Page 40 of Stealing Iris

The phone rings again, forcing me to answer. “She asked about you.” Tino’s voice comes from far away, yet the note of urgency puts me on edge.

“Iris?” My pulse is beating against my throat now.

“You’re a lot of things, Dante. Stupid isn’t one of them,” Tino adds in his deadpan voice.

If there’s anyone who will call me on my shit, it’s him. The reason I left the city was so I didn’t go find her, especially after Bunny brought her to mind. And I didn’t want to be home, waiting on him to tell me he was back from dropping her off. Or worse, not say anything at all. Though I didn’t ask, I know he’s still picking her up every day. I don’t want to end up telling him to stop because the man I’d become would do so.

“What happened?”

“Something’s wrong.” The note of confusion in his voice makes me frown. “But I don’t know what.”

“What?” For once, I can truly appreciate his regular, on-point comments.

“It’s weird…” He blows out a breath. “Like Montoya-shit weird, man.”

“But she was safe when you left?” Thunder rolls across the distance, getting closer.

“Yes.”

The tension in my shoulders relaxes a little. “So your spider sense is telling you?”

“Shut the hell up,” he barks. For a guy whose life’s been spared more than once due to some heightened ability to sense danger, he really fights it. “She told me not to come back.” Something in my chest collapses with the reality of his words. “But it’s how she said it that bothers me. She sounded so defeated.” I can’t imagine her without the brightness in her eyes. “And yeah, I’m worried about her. She’s a good kid.”

I thought so, too, once, and I’m paying for my mistake. “She made her choice.”

His exhale rushes across the mouthpiece. When has he ever been this annoyed? “Maybe I was wrong.”

I scrunch my brow. “About what?”

“You not being stupid.”

The line goes dead, and I’m left speechless. What the hell. How can all this be coming down on me at once? Tino’s usually so levelheaded, well, more like cold and calculating, but still. For him to shoot back like that, at me, is out of character. Grabbing my bag from the back, I head to the plane, taking the stairs two by two as the rain picks up.

“Ready for takeoff.” My pilot’s voice comes over the speaker. “We should just miss the storm rolling in.” Within seconds, we’re starting down the runway. A perk of owning a private plane is you can take off whenever the mood suits you. I’m better off somewhere far away, getting work done. A moment later we’re over “the estate.” It’s dark now, but I can still picture the taillights as Tino drove her away that night.

Annoyed, I run my hand across my face, as if I can wipe away the memory. Can’t she see Conrado’s using her? He wanted her for her virginity…fuck. Another thing I screwed up. Does he know? So far, he hadn’t taken her that way.

My mind takes me to an ugly place. The one where Iris is having sex but not with me. My thoughts return to that first night in the sleazy motel. How she’d looked away when I came in, trying to pull away from him, her grimace when he touched her. She hadn’t acted anything like when she’d been with me, quite the opposite, in fact. I sit up straight. After digging my head out of my ass, free of the cloud of lust, I can see things with more detail. She wasn’t with him because she wanted to be, something was forcing the issue.

He holds something of great value.The words echo in my head, I even hear them in Montoya’s voice.The truth hits me like a shower of river water.Shit, she’s the “something” of great value.Slamming a fist into the armrest, I draw my new conclusions from a different deck of cards.Does she actually have a choice? And, if not,why? What could Conrado be holding over Iris? Her face shows everything she’s feeling, but I’ve been too pissed, hurt, annoyed, whatever the hell else, to see it.

Realizing she has something so serious she would turn her life over to scum like Conrado, I have to figure out what it is. Will I get any answers if I confront her? There’s one person who can dig up the truth, if for no other reason than to prove she can. I pull up Kassy’s contact info and connect by FaceTime. The image on the screen freezes, blinks then comes back.

“Can’t a girl do yoga without getting interrupted?” Kassy frowns back at me from the monitor, her purple hair folded up in some kind of ponytail on top of her head.

Luckily I’ve been around her long enough to know how to switch her out of a mood. “I need you to solve a puzzle.” I slam the words out without bothering with a hello.

She perks up. “Talk to me.” She unfolds from whatever position she was holding and heads to her computer.

“Get me a workup on Iris Gloria.”

Raising an eyebrow, she slips into her chair, rolling toward her keyboard while batting a cat off her desk. “Wait, I thought you didn’t want me checking into her.”

I drag in a long breath. “I didn’t want a mark, I wanted the”—cute, funny, sexy—“woman herself.” That’s all she needs to know. “There’s something tying her to Conrado Villa, and I need to know what.”

“But we hardly found anything on him,” she points out. “And you didn’t want Tino to follow up.”

Shame whips at my chest. I held back information on him. Things that may have gotten us here quicker. Things that might have even led us to bring him into the circle. I’d hated him immediately, and it doubled when Iris came into the picture. “Link him to Gloria’s Market, and try again.”

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