“Who?” Sante demands.
“You wouldn’t know him.” Her voice is suddenly weary with defeat. “And trust me, you wouldn’t want to if you did. He’s dangerous—that’s why I needed a place he would never look.”
I don’t like it, but not for the reasons I shouldn’t not like it. I should be pissed she’s mixed us up in someone else’s drama, but instead, I feel surging rage that someone has instilled this fear and despondency in her. It’s not my place to care. I don’t know this woman, and her problems aren’t mine, yet I find myself pulling out my gun and pointing it right at her face.
“Who?” I demand with deadly calm.
Silence presses against my eardrums. Or maybe that’s my thundering pulse. Either way, my blood pressure skyrockets.
“Who … who are you?” she whispers with dawning realization. Whoever she’s running from isn’t the only monster in the city. She’s leaped from the frying pan straight into the fire. Her paling skin highlights her freckles, making her look sickeningly innocent. How am I supposed to walk away from a face like that?
Fury over this turn of events sharpens my tongue when I answer her. “The last person you’ll ever see if you don’t give me a name.” It’s an empty threat, but she doesn’t know that, and I want answers.
She squeezes her eyes tightly shut again. Tears roll down her freckled cheeks this time, and she whispers, “His name is Biba.”
The single word ricochets like gunfire inside my head.
“Fuck!”Sante roars beside me.
She’s got the Russian mob after her. This isn’t just a case of a domestic dispute or some asshole loan shark looking for his money. She’s got the boss of the whole Russian mob looking for her.
Jesus Christ.
I don’t realize Sante and Amelie are having a wordless conversation until he addresses her in a frustrated tone. “What am I supposed to do, Mel? We don’t know what the hell she’s gotten herself into. This could draw us into a full-blown war.”
“We can’t send her out on her own,” Amelie returns in a pitiful tone that I instantly know will trump any argument Sante or I might make. “I know what it’s like to feel hunted and alone. Please help her.”
Yup. Checkmate.
“I can get her a plane ticket. I hear Colombia is a great place to disappear,” he suggests dryly. He can read the writing on the wall as well as I can.
“Is that what you would have wanted for me?” she prods, hands now hiked on her hips.
He grimaces, arms spreading wide. “What else do you suggest? I can’t put her up in a hotel forever.”
“No, but we could hide her while we figure out what’s going on and see if there’s a way to help.”
“You and I hardly have room for ourselves in our tiny apartment, let alone a guest. Not that I’d let you bring that sort of danger into our house anyway.” He pauses, then, as if in slow motion, turns to me. “You’ve got plenty of room, though, don’tcha, Tommy?” His knife slides as easily into my back as the grin across his face.
Fucking traitor.
“No fucking way. It’s not happening.” I haven’t shared a living space with anyone since he and I were forced to spend a month in a barn with a dozen pigs back in Sicily. What he’s proposing sounds just as distasteful. I don’t share my space with anyone, let alone someone I know nothing about. And besides that, keeping Danika near me will eliminate all hope of scraping her from my mind. I’ll be just as much a captive as she is.
Amelie turns to face me like a cat angling itself to look larger than it is and injects every ounce of authority she can summon into addressing me. “You owe me, Tommaso Donati, for pretending to be my stalker. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that.”
I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. “Oweyou? I took a fist to the face for that.” And I was only doing what her damn husband asked me to do.
“That was between you and your delinquent friend over there.” She nods toward Sante, then presses a finger into my chest, brows narrowing. “This is between you and me. It’s not forever. Give her a place to stay while we figure this out, and we’ll call it even.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” I breathe. “You going to say something, Sante?”
The traitor shrugs. “Yeah, happy wife, happy life.”
Amelie grins, and I know I’ve lost.
After bellowing my frustration, I turn to my friend and level him with a scathing glare. “You fucking owe me.”
He bites down on his lips to keep from laughing.
