Page 20 of Protecting Charity

“Hey now, I left it unlocked for him,” Max said, affronted that I would give him up.

“I’m not about to give Nico another reason to be mad at me. This one’s all on you, big guy,” I said with laughter.

“We really need a key to your house,” Nico said.

That sounds like we are proceeding to the next step, despite my outrageous behavior.

Chapter 9

Luca

My god, just make it stop. My phone was going off every few seconds with tag-teaming text messages from my irritating brother and cousin. I was trying to conduct business, and these fools were bothering me. “Sorry,” I told her as I put my phone on vibrate.

“Why am I here, Luca?”

Kandy sat across from me, staring at her untouched pasta, her palms flat on the table. I watched her place them there a few moments ago to calm the quake that she couldn’t hide.

“I have this little birdie in my ear telling me things about you. Do you want to know what it’s saying?” I let my indignation sit just at the surface. Enough for someone to suspect me of being angry, but keeping it down far enough where it didn’t show.

“I-I don’t know what you mean,” she stammered while shifting in her seat.

“It’s telling me that you, Kandy Weir, are telling people about things you see happening around my place of business.”

Her face paled as she drew in a deep breath. She shook her head, then moved her hands below the table, leaving behind a sweaty palm print. “I would never do that, Luca.”

“See, that’s not what I’ve been hearing. I believe the person who told me. They have a better rapport with me than you do.”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

I eyed Vito, who remained silent behind her, his hands clasped in front of his body. “You wouldn’t do that to me, but you would do it to someone that you didn’t like.” I leaned towards her and placed my elbows on the table. “Isn’t that right, Kandy?”

“I don’t have to listen to this.” She stood from her seat, suddenly growing a pair of balls, but not before Vito put his hand on her shoulders and shoved her back down into her chair. She looked at him with bulging eyes, then back to me.

“You do, actually. See, you put a certain colleague of mine in harm’s way, and I can’t overlook that.” I call him my source, but in actuality, he’s Nico’s. “Want to tell me why you were talking to the FBI, Kandy?”

“I wasn’t… I mean, I wanted to see if I could help with the kid case.”

Looking at Vito, I pointed at her like that was the most ridiculous thing she could have told me, then rubbed the contempt from my face. “Feed me something believable, would ya? You don’t have a charitable bone in your body.”

She looked at the door, probably contemplating her chances of escape. Her odds were next to negative. I mean, I wouldn’t rule anything out, but she was as good as dead if she tried. I closed the restaurant down so there were no witnesses and no one was going to save her. She had to realize this. The people that worked for me knew who I was and what I did. And if they didn’t, their heads were so far into the clouds they should stay there with a bullet to the brain. But I couldn’t get rid of her right now, even if I wanted to. It’d be too suspect after her revealing discussion with the lead investigator.

“It’s true. I saw it on the news.”

Okay, so she was going to stick to her story. This should make this more entertaining. “Vito,” I motioned to him, “why don’t you take Ms. Weir and have some fun with her for a little bit. I have some things I could be doing.”

She sucked in a breath and held it to the point I thought she might pass out in her pasta. “Wait. Just wait,” she said as Vito grabbed her upper arm. “I may have mentioned that Charity was a violent asshole like the little girl’s sister, which sparked a conversation about Charity. I didn’t go in to specifically talk about her, but he just kept asking questions. I thought he was interested in me and was just having a conversation. I didn’t think he was using me.”

I raised my brows. “What exactly did you say?”

Vito released her arm, and she rubbed where he had gripped her, looking from Vito back to me. It wasn’t Vito she should fear. It would be Charity. I wanted her sitting next to me while Kandy and I had this conversation, thinking about all the bloody ways she could handle this one woman I’ve only ever seen her express resentment over.

“Just that she was crazy. And I may have mentioned…” she trailed off while looking at her hands she had twisted in her lap. “that she drugged me out of envy.” She winced at her last comment as her leg bobbed up and down frantically.

I let my disgust leak through like a crack in a dam. “Did you now?”

“It just slipped out. I don’t even think he noticed.”

Oh, he noticed. My people were already scrambling to tamper down the rumor mill that he had moving around the precinct. If her father caught wind of it all, Charity would have more problems than she would care for.

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