Page 92 of Assassin's Obsession

I shrug. "I'll always be prepared to protect you."

"You don't have to protect me from my family." She shoves her feet into the ankle boots I knew would look beautiful on her.

"I know that. But you never know what else will happen. Bianchi tried to gain access to the property, using your mom and sister to do it." No matter how secure my property is, I don't drop my vigilance.

Ever.

"Stefano went to my mom?" Candi rushes over to the steel wall. "Get this thing open! It's worse than I thought."

I do something on my phone. "Put your hand on the pad with the red light above it."

Candi does as I tell her and her palm print gets entered in the system.

"Now type in your birthday, year included."

"That's not obvious at all." She taps in the numbers.

"It only works from this side of the wall. The code for the other side changes daily. Only you, me and Derian have access to it."

"I don't have access to squat."

"You do on your new phone."

"New phone?" She rushes out of the room as soon as the wall slides up and she can open the door. "Not important right now. Stopping mom from calling the police is."

Chapter 25

CANDI

Mira Czabok may have debilitating arthritis. She may sleep behind a curtain in the kitchen and be wearing her only pair of dress shoes she bought at Goodwill a decade ago.

But when she is in a temper, my mom is a queen.

There are seven guards milling around the foyer when I come tearing down the stairs, Angelo's shout to be careful only spurring me to go faster out of orneriness.

What does he think? I'm going to trip and fall in the first pair of designer boots ever to grace my feet?

The guards are all watching mom like she's a bomb about to explode and they don't know which wire to cut as she yells at them in a mixture of English and Polish, none of it particularly polite.

But the way she looks at them is a monarch getting a glimpse of unruly peasants.

They don't scare her at all. She's looking for her daughter and here I am.

I remember thinking she'd never cut a guy's hand off to protect me, but coming to Long Island in the company of a mafia capo to rescue me is pretty much the same thing.

"Mom! I'm right here," I yell in really bad Polish.

But it gets her attention, and she stops mid rant to turn her glare on me. "Young lady, do you have any idea what time it is?"

Considering the fact I didn't check the time on my phone before answering her call, the answer isno, but that doesn’t feel like the right answer to give my irate mother.

I look to Cookie for help and like the stellar little sister she is, she pats mom on the back. "I told you she'd be fine. Just because she didn't answer her phone earlier and hasn't called eventhough it's almost dinner time doesn't mean she got kidnapped like her douchebag sperm donor said."

Almost dinner time? We eat at 6:30 pm every night so Cookie has time to do homework after school and to relax after dinner. Mom insists on keeping the same schedule on the weekends too.

Considering Angelo and I didn't go to sleep until nearly noon – because sex is fricken amazing and we woke up an hour after falling asleep the first time to do it all over again – that's not so bad.

Obviously, mom does not agree.

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