Page 93 of Possessive Mafia Vows

My thoughts are scrambling around inside my head like beetles hunting for food. What did Kyle say about the Murray property? He mentioned fields and cows and streams, but I don’t recall him talking about cliffs.

There’s only one way to find out if Nick is telling the truth.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to believe me. Go see for yourself.”

He’s testing me, but I haven’t moved.

“I said, ‘Go see for yourself’.”

“I heard you.” I hold his gaze.

Without warning, he grips my wrist beneath the blanket and drags me from the room.

We’re in a narrow corridor. Naked bulbs hang from the ceiling, casting eerie shadows between puddles of light. The walls areplastered, unpainted, grubby. It’s only marginally warmer than the room I’ve just vacated.

“You’re hurting me.” I try to wrestle my arm free of his hold, but his fingers are digging into my flesh, and he’s determined to hold on tightly.

“Maybe next time you’ll do as you’re told.”

We pass through a heavy metal door at the end of the corridor. Up a stone staircase. Through another door.

We’re standing in another corridor that must run parallel to the one on the basement level. Nick hurls me towards a window framed by dusty green velvet drapes held back by gold ropes.

My heart is galloping, but I don’t have time to register the pain in my ribs where I collided with the window frame. I’m mesmerized by the view outside.

The house overlooks the sea which is storm-gray, choppy, foam dragging across the surface and hurtling towards us. But it’s the sheer drop below the window that has stolen my breath and run away with it. I can hear the waves crashing against the jagged, lethal rocks below.

22

KYLE

Mateo Dragonetti clearshis private jet for take-off at 6 a.m.

I’m already six hours behind Sienna.

Six hours.

With the image of her bloody face in my head, I can’t sit around waiting for the flight. I have to keep busy. There’s nothing else that I can do for Cash until we have more information on his alibi, so instead, I go with Terry to Hooch’s apartment.

We already know that someone is covering Nick Morris’s tracks, but has Sienna’s father been as careful or as clever? His perfectly timed alibi for the break-in at the gallery was premeditated, meticulously planned even, but I get the feeling that someone else was pulling all the strings behind the scenes. Robert Hooch has a history of gambling addiction, petty crime, and assault charges against women, but now he’s messing with the big boys, and I believe he’s in way over his head.

Terry’s team of men are breezing through Hooch’s apartment like ninjas. I stand in the middle of the living room and watch them rolling back the carpet to reveal dusty floorboards, liftingthe lone picture frame from the wall and taking it apart, ripping open cushions and pulling out the stuffing.

It’s hard to picture Sienna in this dingy space. She doesn’t belong here. It’s too stifling, too decrepit, too dull, like locking a peacock inside a cave and telling it to shine. There are no personal touches inside the apartment, which tells me everything I need to know about Sienna’s father.

He’s a drifter, following the money and trying to avoid getting caught.

Until now.

Pressure leads to panic, and panic leads to mistakes, and Hooch made the biggest mistake of his life when he involved his daughter.

I wander through to the kitchen. Sienna said that he took her keys. It would’ve been simple enough to make a copy of the gallery keys and replace them without her noticing that they were missing, but he didn’t. He also lied to her about what time he came home from the casino the night she stayed with him. Why?

I call Caleb and ask him to find out where Hooch was that night. I should’ve done this sooner, but I was so fixated on Nick Morris that I didn’t figure on Hooch being a prominent player in whatever game this is. My mistake. He blundered into Sienna’s life, making sure that we all saw him, and added the finishing touches to Nick Morris’s plan right under our noses.

“Feels like the guy was living out of a suitcase.” Terry joins me in the kitchen. “This place isn’t lived in. It isn’t a home.”

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