Page 64 of Warped

“He might believe your father’s men were the ones who took you.”

“Perhaps for a while, but not now that Johnny saw you on the street. I’m sure Johnny will have gone straight back and filled Tony in on the details.”

“Damn it. I’d forgotten about that.” I scratched my fingers through the soft beard growth on my jaw. “So what are you thinking?”

She sat up straighter. “Tony is going to use Nicole against my father however he can. He’s going to want to punish him, or perhaps use her to lure him into a vulnerable position. Tony doesn’t have a use for me anymore. At best, if he was able to get his hands on me, he could use me to lure my father out, but he’d only be giving my father what he wanted if I ended up dead. No, I think Nicole is the one who’s the main pawn in this whole thing. That’s why it’s so important I get her out of there, even if it’s against her will.”

“I’m worried, Vee. I know I’m sounding like a broken record, but I want you to consider one last time the possibility of leaving New York.” She opened her mouth to speak, but I lifted a hand to stop her. “I swear I won’t even mention your sister. I want you to think about leaving for a different reason. I’m concerned about who went through the room back at the motel. I’m worried someone might be onto me.”

She frowned. “You think whoever ransacked the room was after you?”

“It’s a possibility. The memory of my picture in the paper keeps haunting me, and I know I have enemies out there, too. There might be someone onto us who isn’t even connected to Tony or your father.”

Her jaw tightened. “You need to tell me. You’re helping me with all of my shit. I need to know about yours, too.”

I took a breath. I worried that telling her would somehow expose her to the man I knew had it in for me, but I figured she’d most likely find out soon anyway.

She needed to know everything in order to be ready for what might be coming.

“A month ago,” I started, “I was paid to take someone out, a cop who had been poking into the business of one of the mafia guys, Giovanni Bianchi.”

Vee nodded, obviously recognizing the name.

“Bianchi wanted the cop dead, but I couldn’t bring myself to do the job. I recognized the cop’s name as soon as I was given it. I’d known him from the early days when I went into law enforcement myself, before I realized it was completely the wrong job for me. He had been my mentor. Instead of doing what I was paid to do, I warned the cop in question that people were after him. I took the gangster’s money, gave a chunk of it to the cop to get him and his family to safety, and stashed the rest in the suitcase with the guns and the fake ID. I thought the cop would do the smart thing and vanish, so I could tell Bianchi he was dead and everything would be cool, but instead he decided to go down the correct procedures and report the whole thing. All except for me. He was decent enough not to report my real name, though I was well aware he could have. Instead, he reported the gangster who wanted him dead, and let it slip that the man sent to kill him had instead given him the opportunity to leave.” I sighed. “Stupid asshole should have taken the chance. He was dead a few days later. Giovanni Bianchi must have hired someone else to do the job. Of course, there was never any proof that Bianchi was behind it—there never is with those guys—but Bianchi knew exactly who had given the cop the heads up about who was after him.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “You.”

I nodded. “To be honest, I’m surprised Bianchi hasn’t tracked me down already. I assumed he’d decided to keep his head down after the cop’s death, and was waiting for the right opportunity. When I took the job for your father, I hadn’t yet known about my old mentor’s slip. If I had, I wouldn’t have even looked at taking another job. But I’d taken the money from your father, and I wanted to do it, mainly because I’d seen your photograph and I wanted to find you. It at least got me far away from New York. I hadn’t considered that it would also be the thing that would bring me right back again.”

“Jesus. So you think it might have been this Giovanni Bianchi who went through the room?”

“Yeah, possibly. He wouldn’t have found anything that would have related to me, though, so I’m hoping that bought us some time. He might have even thought we’d left the city already.”

“You should have told me sooner.”

“I didn’t remember it, and when I did remember, I felt like you had enough to worry about.”

“So, do you think there’s an award for New York’s most hated couple?” She said it with a deadpan expression, but then I saw her holding back a smile.

“Or an award for ‘couple most likely to be killed by the end of the day’?” I joked back, though we both knew our jesting was perilously close to the truth.

She laughed. “That, too.”

I loved how she was still able to put a brave face on everything, despite the number of things going against us. I couldn’t help myself. I leaned in and kissed her. “I love you, Verity Guerra.”

She kissed me back. “I love you, too.”

I stopped and pulled back to look into her eyes. “You mean that? You’re not just saying it?”

“No, I swear. I’m sorry I freaked out on you before. I was frightened of my emotions. You must have realized by now that I’m not exactly in touch with them.”

I reached up and traced my knuckles down the side of her face. “Is that the reason you never cry?”

She bit her lower lip, glancing down. “Maybe, in part. But mainly it’s because when you cry, you can’t fight. You use up all your emotion in the tears and the sobbing, and it drains your strength. When you’re drained, you’re weak. And when you’re weak, you’re vulnerable. I learned a long time ago that being vulnerable can get you killed.”

I leaned in and placed another slow, soft kiss to her mouth. “You can be vulnerable with me.”

“Can I? We might not be physically fighting, but the same thing applies. If I’m vulnerable, then I’m weak, and when people are weak, they get hurt.”

“Not if they have people around to protect them.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she said, looking me in the eye. “I’ve never had that experience.”

I took her hands. “Neither have I. But now we can be each other’s little piece of protection.”

---