard the absolute honesty in her voice. It took discipline not to tense beneath her. She was a rider and every bit as capable as any shadow rider of targeting a man for justice. In her mind, anyone threatening Elie was fair game, just as he believed that anyone threatening Brielle was. His woman wasn’t going to hunt Carmine Catani. He had to make that absolutely clear to her.
He made a mental note to make it a priority to go into the shadows with her and see just how sick she really was when she entered the tubes. Truthfully, it was hell on the body. In the little time he’d had with her, Elie had come to know Brielle very well. And one thing she absolutely didn’t do was complain. For her ever to have said anything about getting sick riding the shadows meant she was really sick when she was in the portals.
Dario couldn’t fail to hear the honesty in her voice when she declared she would have gone after Carmine Catani. He’d spent far too long interrogating prisoners and knew truth when he heard it. Dario simply nodded. “Knowing what we do, would you have problems conducting investigations for us?”
“No. Unless your intention is to harm innocent people.”