Page 55 of The Fighter

I freeze, my cup midway to my lips. There’s only one Leo I know. “Leo Cesari, the same guy who’s engaged to my friend Rosa? That Leo? He works with you in the mafia?” The dots start to connect. “Hang on. You told me Simon made a pass at the enforcer’s fiancée, and that’s how you got involved. It was Rosa, wasn’t it? Which makes Leo the mafia enforcer.”

“Yes.” Tomas looks unfazed by my obvious shock. “To speed this up, Rosa’s friend Valentina, who I believe you’ve met, isn’t a web developer; she’s our hacker. And Dante, her husband, is Antonio’s second-in-command. Daniel handles our legal stuff, and Joao, who has visited your gym at least twice, also works for us. And the doctor last night…”

“What doctor?”

“Matteo was here when we got back. You don’t remember him?”

Now that I think about it, there was someone here. I can’t remember his face, but he was kind. He took my temperature and told me to pee into a?—

“Why was there a doctor here?” I demand, shock jolting down my spine. “I don’t understand. I drank too much, and I just needed to sleep it off. Why did you call a doctor, and why did he need to take a urine sample? He took a urine sample, didn’t he? I’m not imagining that part?”

“He did,” Tomas confirms.

My head is spinning. What the hell is going on? One minute, I’m in a pleasant sex haze, and the next, I feel like the foundations of my world are cracking. “What aren’t you telling me, Tomas?”

He sighs, his eyes troubled. “You weren’t drunk, Ali. At least, I don’t think so. I think someone put a date rape drug into your wine last night.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. The only person who came near my glass of wine was Gemma. Why would she want to drug me?”

He looks at me steadily. “Do you remember the men trying to abduct you?”

“Men?” A frisson of alarm runs through me, and a fuzzy memory drags itself to the forefront. A boat gliding into the dock, its engine cut off, its lights out. Two men dressed in black coming toward me. I start to tremble. “I don’t understand… Who were they? Why would they want to abduct me? Why would anyone want to abduct me?”

He puts his arm around me, and I lean into his body. His strength. He smells like sandalwood and soap, a clean male aroma that’s both comforting and a turn-on. I know this is just supposed to be about sex, and I’ve already overstayed my welcome, but I can’t bring myself to pull away. Right now, I need comfort in the worst sort of way, and Tomas is here, as solid as a rock, offering his shoulder for me to lean on. “I don’t know,” he says. “But I intend to find out. Matteo should call me in the next hour with the results of your sample.”

“What about the men? Can we ask them?”

“They’re dead.”

I pull away from his embrace and stare at him. “They’re dead? How?”

“I killed them,” he says flatly.

My vision turns fuzzy around the edges. “You killed them,” I repeat in disbelief. I open my mouth and close it. Please let this be a bad dream because I can’t quite believe what I heard. “Why?”

“Because they tried to abduct you,” he replies, his voice hard.

He’s being so matter-of-fact. He’s acting like their deaths are no big deal, and it’s never been more obvious to me that we live in two very different worlds. Those men were alive last night, and they’re dead now. Tomas killed two men, and he doesn’t seem to care. Not at all.

Who did I just sleep with?

The way I’m feeling must be visible on my face. “Alina,” Tomas says quietly. “I know this is hard for you to understand, but?—”

I take a step back. “It’s not hard to understand.” I feel sick. Bile fills my mouth. I slept with Tomas less than twelve hours after he murdered two men. Even worse, I liked it. I liked him. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Before I…” My voice trails off, and I can’t finish the thought. “Why did you hide it from me?”

An expression of hurt flashes over his face. “I didn’t set out to hide anything from you,” he says. “I was going to tell you everything when you woke up. And then you dropped your towel.”

That’s a reasonable explanation, but I’m in no mood to hear it. Right now, all I want to do is flee. I take another step back. “I need to go,” I blurt out. “Where are my clothes?” I’m not looking forward to wearing the vomit-splattered garments, but I can hardly go dressed in Tomas’s T-shirt and nothing else.

“I sent them to the cleaners,” he replies. “Paulina went shopping this morning, so…” He disappears from the room for a moment and returns with a paper bag. In it, I find underwear, a pair of yoga pants, and a new Groff’s T-shirt, all my size.

“Thank you,” I say grudgingly. Who’s Paulina? “So, you’re a killer but a thoughtful one?”

His lips twitch. “Your phone ended up in the canal last night. Here’s a replacement. Valentina synced it up, so it should have all your info on it.”

Damn it, he’s making it really hard to dislike him. From the day he walked into my gym, I’ve been trying my best to hate Tomas Aguilar, and at every turn, he thwarts me.

“Thank you,” I repeat stiffly.

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