by Meghan March
He’s alluding to the truce that our fathers struck earlier this week, but he should know better than to breathe a word of that shit in a place like this. Then again, GTR has never struck me as intelligent—just brutal.
I curl my arm around Drew’s waist and pull her into my side. “Go ahead. Waiting list hasn’t gotten any shorter since last time, but you can try.”
“You don’t want to be a member of that stuffy club,” Randi says with a wink at GTR before shooting me a sharp look. “They don’t let in women like me.”
“Their mistake,” GTR says to her. But even with Randi’s tits nearly falling out of her shirt, he still cuts his gaze to Drew, and I swear he’s one step away from drooling.
Randi doesn’t miss his shifting attention as she straightens. “So, what brings you here tonight if you’re supposed to be working, Cannon?”
“Couldn’t keep my mind on work, so I thought I’d track down my beautiful distraction.” I squeeze Drew against my side, making it clear to GTR that she is off-fucking-limits.
“Oh my God, that is too freaking precious. Drew, seriously. How did you not fuck this guy?” Randi squeals as she reaches for her drink.
GTR’s eyes light up like he’s been handed the keys to the kingdom, and I want to strangle Randi Brown. Drew freezes beside me, and I guarantee she’s wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.
While I’m working out something to say, Drew presses harder against me.
“Jesus, Randi. You know I’m a fifth-date kind of girl.” She glances up at me from under her lashes, and I’m stunned at what a good actress she is. “I did appreciate all the orgasms, though. What do you say we get out of here and have dates two through five all in one night?” Drew bites down on her lip, looking earnest and sexy and innocent all at the same time.
“Well, fuck. Who could turn down that kind of offer,” GTR says. “I’d ride her all night—”
I rip my gaze away from Drew’s to cut him off. “Shut your fucking mouth and have some goddamned respect. Obviously, your father didn’t teach you shit, but you’d think you’d have learned some by now.”
His glare is filled with enough acid to strip paint off a car.
“Fuck you, Freeman. You think you’re better than me. You and your old man ain’t nothing but—” GTR manages to stop himself from saying the one thing that could get him killed faster than anything, talking shit about Dom. He turns and speaks to Randi instead. “What do you say we get out of here, sexy?”
Drew tenses at my side, probably wanting me to stop her friend from going with him, but there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Randi’s a grown woman and she doesn’t take orders well, which is only one reason I wouldn’t hire her.
The woman in question smiles seductively. “I’m going to bang you like a drum, bad boy. I need a little danger to spice up my life. Let’s go.”
“Randi—” Drew says, but Randi shakes her head.
“You know I’m a first-date kind of girl, and Mama needs to get some tonight.” Randi hops off the stool and wraps herself around GTR’s side like climbing ivy. “Catch you on the flip side.”
The pair walk out of the bar arm in arm, and I lock my fingers around Drew’s to keep her from going after them.
“Why did you let her leave with him?” she demands as soon as she cuts her attention from their retreating backs to me, fear for Randi written all over her features. “He’s bad, right?”
“Which Randi clearly picked up on, and she went anyway. What do you want me to do?”
Drew presses her lips together and doesn’t answer right away. In her silence, I look at the abandoned table and the untouched martini sitting on it.
“This yours?” I ask her.
She nods. “Randi ordered another round when I got up to answer my phone. I didn’t make it back to the table to drink it.”
“And while you were gone, GTR showed up and hit on your friend.”
“Yeah, so it seems.”
“What kind of drink is this supposed to be?” I pick it up and sniff.
“Dirty martini,” she replies as her top teeth bite down on her bottom lip.
The clear liquid has an unusually cloudy appearance, so I take a small sip and a strong, salty flavor hits my tongue.
That motherfucker.
Rage, the likes of which I’ve never known before, rushes into my bloodstream. Instead of boiling over the way I want to, I force the heat to turn to pure ice. Ice is better because you don’t make stupid decisions.
Still, I voice my intent. “I’m going to kill him.”
“What?” Drew stares up at me, her eyes wide. “Why?”
“He fucking roofied your drink.”
33
Drew
“Then we have to go after Randi. What is he going to do to her?”
My grip on Cannon’s hand tightens as I try to drag him away from the table, but he’s become an unmovable mountain. Instead of charging after GTR and Randi, he’s practically glued to the floor.
“Please,” I say, resorting to begging. “We have to do something.”
Cannon’s expression is as warm as an iceberg when he finally meets my gaze. “Randi will be fine. GTR wouldn’t dare hurt her. Not when we watched them leave the bar together. And he’s also probably thanking God that we don’t know he tried to drug you. But he’s fucking wrong about that, and he’ll pay with his life.”
Suddenly, the man who never seemed to fit the mob profile sounds just like his father. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind that he means everything he says.
He plans to kill the heir to the Rossetti crime family, right after they had a secret meeting, for this. For me.
Oh sweet Jesus. What the hell am I supposed to do now?
