Page 99 of Stolen Kisses
She looked like she’d been crying.
“Dante, I have to talk to you. I have to tell you something now.” She babbled. She was talking fast the way she did when she was scared.
“Not now baby, there’s a bomb. There’s a bomb either here or on the way. I need you to get down to the basement. The boys took Flynn down there already.”
I grabbed her hand, but she pulled back.
“Elliot Granger.” She blurted, her eyes wild and wide with fear. “It was him. It was him Dante. It was him who killed Christina.”
“What the hell are you saying to me?” Elliot Granger was the governor. He was never on my radar.
“Christina was seeing him and I saw him kill Todd Parker with Barabbas Antonella. In her treasure box your Ma gave me was a whole host of evidence against Granger linking him to all sorts of things. It’s the dirt. The thing was I knew about him and I’m so sorry I didn’t say anything before.”
I stilled. Jesus Christ.
The guys rushed back in looking at us.
“What are you saying Maria? You saying you knew it could be him and you never said?”
“No,” she shook her head. “I didn’t know. I never knew. Not till today. I saw him in the park earlier. He came and spoke to me and I guessed he knew you were investigating. He knew you were looking in the right places. I would never hide that from you, and that is why I’m telling you now. Because I know it was him. The stuff in the box is dirt enough to destroy him and if we’re going with that then it has to be him. I couldn’t just speculate, because Christina was seeing other people too. He’s dangerous and I was scared to get it wrong.”
All I could do was stare at her while disappointment and hurt filled me.
All I wanted for so long was a name, just a name and she had it.
She had a fucking name all this time and never told me.
The glass smashing in on the floor to ceiling window stole my next words. A grenade dropped a few feet away from us and outside was the creeper from the charity.
The creeper with the long pointed nose, greasy black hair, and distorted face. The fucker was right outside my house.
Furious as I was the first thing I did was grab Maria and jump as far as I could into the hall while the other guys jumped out of the way.
The blast from the explosion took down everything in its path.
Chapter 28
Dante
* * *
As the walls crumbled the bullets started to fly.
My head was spinning and my ears were ringing. Blood ran down Maria’s nose, but she was alright just disorientated.
I was still so furious I couldn’t look at her properly.
She had a name and never shared it with me. She saw me suffer and never once said she suspected this guy.
I got up to go, to help the others.
“Stay in here.” I told her.
“Dante wait–”
“I don’t want to hear it Maria. Of all the shit you’ve done to me to screw with my mind, this was the worst. You had a name. It doesn’t matter what you thought you should have told me. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I was trying to protect you. I couldn’t lose you too. I didn’t know.” Tears spilled from her eyes, mingling with the blood that stained her skin, but I didn’t care .
