Page 73 of The Chameleon

Fuck it. The man knew everything else about him already, and he strongly doubted that he would betray him after everything they had been through.

“I loved you and wanted to make sure that you were safe.”

Matteo shook his head in disbelief. “After this is all over, we are having a serious conversation about limits and boundaries.”

Ares nodded, knowing to take this as a win and not poke the bear.

“Boss?” Elijah asked, his voice sounding a little strange. “You wanna ask the little traitor to turn off his cell phone?”

Ares’s head snapped toward the boy who was sheepishly pulling his cell out of his pocket.

Grabbing the phone from the idiot’s hand, Ares shoved it back toward Jorge. “Unlock it.”

The boy quickly grabbed it and entered his passcode.

Once unlocked, Ares pulled up the last set of texts sent.

“Here’s the number.” Ares quickly hummed off the cell phone numbers for the previous two texts. “See what you can get.”

With those final words, Ares whipped the cell phone at the exposed brick wall, watching as the device shattered into several pieces.

“We can’t stay here now that numbnuts brought his cell phone into my secret lair.” Ares glared at Matteo. “Eli, we’re heading out. We’ll meet you at the rendezvous spot tomorrow night.”

“Sure thing, boss. Be safe, and I’ll get things set up for your arrival.” The line went dead.

Ares grabbed the duffle bag from the floor and began pulling items out. He shoved a wad of cash into his pockets and passed half to Matteo. “In case we get separated for some reason.”

Next, he pulled out two light jackets and two ball caps and shoved extra rounds of ammunition into his jacket pockets—because that was always safe.

He tossed the next items at Matteo and asked him to keep them safe.

“Passports?” Matteo asked, flipping open the covers. “Did you make me a fake passport?” Matteo gasped, leafing through the document.

“Yeah, well, if we needed to escape quickly, you might not have time to grab your passport. So I kept these two in our go bag just in case.”

“But these aren’t even expired. How long have you had these for?”

“Since we started dating.”

“But that was ages ago. These are still valid IDs.”

“I know. Every few years, I had to return and replace the passports with valid, non-expired ones.”

“Let me guess: you broke into my house to make the switch.”

Ares only shrugged. He wasn’t going to apologize for looking out for Matteo.

Still, judging by the pissed-off expression plastered to the cranky Italian, Ares knew that perhaps he had crossed a line on this one.

“You sure you still want to bring this Judas with us?” Ares asked, hoping Matteo would change his mind and just let him put a bullet between the kid’s eyes.

He could make it quick. The boy would barely even know that it happened. One minute, the kid was standing in a shack in Spain; the next, he was begging for entry at the pearly gates. Easy peasy.

“He’s as much a victim as we are. Plus, if he stays here, he’ll probably get hurt or even killed,” Matteo added.

“He might get killed by me if he comes,” Ares noted under his breath.

“I heard that,” the pissed-off Italian grunted from behind him.

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