Page 26 of Sinister Intentions

Also, I should’ve gotten a burner phone, as well. What if she tracked my number? What if she wasn’t who she pretended to be?

Maybe contacting Iset wasn’t a good idea after all.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I groaned. Once I made contact, there would be no turning back—did I trust her or not?

My gaze drifted towards the cafe’s glass front door and to the bustling street outside.

Alex and Fee chose the cafe, so when we came here, I didn’t even consciously take in the surroundings. Did that mean this was Salvini territory?

And there he was—Vince Salvini—emerging from the building across the street.

I did a double take and pushed my face against the glass frame.

Holy hell. This was like an on-steroid version of a bad horror movie where just thinking about the Anti-Christ was enough to conjure him up. You didn’t even need to stand in front of the bathroom mirror and say his name five times.

Was it really him?

I focused on his face. He looked disheveled, his usually impeccable appearance a bit rougher around the edges. Apparently, he hadn’t shaved since he’d visited us, and his longish black hair was slicked back, wet—did he just take a shower?

A picture of Vince Salvini naked with water dripping down his broad chest entered my mind uninvited, and I inhaled at the pang of…surprise that shot right through me. Because it sure as shit wasn’t lust I was feeling. Not when it came to Vince Salvini.

Vince turned around, grabbed the shoulder of the man next to him, and smiled before he jokingly shoved him back toward the door they’d just exited.

I looked up, and the sign above the door read, “Dom’s GYM—MMA.”

Dom’s gym? The other guy locked the door before he turned back to Vince.

So was the other guy Dom, and this was his gym?

And why would Vince Salvini, the feared head of the Salvini Mafia family, just train in a random gym? The juxtaposition was almost comical, and yet, there was something undeniably intriguing about watching him, about seeing this side of him.

He seemed…human in a way he hadn’t before.

Well, I’d seen him twice: once in Dublin when he first started his crazy demands and the only other time back in our library.

Both times, he was dressed in all-black: black suit, black mood, black soul.

Raw yet sophisticated. Sleek and deadly.

I scanned him from head to toe. He was dressed in all-black again. But yet, he seemed different.

Was it the way he interacted with the other guy? Their body language was comfortable and familiar as they joked around. And Salvini even cracked a smile when the other man grabbed his ass. An unexpected flicker of curiosity stirred within me. Who was this man to Salvini? A friend? A lover, perhaps?

The idea of the brooding Mafia boss having a same-sex romantic partner was oddly fascinating and strangely satisfactory.

“Not as untouchable as you pretend to be, are you?” I murmured, then stepped aside when a couple appeared on the other side of the glass door I was staring through.

The guy opened the door and held it open for me.

I stepped outside, just to avoid any weirdness, and stared after the two men as they continued down the sidewalk, arm in arm.

Huh?

Fascinating indeed. I wouldn’t have pegged him as out in the open.

I waited for them to get into a car, and indeed, Vince stopped, opened the trunk of a sleek, black Mercedes Cabrio, and put his bag inside before closing it again.

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