Page 72 of Sexting My Bratva Boss
Her breath catches. Her pupils dilate. The air turns molten.
But I don’t touch her.
I rock back, stand, and pull my phone from my coat.
Giuseppe won’t answer. But he’ll see the message. He always does.
Audrey Wolfe. Her debt with you is cleared. The money will be in your account tomorrow morning.
Then I swipe to my private ledger. The one no one else touches. Not even Olena.
It takes fifteen seconds to transfer thirty thousand to a laundering route we both use. An old truce. One I’m about to break.
It takes another ten seconds to kill the trail. Sal will see the money, think Giuseppe covered his ass. And I’ll know she’s free.
Holding a hand out, I help her rise to her feet and give her a slow, patient kiss. Audrey leans into it, body melding against mine. Once again I’m tempted to forget everything, take her upstairs, lose myself in her and our future.
“Do you trust me?” she whispers, vulnerable, against my chest.
“Yes.”
Her phone on the coffee table lights up. An unknown number flashes a message on the screen:The balance is zero.
"What did you just do?" She looks up at me quickly, the phone trembling in her hand.
"Tied off a loose end."
Audrey opens her mouth to press, but I stop her with a look. Not a threat. A promise.
"You told me everything tonight. So let me do what I do best."
She hesitates, then nods.
Outside, a siren echoes in the distance. I step toward the door. Before I open it, I glance over my shoulder.
"If Sal comes near you again, I’ll make him wish he was the one who died in that meat locker."
And I mean it.
Chapter 23
Audrey
There’s something…offwhen the landlord calls. His voice is clipped as he asks, “It’s Aubrey Wolfe, right?”
“Um, Audrey, but… Yes?” Maybe this is just the tone of someone trying to remember which tenant left without giving notice. I still feel bad about that; it’s something my mother would have done, ditching an apartment and disappearing, like the many times she leftme.It’s something my Nana would’ve given me a disapproving look for.
“There’s… something for you here. At your old place. It looks like a delivery.”
“Oh, is it a package, or--?”
There’s a garbled sound on the other end. Then the call drops. I pull back and stare down at my cell. Strange, but then Konstantin must’ve forgotten to have someone leave a forwarding address.
It must be one of the many baby-related things I’ve been ordering during this bout of insomnia. I can’t even remember what I’ve added to my cart in the past two weeks, foggy and browsing “Must Haves for New Moms!” articles at 3 a.m. I must have forgotten to change my delivery address on the website.
“Kashmere?” I call out, padding from the sunroom into the kitchen. It’s late in the day, but her car is still in the driveway. Ever since the nightmare, Konstantin has asked her to stay over when she can. If not her, I always know the men are out there… somewhere. Sometimes I can see them parked down the street, other times there’s just the suggestion of cigarette smoke in the cold air.
The leaves outside rustle and clatter with a breeze. The trees are mostly past turning now, with only a few days of that pretty gold-red-orange coloring before they turn brown.
