Page 43 of Her Keeper
For some reason, he hadn’t killed her the moment she walked through his door.
“Tell me everything,” I said. I grabbed her and sat her down on the bed, then yanked a chair over and sat in front of her. “And don’t leave anything out.”
She blew out a breath, eyeing me like she wasn’t sure I was going to be able to stay in my own chair—she was right about that—and then got started with talking. She’d gone to see my father, she said, because it was the only way she could see to bring any of this to a close. She needed to get his agreement to a plan that would use her to get more information from Monica and win her freedom from his hit order.
“That’s insane,” I growled.
She tipped her head. “Maybe. But you were bleeding and your brother was too busy trying to take care of you to do anything. I figured that meant it was up to me.”
God, she was stupid. Stupid and reckless and way, way too brave for her own good.
I wanted to kill her. I wanted to hug her to me and never let her go again. I wanted to pin her to the bed and fuck her until she promised never to go anywhere without talking to me about it again.
The girl was mine, and I hated that she’d put herself in danger like this. That should have been my job.
But I needed the information she had more than I needed to assert my control over her.
“Keep talking,” I snapped.
“I went there. I told him everything. About Monica and what she has and the fact that she has more than I ever gave her. I told him what she has and your idea that someone higher up in the Rossi house has turned. Someone who actually knows about things like that.”
So she’d told him everything. Without even getting a promise from him.
“And,” she continued, seeming like she was reading my mind, “we came to an agreement. As far as Monica knows, I don’t know what you’re doing. The last time she talked to me I was asking for her help. She might not realize that I’m on your side. She might think I’m still willing to work with her.”
“And what the fuck good would that do us?”
She gave me a tiny smile. “If she thinks I’m still willing to work with her, and I can get an in-person meeting, we might be able to bring about a situation where she has to tell me who she’s working for. Your father’s words. Not mine.”
My father’s words. Not hers.
Because he was going to use Penny as bait to try to expose whoever was working against him.
Oh my God.
“And you agreed to that?” I whispered. “You agreed to go in there and try to get her to talk about who she’s working with?”
She nodded once. “He said he’d release his hit men if I did. I work for him to gain my life, and you and Joseph can go home again. We all get our happy ending. All I have to do is make sure Monica still trusts me.”
All she had to do was make sure Monica still trusted her. And then go meet with her and put herself in a position where Monica and whoever she was working with could kidnap her. Because now that they knew I’d fight for her, they knew she was worth money.
They knew I’d do anything to get her back.
And my father knew it as well. So he was going to use her to try to draw all of us out of hiding, and damn the consequences. Penny might die in the process and he wouldn’t care, as long as he got his information at the end of the whole thing.
I felt... empty. Like everything had been for nothing, and all I had now were bad options. Penny had done what she thought was best—and it might have worked—but now she was beholden to my father and he was literally going to use her as bait.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she muttered. “This is a good deal and you know it. And I was perfectly safe. Your sister and Duca were there and they would have taken care of me if anything happened.”
There was my Penny. Positive that someone else was going to take care of her if things went bad. I’d thought she was growing and getting used to this life and yet she was still looking for the best in everyone involved. People who would kill and not think a second thought about it, and she thought they were going to grab her and carry her out of any bad situation.
I moved onto the bed and gathered her into my arms, still not sure whether I wanted to make love to her or threaten her with bodily harm if she ever made another decision of her own.
“How long do you have to get information from Monica?” I asked.
As long as the deal was made, I was going to do the only thing I could do: Find a way around it. Find a way to trick my father out of what he was planning to do.
“A week, and I already know where we’re going to start,” she said quickly. “I don’t even know if we need to meet with Monica at all.”