I have to mitigate the damage. I didn’t start this investigation intending to cause a bigger rift between the Rossettis and the Cassos that could easily result in rivers of blood on the streets of New York. While it would solve my problem in a way I didn’t consider, I find that I can’t stand the thought of Cannon caught in the cross fire.
I have to protect him, even if it’s from himself.
Cannon suddenly moves away from the table, and I hurry to fall into step behind him. I don’t know where he plans on going, but I don’t trust him too far away from me right now, given what just happened.
Instead of leaving, he goes up to the bar, and it’s hard to hear him over the conversation and music playing in the background. When the bartender hands him an empty paper coffee cup and lid, things finally click into place in my brain. He’s taking the drink as evidence. We backtrack to the table, and he dumps the contents of the dirty martini into the cup and snaps the lid on it.
Finally, he turns his attention to me. “Come on. You’ve got some explaining to do.”
“What do you mean?” I blink up at him twice while I try to figure out what the hell kind of information he could possibly want from me.
Without replying, he holds out an arm, indicating that I should precede him out the door. As I move through the thickening crowd, he blocks anyone from getting close to me, but it also makes it impossible to ask any more questions.
When we reach the sidewalk again, I can’t help but scan up and down the street, looking for Randi—or Lorenzo, who was following us the night before. Beside me, Cannon is tapping something into his phone, and I assume he’s calling for a ride.
Without thinking, I pull out my phone, find Randi’s contact, and fire off a text message.
* * *
Me: Please be careful tonight. That guy seemed sketchy AF. Text me when you see this. And when you’re home safe and alone. I know you think I’m crazy, but please just do it.
* * *
Not surprisingly, Randi doesn’t reply immediately, and I don’t even want to think about what she’s doing instead. Please stay safe, Randi. I didn’t mean to drag you into my mess. Guilt whips through me, and I try to push it away. Occupational hazard, I try to tell myself, but I’ve never been in a sit
uation like this before.
“Are you sure she’s going to be okay?” I ask quietly, watching Cannon’s serious face as his attention cuts from his phone to me.
“How many other bad decisions has she made that she’s skated away from without any problems?”
It’s a valid point, I know, because Randi isn’t the most careful with her own personal safety, and that’s based solely on what I’ve learned over the past six months from her.
“A lot.”
“Then let’s hope her luck holds out for one more.”
A knot of tension blooms between my shoulder blades. “I was really hoping for a little more reassurance than that.”
Cannon shoves his phone in his pocket and turns to look at me. “GTR isn’t stupid enough to hurt her. And don’t take this the wrong way . . .” He pauses to glance out at the street and the wailing fire engine that flies by before meeting my gaze again. “But there’s no way he’s going to throw away a chance at leading the Rossetti family on a piece of ass like Randi.”
“What do you mean?” Indignation rises up in me on Randi’s behalf, and a chill from the cool air sweeping by us raises goose bumps on my arms.
“Because she’s not the same kind of woman you are.”
My jaw drops as I try to make sense of what he’s saying. “What . . . what do you mean?”
“Randi’s one-night material. That’s it. He’ll get what he wants tonight and move on.”
“Then what kind of woman does that make me?” I ask as a shiver works through me.
Cannon yanks one arm and then the other out of his suit jacket. He drapes it over my shoulders. “The kind wars are fought over.”
His words wrap around me with more warmth than the jacket, and I know it’s dangerous.
While I’m gaping at him, Cannon turns away as the Bentley rolls to a stop in front of the bar. He threads his fingers through mine and pulls me toward the back door.
“Come on. We have a stop to make, and then you and I are going to talk.”
34
Cannon
I shouldn’t have said it. Any of it. Fuck. I shouldn’t have even been at Lambo’s tonight, because GTR shouldn’t have been there either. But we’re all getting fucked up over this woman who has me more off-kilter than anyone I’ve ever met.
More than anything, I wish I could talk to Creighton about her. I watched him get knocked on his ass by a little powerhouse of a woman who stole his heart before he even realized he had one.
I was so fucking smug and superior about it too. I couldn’t figure out why he’d want to disrupt his perfectly ordered life to chase Holly all over the country and make their marriage work. Now I’m starting to get an inkling of why he was willing to drop everything that had always mattered and shift his priorities to accommodate whatever made her happy.
My situation is nothing like his, I remind myself. Creighton is a billionaire who could have anyone and pull any string to make things work. He didn’t know he was the bastard son of a mob boss until he was in his thirties, and once he found out, he didn’t care. His relationship with Dom hasn’t overshadowed everything in his entire life. He wasn’t raised on treachery the likes of which only someone who grew up around the family could understand.
But he’s one of the only people on this earth who could possibly have advice for me in this situation . . . and he still won’t take my calls.
“Where are we going?” Drew asks, and I put Creighton out of my mind. It’s not a problem I can fix right now.
“A friend’s—where you’ll stay in the car.”
“Why?” she asks, her dark brown eyes inquisitive.
I wish she’d quit wearing those contacts. Not something I’m willing to say in front of Warren, though, because then it would get back to Dom and he’d have way too many questions about it.
“Because there are certain things you don’t need to see.”
