But this? This is not that picture, at all.
I need to figure out how to stay in control of myself as far as she’s concerned, or one day, I’m going to do something really fucking stupid. Something far worse than giving Garzolo a twelve-hour head start.
Maybe I just need a few weeks to fuck this obsession out of my head.
I drag my thumb over my bottom lip. Yes, that’s it. I’m going to fuck her until I tire of her. Until I can evict her from the space she’s inhabited in my head like an illegal squatter. Now that our game’s done and she’s spread her legs, the intrigue is gone. It won’t take me long to get back to safe ground. I’m sure of it.
I take a cold shower. It helps. By the time I start toweling myself off, my mind is firmly back on work matters.
I need to divert some resources from Albany to New Jersey so that we can do a proper search. Garzolo could not have gone far. No doubt he’s only retreated so that he can come up with a new plan to get rid of me. He’ll need allies for that, which means we need to put tails on all his closest buddies. Eventually, he’s bound to pop up somewhere.
I pull on some clothes and return to the bedroom. Cleo is up, her red hair tousled and messy, and her lips fixed in an adorable, sleepy pout.
I walk over to her and kiss her. It’s meant to be a peck, but before I know it, my tongue is in her mouth, she’s sucking on my bottom lip, and her fingers are playing with the buttons of my shirt. I break the kiss with a frustrated groan and take a step backward.
Work. I need to work.
She gives me a puppy-eyed look. “Where are you going?”
To shoot myself in the head, because that’s apparently the only way I’m going to be able to get her out of it.
I tug on my collar. “Your father is gone.”
This jolts her awake. She sits up, holding the sheet to her chest. “What?”
“He fled during the night. We’re looking for him now.”
“He must have realized I’d tell you the truth eventually,” she mutters as she slips out of bed, naked as the day she was born, and heads toward the closet. It takes every ounce of my self-control not to drag her back to bed.
She comes back out dressed in a black silk robe. “I can write down all the places he might be hiding.”
Surprise flickers through me. “You’ll help me hunt down your father?”
“He wants to kill you. He’s my enemy as much as he’s yours at this point.”
A tight fist squeezes around my heart. She’s trying to protect me? That’s not her job. That’s never been anyone’s job. Ever.
She walks across the carpet until she’s standing right before me and tips her head backward to look me in the eye. My nape prickles. Can she see how she weakens me? How she makes me waver in my convictions?
Her arms slide around my waist, and she pushes up on her tiptoes. The inches between us disappear as I lean down and kiss her. Again, it turns into something more. Something that makes my chest feel light and heavy at the same time. Emotions swell under the surface, threatening to burst out, and even though my gut is screaming “Danger! Back away!”， I don’t listen to its warning.
It’s only when I jerk her against me and she gasps in pain that I remember myself. I break the kiss. “Are you sore?”
Her lips are swollen and pink. She shifts her weight between her feet and winces. “Yeah. A bit.”
“Go take a bath. Relax. I don’t want you going to Loretta’s today.”
“It’s the weekend.”
“Right.”
She sighs and looks down at my tie. “But you have to go,” she says, sounding disappointed.
Don’t make this harder than it already is.
I cup her cheek and give her another kiss. “Send me that list. I’ll see you in the evening.”
I walk away from her, one painful step after another.
That night, Cleo is already in bed when I come home covered in blood.
Her eyes widen. “Oh my God.” She springs out of bed and rushes over to me. “We need to call Doc.”
I shake my head, exhaustion pulling on my eyelids. “No. It’s not mine.”
She halts, and I brush past her into the bathroom where I quickly take off the bloody shirt.
It was a bad day.
We went to all of Garzolo’s usual spots, and no one’s seen him since last night. Then Nero and I went back to Il Caminetto and talked to the staff again. By that point, I was sure it was Garzolo who ordered the hit on us.
One of the band members saw us come through the door and took off. Nero and I caught him a few blocks away and took him to one of my warehouses, where he broke immediately and confessed he’d been on Garzolo’s payroll ever since the restaurant opened up, acting as his eyes and ears. He heard Garzolo disappeared and freaked out as soon as he saw us appear, sure that we were onto him.