chiara
“I heard that he’s going to kill you.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, I swallowed hard. Something wasn’t right. Part of me didn’t believe that Alessandro would kill me after he just saved me … but maybe he wanted the money. He had to get away from his family and needed money to survive. Maybe this was his only way.
He waltzed around in his gray sweatpants, his dick pressed against the front of them, and without a single shirt in sight, showing off his toned abdomen. His bullet wound was still patched up, some white gauze over it.
Instead of sparing me a glance, he pushed his hand into his pocket and walked to the kitchen. My brows furrowed for the briefest moment, and I heard William talking really fast, which he only did when he was nervous. So, I clicked off my phone and shut the damn thing off.
Alessandro started the Keurig, leaned against the counter, and looked over at me with his thick arms crossed over his chest. All I wanted to do was—
“Like what you see, reginetta?”
“No.” Yes.
I lay on the couch, my tits nearly hanging out of my bra. Tonight had gone from bad (finding out someone had put a hit on my head), to really bad (getting shot by the mafia), to terribly bad (figuring out that my only hope of solving my mother’s case might’ve been compromised). I needed something to pick me up.
“Do you have something I could wear?”
“I’d rather you walk around naked,” Alessandro said, glancing down at my body.
I swallowed hard and tried so hard to think straight, think about Tommy and all the revenge I wanted to get on him, think about not being distracted by a devilishly handsome man with a thick Italian accent, standing in the kitchen in thin gray sweatpants that I could almost see right through.
“Who were you talking to?” He grabbed the coffee mug and walked around the kitchen island to lean against the wall in front of me. “Your cheating boyfriend or your cop boyfriend?”
I clenched my jaw and glared at him. “The cop, and he’s not my boyfriend.” I paused for a moment, listening to him chuckle, and pushed myself up into a seated position because this couch definitely made me keep slipping. No wonder I didn’t buy this type of leathery shit for my apartment. “He’s been compromised.”
Alessandro’s hand tightened on the coffee cup, his knuckles turning white. “What the fuck do you mean, he’s been compromised?”
“He called me, nervous. He’s never nervous. They might be tracking us. We should go.”
“No,” he said. “I’m tired of running. If they want to come up in here, I’ll shoot them fucking dead. They won’t be able to get within fifty meters of this building without me knowing about it.”
So, he had people.
I grasped on to the couch for dear life, my leg hurting so terribly bad. “Do you think it’s your family?”
“No, reginetta, it’s yours.” He looked so serious that I actually believed him. “The Sicilian Mafia doesn’t give a fuck about the Americans. They’d kill the police if they got into their way. They have no use for them anyway. They want us.”
My mind was spinning with who would go to Officer William—the one cop who had been hunting them down for years—to find me. Tommy crossed my mind, but I shook my head. It couldn’t be him. He was too damn stupid. He got followed by cops so often, and he didn’t even realize it.
“Well, we have to tell my dad,” I said. “He’s not going to like that someone—”
Alessandro placed his coffee down on the side table and stepped closer to the couch. “That someone—his daughter—was talking to the police, and now, they know something?” Alessandro shook his head. “He really wouldn’t like that,” he said, mocking me.
I narrowed my eyes. “The only reason I hired that asshole was to figure out who had killed my mother because this family is absolutely useless at figuring stuff out.”
“They’re good at figuring shit out, but they’re better at hiding it.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Oh, don’t be so dense, reginetta. I know you’re smarter than that.”
But … I didn’t want to believe that my own family knew who had killed Mom. It was true that someone in the family had done it and that they also wanted me dead, but if they knew who had done it, they would have to risk their entire life to hide this from Dad. Because Dad would put seventeen bullets straight through the man’s head when he found out.
“You’re lying,” I said.
“I have no reason to lie to you … except that you’re annoying as fuck, you won’t leave me alone, you threatened to shoot me in my exposed wound.” He winked at me. “But if you ignore all those reasons, reginetta, maybe you’d see that I’m the only damn person in this family who is looking out for you.”