Page 27 of Rescued By the Mafia

“If the bastard was watching the whole time,” Romeo said, “why’d he wait to blow up the car until Iris was back in the armored SUV?”

Mikey set down his tablet. “There are a couple of possibilities for that.” He started ticking off fingers. “Most probable is that there was a preset delay, because he couldn’t be sure how far from the car he’d be when he hit the switch. The next option is that there was a lag in the signal between the sending device and the receiving device, which equates to the same effect.”

Dante let himself think back on their time in that parking lot, on the way Iris had wedged herself up between him and her Corolla. They’d been out there for at least two minutes before he’d realized it was time to leave. “Or,” he said as Mikey took a breath, “killing Iris was never really the intent, and blowing up her car was a warning.”

Romeo made a face that said everything about how he felt about that method of message delivery.

Mikey cursed under his breath. “Yeah. Or that.”

They sat in heavy silence for over a minute.

Romeo sank back, legs stretching out. “So, if this asshole’s setting bombs now, you think there’s some kind of trap waiting in the apartment she shared with that woman?”

Anger burned through him as Dante reflected on what Elise had told them. “I suspect the trap is the psychological impact of him having been in and gone through her space. And the unavoidable fear of when and how he might return.” From Elise’s story, Bishop had had the car and access to the apartment for over twelve hours. Plenty of time to make a copy of a key, rifle through an underwear drawer, leave taunting messages, or whatever else was in the bastard’s mind.

“Damn,” Romeo grumbled.

Mikey straightened. “What more can we do, brother?”

Dante curled his hands into fists. “Just keep your eyes open,” he said. “I want this son of a bitch found. I don’t care if you have to haul him out of a crowded Starbucks, if one of your teams sees him, they had better drag his ass to the nearest facility or have a damn good reason why they didn’t.” He met each of his brothers’ stares. “And he’s to be taken alive. Unless Iris asks for it, the prize of his head belongs to me.”

His brothers nodded and with subdued words they let themselves out, leaving him to sit alone.

Dante moved to the cabinet beyond the dining area and reached for his favorite whiskey, but his fingers had barely closed around the bottle when he stilled. With the mood he was in, he’d have to drink the whole damn bottle to kill the restless beast in his veins, and the last thing he wanted to be was a hungover slob come morning. Hell, he couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d let himself drink enough to put him in that position. So he settled for a single shot, put the bottle away again, and took himself upstairs when he was done.

He stopped by the closed door to Iris’s room.

He’d promised her that the space beyond would be her sanctuary. He’d specifically promised that even he would respect the boundary of the room so long as she needed it. But this feeling inside … he wasn’t familiar with it. He’d never been so desperate simply to see someone else’s face as he was when they were apart, and the more time they spent together, the deeper these moments of separation cut.

Dante raised his hand and pressed his palm to the door. She’d asked him to stay with her until she fell asleep, and he had. He’d sat beside her on her bed, run his fingers through her hair, and held her until her quiet sniffles evened out.

His fingers curled into a fist and he pulled his hand from the door. He needed to man up and stop worrying so much when he knew damn well she would be perfectly fine. Because he was going to see to that. So he cracked the door, quietly, and slipped her silenced phone into the room. He had to rest it on the floor, but she would find it, and he hadn’t technically crossed into her space.

Then he turned and continued to the room that remained only his, at least for one more night, and pulled his own phone from his pocket. He had one more call to make, and possibly Iris would be upset about this choice, but he believed she’d understand in time. Especially if she ever worked up the nerve to look inside that folder.

It rang twice before Aurelio answered. “What can I do for you, Boss?”

Dante lowered himself to the two-seater sofa in his room and toed off his shoes as he spoke. “The situation’s changed,” he said. “Iris Jayne won’t be coming back to work.”

Aurelio made a sound of surprise. “Ah, yes, of course.” He cleared his throat. “Can I ask … why? I thought she had promise.”

“Oh, you weren’t wrong,” Dante said, “but you’ll figure out the rest in time.” There was no sense leaving her on payroll from a financial perspective. More importantly, he’d have to kill every single staff member and customer who leered at her if she kept that job. It’d be bad for business.

Aurelio hurried off the phone after that, assuming he’d overstepped, and Dante let the device fall onto the cushion beside him.

It was too early to sleep and too late to do much else. He could go down to the home gym in the basement, but he wanted to be close by in case Iris woke up and needed him. A concern which in itself was foreign to him. For as much as he cared about his immediate family, for as viciously as he would defend them, none of those feelings compared to what had built inside him for Iris.

Deputy Sheriff Paul Bishop had made a huge mistake chasing her to Newark, and doubled down on that foolishness when he’d set a remote-activated bomb on her car.

Nightmares plagued her again, causing Iris to twist and thrash as she fought both to sleep and to wake at the same time. She dreamt of a cold, lonely childhood one moment, blended with the hard, painful years of abuse she’d suffered as an adult. A well-rounded lesson of why people were not to be trusted, years of proof that she had no one but herself in her corner. Bruises, cutting words, broken bones, dripping blood, and devastating secrets—all of it amounted to that one fact.

When the dream settled—as they so often did—on her battered and bleeding on the floor of the shower with the water raining down on her, Iris finally jolted awake. A scream clogged her throat as tears blurred her vision, her chest heaving, but at least she’d escaped that space. Even a dark, barely familiar room was better than that shower.

But she was still alone.

The door to her room swung open and light trickled in around the large frame of a man suddenly standing in the doorway. He was barely discernable against the backlighting, but Iris knew who he was even before her eyes adjusted.

“You screamed,” Dante said. There was a strangled rasp in his voice that sounded like fraying restraint.

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