Page 49 of Tormented Diamonds
Her soft admission sends up a line of warning flags.
“Who was after you?” I lift her chin and make her look at me. “Becca, do you know who hit you?”
“It was Dagger.”
I see black, red, and every other fucking shade of hell. “Are you sure?”
“I saw his face, Gianni. Red hair. Small eyes. Big teeth. You think every facet of that man isn’t seared into my memory? He pulled up beside us and smiled at me.” She shivers, the muscles under my palms tightening. “He wanted to make sure his face was the last one I ever saw.”
Chapter Fifteen
GIANNI
He tried to take her away from me.
I’ll make this motherfucker beg for his life. Then, I’ll watch him burn.
“He had to have been following you,” I say tightly. “Any other explanation is too much of a stretch.”
“Then why wait until we were on our way back? Why…?” Becca looks down, her lips rounding. “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Promise you won’t get mad?”
I close my eyes.
You almost lost her. Don’t be a dick.
With a heavy exhale, I open them to find her arms crossed over her stomach in a protective huddle. Something about the way she’s guarding herself from me drives my rising temper into the ground. “No, but I promise to listen,” I say calmly. “Let’s start with why you conned one of my best men into drivingyou and your father to Hackensack.”
“I didn’t give him much of a choice.”
“I’m still waiting for thewhy.”
“After you left, my father shut down, so I figured a change of scenery might help. I thought he may have been more inclined to answer my questions if they were asked somewhere other than his arch nemesis’s house.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Arch nemesis? Isn’t that a bit dramatic?”
“Says the man who only yesterday referred to one of his men as a braindead cock leech.” At my silence, she sighs and drags her hand down her bruised face. “Do you want to dissect my vocabulary or hear the rest of this?”
I nod. “By all means, continue.”
“I heard you mentionCucciola’smore than a few times to Anton,” she starts, quickly adding, “I wasn’t eavesdropping if that’s what you’re thinking. Our bedroom isn’t that far from your office, and you haven’t been exactly calm on the phone lately. You shut me out of so much of that side of you, I got curious.” She pads the confession with a shrug. “I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a meal.”
“Becca, the man who murdered your mother crossed into New Jersey,” I say, a bit more loudly than intended. “I tripled your security. How could you not see the harm in…?” With every word, I see her body stiffen and start pulling away. Taking a breath, I try to keep my fear-driven anger on a leash. “Did you ever stop to consider I kept you away from it for a reason?”
“Yes. But you have to remember I’m a psychiatrist. I operate under facts and logic. Throwing out vague warnings under the ‘trust me, babe’ umbrella only makes me dig my heels in even harder.”
Sometimes I forget this is the same tight-assed doctor who sat across that coffee table judging me withpinched lips and a know-it-all stare. So much has happened, the line separating the two has gotten muddled. I miss that woman. I wanted to throttle the shit out of her, but I still miss her.
“I’ll admit I shouldn’t have excluded you. But the fact remains, if you had questions, you should’ve come to me instead of circling around me.”
“I know, but theplan worked. My father talked.” I don’t like the wobble in her voice. Whatever it is, she doesn’t want to tell me. “He admitted he and Dagger would meet at the docks on Tuesdays. Afterward, Dad would leave, and his tormentor would walk toward the cargo berths. I asked if he ever saw anything, and he said no. He assumed they were running drugs, and other than a couple of reports about undocumented outgoing shipments he buried, he stayed out of it.”
“Until he didn’t.”
She nods. “After my mother was murdered, he went off the rails and followed Dagger to the berths. He watched him help load five huge crates onto a freightliner. I asked if he saw what was inside, and he said no…” She takes a ragged breath. “But he heard their screams.”
