Page 37 of Mob Bride

There. My brain said it.

It makes no sense at all. He kissed me, and that’s it. We’re not in a relationship of any sort. We’re inconvenient acquaintances. We’re physically attracted to each other, but that’s it.

He’s been trying to keep me safe ever since he met me. I don’t appreciate the meddling. I definitely don’t appreciate his high handedness, but he’s doing what he thinks is best for me. I know a lot is also for my mom’s sake.

To do more with Bartlomiej feels wrong, but I doubt Shane is worrying about me and what I might think if he’s off with someone else. I don’t know if he has anybody, whether he’s in a relationship or even a situationship. Who knows? It irritates me even more that I’m concerned about it. I don’t want to care.

I look at my front door, and I’m trying to figure out a plan again to get out. I really don’t want to go anywhere. I’m so tired. I just want to sleep. I’ll just text my handlers back in a couple hours and say I can’t.

Yesterday might have been the longest day and night of my life. Bartlomiej texted me four times and called me twice to make sure I was okay. He was very insistent I come by today, so here I am. This is going to be another tedious day, and I still need to figure out a way to ditch his men and see my handlers. I don’t know how I’m going to do that.

“Bartek, I didn’t go for a run this morning. Can I at least go for a walk? I’ll go stir crazy if I have to be in this house all day. You don’t even want me to go in the backyard. Please. I just needsome fresh air. I need to stretch my legs. You know how I get when I don’t work out.”

“I don’t think one day off from a run will kill you.”

“I know that. That’s why I asked for a walk.” I try to infuse light-heartedness into my tone.

Bartlomiej nods to two of his guys. “I’ll round up two more. Meet them at the front door.”

Blessedly, I set off for my walk a few minutes later. Now, I’m two miles from the house when I spot Shane’s car. I wonder if any of the men see it, too. I can’t tell about the guy in front or in back of me, but I dart my gaze to the guys beside me. None of them seem to have noticed, but if they do, they don’t want me to. Shane ducks down fast, so maybe he’s in the clear. If that’s the case, it makes me wonder just how situationally aware these guys are if I’m scanning our surroundings and noticed that, but they don’t.

I can’t point it out to them or Bartlomiej without admitting I saw Shane, and I have no interest in Bartlomiej tightening his security detail around me. I see another familiar face driving toward me. I can’t tell if she’ll be a friend or an agent for this conversation, but we’ve positioned her as a friend of mine before.

I point to the oncoming car. “I know her. I’m just going to say hi.” I lean over when she stops and winds down her window. “Hi, Stella.”

“Hey, what’s with the extra guys? Something happen?” She sounds inquisitive like a friend not conspiratorial.

“You know Bartlomiej. He just likes to make sure I’m safe. I’d rather be too overprotected than not protected enough.”

“I was planning to call you to see if you could come over tonight. I broke up with Johnny, so I was really hoping we could have a girls’ night to take my mind off it.”

That must mean they’ve reassigned him. I wonder if that’ll make her my full-time handler along with Steve. It would make more sense. I’ve said that all along one of them should be a woman, so we could stage situations like this.

“Yeah, that would be great. I’d love that. What time should I come over?”

One of the men clears his throat, but I ignore him. Bartlomiej never said I couldn’t go places. He said I had to go with four guards.

“Why don’t you come over at like seven? We can order something and just hang out.”

“That sounds good to me. It’s been forever since I’ve had a girls’ night. I’ve almost forgotten what they’re like.”

“Okay, I’ll see you then. I’m so glad I ran into you.”

“You, too. Have a good day. I’ll see you in a bit.

Angela drives away. Just like my name isn’t Kaja, her name isn’t Stella. I decide I’ve pushed my luck with these guys, so I tell them I want to head back. The conversation doesn’t go over well with Bartlomiej, but he gives in, and he lets me head over to Angela’s place.

It was nice to get away from Bartlomiej, but I have to spend more time than I want explaining what happened yesterday to Angela and Steve. I skip a lot of details and make it sound like I wasn’t actually at the scene. I waited until she let me know they’d heard Jacek got shot, but there was no evidence found before I admitted to anything more than just I hadn’t seen it.

They don’t know about the scene at the trail. They only talked about where I guess Tymoteusz and his men went. They scattered before there were any arrests, but at least it drew NYPD away from the actual scene.

It makes me think Shane’s cleaners must have done a good job. The only reason any law enforcement knows about Jacek is because his wounds were so severe there was no avoidinggoing to a hospital. Gunshot wounds and stabbings usually require getting the police involved, bringing in a man practically dead from two gunshot wounds is definitely going to mean an investigation.

It suddenly makes me wonder if the doctor who put Jacek in a medically induced coma did it because that was the best course of treatment or because Bartlomiej told him to do it, so no one could force Jacek to give a statement right away. I don’t know, but either seems highly plausible to me now. I can’t convince Bartlomiej to let me go back to my apartment for tonight, so I’m already in bed here.

He said he had some paperwork left to do. I’ll pretend to be asleep when he comes in. I need to know when that is and what kind of mood he’s in. He promised he’d let me sleep and not touch me tonight because he often wakes me up. I made the mistake of trying to reject him the first night he did it. We had a massive argument. He learned I don’t enjoy being woken any more than he enjoys being turned down. I thought he was going to dump me. Now he sticks to some heavy petting then spooning me.

I hear voices, and I don’t recognize any of them. I creep out of bed, avoiding any of the creaking floorboards. This is an older home. It’s nice, but it has definitely settled. The first couple of times I got up to tiptoe around made a floorboard creak. I passed it off as needing to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water since you have to walk toward the bathroom to get to the bedroom door.

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