Page 7 of Her Keeper
“That’s sweet, Barney. I think I just need a cup of tea. Would you mind getting me something from the kitchen?”
Please just go, please just go,I chanted in my head.Please just offer to get me some tea.It would make everything so much easier.
Barney’s face broke into a grin. “Of course. What kind do you want?”
Oh my God, I didn’t care! I didn’t evendrinktea. “Whatever you think is best,” I told him quietly, hoping he’d just get up and leave.
I didn’t know how long Michael was going to be, but I was guessing he’d be coming back as fast as possible. I didn’t have a lot of time. I needed Barney to leave so I could get out of here before Michael re-entered the building. Or got onto this block again.
I watched Barney nod and stand up, then walk slowly through the door—which he left open—and toward the kitchen attached to the office. Getting up, I crept toward the door and peeked out, my eyes scanning the office. Everyone was still here—of course, because it was the middle of the day—but they were all hard at work. The secretaries were doing whatever they did on their computers all day, the accountants were busy at numbers, and the guards were all lounging around, waiting for orders to do something more.
Michael was out of the office. Alf had gone to wherever he had gone. Joseph wasn’t here unless Michael had called him in for something. And as far as anyone knew, I was still just Michael’s assistant, in charge of running errands and keeping him on schedule.
I turned and watched Barney walk into the kitchen, paused for a moment, and then slid through the doorway and stepped quickly toward my desk. I reached a hand out and grabbed my purse and messenger bag on the way by, my eyes glancing quickly from the row of secretaries to the door where Barney had disappeared. No sign of him yet. He must be actually boiling water.
God bless that man.
Two seconds later I was at the door of the office where I’d been working for nearly a week. Three seconds and I was through that and in the hall. Ten seconds later I was out the front door and on the steps in front of the building, my eyes scanning the street in front of me for any sign of Michael or the car he might have taken.
But there was no one out here. No cars coming down the street, no furious blond Rossis rushing along the sidewalk, ready to commit bloody murder against the girl they’d found betraying them.
I breathed out a quick breath of relief and then shot down the stairs, turned toward my brother’s place, and started walking. I had to get to a safe place—a place where Michael wouldn’t look—and figure out what I was going to do from there.
And I had to do it fast.
Because I didn’t think Michael would stop searching until he found me. And I didn’t want to think about what he might do when he did.
4
MICHAEL
Joseph and I arrived at my father’s house at the same time, our cars screeching to a halt in front of the brownstone like we’d coordinated it. I stared through the windshield at my older brother for a single moment, his expression saying the same thing mine must have been.
Someone had attacked our father. In his own home, with his guards and the rest of our family present. Our mother. Our baby sister.
Someone had come in here to kill our family. Joseph looked more shocked than I’d ever seen him, and I doubted I looked much better. People did not attack the Rossi family like this. They didn’t stride right into our family home and pull a gun. Granted, it wasn’t the first time this house had been fired upon. My father was too important for that to be true, particularly with Brennan territory sitting just a few blocks away. This house had been the scene of battles before, and people had most certainly died here.
But incidental battles happening on the pavement in front of this house was different from someone coming here to go after my father.
I let the thought fall into the stillness of my mind, touching a question I’d yet to allow myself to ask, and sat still for another moment, my eyes still on Joseph’s.
And then we both exploded out of our cars and went running for the front door, our hands on our guns and our eyes scanning the windows for anything that looked like movement.
“Think we should wait for backup?” I asked as we ran. “Or word of what’s going on inside?”
“Fuck no,” Joseph snapped. “Whoever’s in that house has our family in there, Michael. They have Dante. Mom and Dad. Our job is to get in there and save them.”
It was such a typical Jospeh answer that I almost smiled.
Almost.
Instead, I darted forward, gun out and pointing toward the house where someone had attacked my family. I didn’t know who was in there, but they’d made a colossal mistake. And now that Joseph and I were here, they were going to pay.
* * *
We charged through the door, guns drawn and ready to shoot, to find that all the shooting was already over. And it had been intense. Several of my father’s guards were in the entryway, either dead or wounded, but we slammed through the area without stopping to see to them.
If the guards had been shot, it meant whoever had shot them had gone on into the house.
