Page 26 of Bleed
I don’t want to leave Dani now that I have her, but there’s something I must take care of, and that’s finding out exactly why Salvatore and Valentino want her gone so badly. I’ll get it out of the younger of the two if I have to beat it out of him. It has to be more than her being the heir to her family’s fortune. If that were the case they wouldn’t send me after her. They must want her to suffer for something and that doesn’t sit right with me, especially as I sit next to her in the back seat of her SUV helping her put her clothes back on.
Brushing the blonde hair from her face, I tuck a lock of it behind her ear and kiss her cheek, loving how flushed and pink it’s become since getting her color back.
“You sure you’re good?” I ask her, gently touching her neck and the already purple and blue marks forming from where my fingers pressed into her.
“Never been better.” She answers me as she pulls her shirt back on over her head, brushing me aside for a moment.
“Sure?”
“Please stop asking. I’m fine. For now. But you know as soon as I go home I’m in a shit ton of trouble if anyone saw us together.”
“Allie did. She was in the café.” I say, grabbing her boot and holding it out for her.
“I’m not worried about her, she’s my bestie.”
“Since when? You didn’t know her when we were together.”
“I dunno, maybe two years ago. We met in Venice. Became best friends over night.”
“And you trust her? Because I sure as shit don’t.”
“Yeah I do. She just doesn’t like you.”
“Gee I wonder why.”
“I may have told her how much of an asshole you were.” She says, shrugging her shoulders.
“Asshole? To you?” I say, my voice going an octave higher in surprise. “I was always good to you.”
“I know, but I couldn’t really tell her the truth of why we split, and I needed someone to talk so.
“So you lied to her, and now she hates me. Great.” I laugh, making light if it, but there’s still a nagging feeling in me. I’ll never trust her, because I don’t trust anyone.
“Don’t worry about it. She’ll come around.”
“I’m not going to hold my breath.” I joke, then hold my breath, puffing out my cheeks comically to make her laugh.
The sound of her giggling at me stabs me right in the empty space in my chest where my heart used to be before she ripped it out, and for the first time I years, I feel a little flutter of something in there. Only problem is that now I have to figure out how to call off the contract on her head, without adding one to mine.
~~~
“Valentino!” I holler through the kitchen of his restaurant from the swinging saloon doors.
Normally I would consider it mine, but everything feels off now. Since I made contact with Dani and saw the fear in her eyes when I asked her about why she left and her not giving me an answer besides she had to, I know something isn’t right. Now that they want her dead, it really isn’t right.
“Valentino, where the fuck are you? I can smell your fucking cologne. I know you’re here.”
Antonio, the young sous chef looks up from his place behind the line, with his big metal spatula in his hand. He waves me over to him with it, like he has something he wants to tell me in private, and I immediately go to him. He’s been my right-hand man for a couple years now, and I trust anything that comes from him. If I could train him to be a killer that’d be the best, but I don’t think he has it in him. He’s too soft.
“Hey, I know you’re looking for Valentino. He’s in the office with the door locked. I went to go in there to get some temperature forms for the walk in, and he all but screamed in my face and slammed the door, then locked it.”
“Is anyone in there with him?”
“Yeah but I couldn’t tell who. A young woman I think. Red hair maybe.”
“Thanks man. Keep it up. Oh and the food looks excellent, good job. I’ll have to put you in charge more often.”
Red hair huh? Coincidence, or not?