Twenty minutes later, we pull up in front of a nondescript brownstone, and I hop out of the car. Ducking my head back inside, I look at Drew.
“I’ll be five minutes. Maybe ten. Don’t go anywhere.”
Her face takes on a mulish expression, but she nods. I glance at Warren, and he smiles.
“We’ll be right here, Boss. Take your time.”
A feeling of foreboding creeps around the collar of my shirt, but I push it down and jog across the street with the paper coffee cup in hand.
I can practically feel Drew’s gaze on my back as I take the steps that lead to the basement unit and knock on the door.
Over the earsplitting sounds of Rage Against the Machine, I wonder if Yoder will be able to hear me.
Shockingly, he yanks the door open a second later. He’s got three pairs of glasses on his head, and I don’t even want to know why. His gaming headset dangles from one hand.
“Whatchu got for me, man?” he asks, stepping aside for me to enter next to a wobbling tower of empty pizza boxes.
When the door shuts behind me, I hold up the coffee cup.
“Thanks, but you didn’t have to do that. I’m already loaded up on caffeine.”
“Don’t drink this unless you want to wonder what the fuck happened to the last twelve hours of your life when you wake up.”
His eyes widen behind the pair of glasses he shoves down onto the bridge of his nose. “Someone tried to roofie you?”
“Not me. A friend.”
His mouth forms an O. “Shit. Who the fuck would be that stupid?”
I grit my teeth at the thought of what GTR might have done if Drew hadn’t called me. The rage that I turned to ice threatens to burst free in the form of a flow of fucking lava, but I hold it back.
Now isn’t the time. Proof first.
“I need you to confirm what was used in the drink. Chemical composition and everything. I want to be able to track it back to the source.”
“Ohhh . . . You’re getting ready to fuck someone hard, aren’t you?”
“I’m just taking out the garbage. We don’t need any more assholes running around the city drugging women.”
Yoder takes the cup and stares down at it like it contains the secrets of the universe. “I’ll do this one for free, man. My sister got date-raped back in college. Seriously fucking uncool.”
“Not necessary. I’ll take care of you. Get it done as quick as you can, though. I need answers,” I say, catching the sound of disembodied players yelling at him through his headset.
Yoder yanks it back up to his ear. “Shit. Sorry. Gotta get back to my game. I’ll get on this as soon as it’s wrapped up. I’ll text you when it’s done.”
I know better than to expect a good-bye, because Yoder is already throwing the headset on and talking shit to someone on the other end.
I leave the musty smell of the basement apartment behind and head out to the car, only to see a black-and-white with its flashers on stopped behind the double-parked Bentley.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
As soon as I step into the street, an unmarked car pulls up behind the squad car, but I know exactly who it is. Detective Clinton Cole, a pain in Dom’s ass since the day Cole graduated from the academy.
The fact that he’s still alive continues to amaze me, because he’s offered up plenty of information to the Feds that helped them bring charges against Dom more than once. Nothing has ever stuck, but Cole hasn’t given up.
He’s looking for a promotion to detective first grade, but he won’t get it until he makes a major bust. Which, no doubt, he’s looking for the Casso family to provide. The only problem—he’s never come sniffing around me before. I’ve always skated by with my connections to Creighton Karas, but after I left Karas International, my veneer of respectability has grown thin.
Cole spots me as soon as I hit the pavement and lifts his chin in my direction. “Mr. Freeman, what brings you to Mr. Yoder’s this evening?”
“Detective Cole, what a surprise to see you here.” I don’t even bother to look at the uniformed
officer standing by the Bentley, no doubt asking for Warren’s license and registration. “Something I can help you with?”
He shrugs nonchalantly, but I can read between the lines. This is no accident. “I heard there was a fancy Bentley double-parked in this neighborhood and thought I’d swing by and see what you were doing. Didn’t plan on staying long?”
Inside the car, Drew is cringing into the corner of the back seat, her hair sweeping down into her face.
“Only long enough to drop off some coffee,” I say, but Cole doesn’t buy it.
“Seems awfully nice of you, and I know you’re not that nice of a guy.”
I smile at the detective. “You know that’s not true, Cole. Even if I did leave you off my Christmas card list last year.”
“Who’s your friend?” Cole tilts his head to look into the back seat of the car from the open front window.
“An employee who needed a ride.”
He ducks down to get a closer look, and I want to rip him away from the car. “What’s her name?”
“My employee. That’s all that matters.” I give the answers through clenched teeth, hanging on to my pretense of politeness by a thread. I’m hoping Drew picks up on my cues to stay silent and let me do the talking.
“Hey, miss. You okay back there?”
From around Cole’s head, I get a better view of her as she lifts her chin to look at him.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she says.
Cole’s posture stiffens. “Have we met before? What’s your name?”
Drew shakes her head. “Sorry, I never forget a face, and I don’t recall yours.”
“Huh. Must be my mistake.” He rises to his full height and shoves his hands in his pockets. “What the hell are you doing mixed up with family business, Freeman? I thought you knew better than to get your hands dirty.”