Page 50 of A Sinner's Virtue
His body freezes and his fingers pause on his phone screen. “Who told you?”
“Does it matter? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Honestly?” He sets the phone down and pivots to look at me. “I’m fucking terrified of saying or doing anything that will give you a reason to run from this.”
His words hit home. I did this to us. I got scared and ran. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me things.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Yes, it is. I gave you a reason not to trust me. I’m flaky. I know that. I want to be better. I want to do this, with you. All in, if that’s what you want.”
Marcel’s smile lights up his face. “I want,” he says, cupping the back of my head before he brings his lips down onto mine.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When I tug open Zoe’s front door, I’m expecting the Uber Eats delivery guy. What I’m not expecting is to find a couple of pissed off looking Russians staring back at me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” one of them, Ivan I think, asks.
Folding my arms over my shirtless chest, I smirk and raise one eyebrow at him in question. Really, fucker? You need me to spell out what I’m doing half-naked in my girlfriend’s apartment. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“We’re here to check on Zoe. Where is she?”
“Asleep.”
“You can either move out of our way, or I’ll be more than happy to move you myself,” the one I’m certain is Ivan says.
“Try it.” I shrug a shoulder, refusing to budge a single step.
“What’s going on?” I turn to find Zoe padding barefoot down the stairs with nothing but a thin silk robe covering her body.
“You have visitors,” I tell her while slamming the door shut. “You should really put some clothes on before you let 'em in.”
“You just opened the door with no shirt on and your pants aren’t even done up,” Zoe says, trailing her eyes up and down my body.
“Yeah, pretty sure your Russian friends aren’t checking me out, babe. You, on the other hand? Well, they’re guys and you’re hot as fuck. They’re most certainly checking you out.”
Zoe smiles at me. “You think I’m hot?”
“Insanely,”
“Don’t worry, those guys are not checking me out. They’re family.” Zoe shoves past me and heads towards the door.
“Unless they’re blind, they’re checking you out,” I tell her. Then I lean forward and whisper in her ear, “I can see your nipples through your robe, babe. If they see them too, I’ll gouge their eyes out.”
Shivers run through her body. Then she turns abruptly. Her hands land on my chest and she pushes me backwards. “I’ll be right back,” she says before running up the stairs.
By the time I turn around again, the front door is opening and the two fucking Russians help themselves inside Zoe’s house like they own the place. They’re way too fucking comfortable here. “You find anything on the shooter?” the one who isn’t Ivan asks me.
The shooter being the fucker who shot up the restaurant Zoe and I were in a month ago, the same asshole who put a bullet through Dominic’s arm. I haven’t been able to find out shit about them or who they were aiming for.
At first, I thought it was me, but there’s been nothing since the incident. If someone were after me, or any De Bellis, they would have tried again. I’ve looked into it being an attack on Dom or Lucy too, seeing as both are heirs to well-known billionaire families. I couldn’t find anything to suggest the attack was on them either.
There’s a small chance it could be random. Some punk-ass fuckers who were bored and thought they’d fill the time by shooting up a restaurant. I highly fucking doubt that’s the case, though. I don’t believe in coincidences.
“Nothing. You?” I ask, knowing full well they’re also looking.
“Nothing. Boss wants her shadowed until we either find them or find out what they were after,” Ivan says.
