Page 84 of Twisted Obsession

Grabbing the sheet tighter around me, I got off the bed and moved to where I’d just spotted my handbag. Reaching inside the large, leather bag, I found my phone and glanced at the screen. The time read as just after three in the morning. Relief captured me when I worked out that the guard I’d drugged shouldn’t yet have come around and that hopefully we still had time. I sat back down on the bed to wait for the only man I knew I would ever love to come back to me.

Dante

‘This better be right up there with really fucking important, mate,’ I growled into the phone, which I was holding between my shoulder and ear while I turned my family’s ring around my little finger several times, as I fought against being an even bigger arsehole to him. He’d rung my number again within seconds of me disconnecting his first call, and it was then I knew what he had to say was probably imperative.

‘Oh yeah, whatever you were doing… this has more importance I assure you.’ I could hear humour wrapped around Marco’s tone.

‘It fucking better,’ I warned, wanting to tell him just who was in my bed, but not wanting to share what had happened between me and Giovanna, not even with him.

‘Remember Grace?’

As a nauseating feeling rose up inside me, I scrunched my eyes shut as I thought about the young woman I’d last seen nervously leaving my office while I’d pointed my loaded gun at her.

‘You remember,’ he encouraged. ‘The one who gives excellent fucking head.’

‘Gives excellent fucking head,’ I repeated before leaning my forehead against the cool wall of the corridor. ‘Yeah.’

‘Well, she’s been working for us on the quiet.’

I rolled my head on the wooden panelled wall beneath it, as I attempted to follow what the actual fuck it was that he was calling to tell me about. When all I wanted to do was to return to where I’d left Giovanna, and sink myself balls deep inside her once again, while the rest of the world slept.

‘Yeah, and how’s that? I don’t recallemployingher.’

‘It takes a lot to mop up your leftovers,’ he exhaled his frustration.

‘I’m sure.’ I cleared my throat thinking of all the women I’d used and discarded over the past few years.

‘After I’d blown my load down her throat, she told me a bit about herself.’

‘And there was me thinking you didn’t need my seconds,’ I added dryly and heard him laugh again.

‘Mostly, that’s true, but you know… occasionally.’

‘Right.’

‘Anyway, back to why I called. Grace is an experienced croupier who learnt her trade back home in London. She worked in Leighton Gentlemen’s Club.’

‘And. You. Believed. Her?’ I said each word individually to drive home my point.

‘There was no way she was a fucking plant, Dante.’

‘I wouldn’t know, as you never ran the facts past me.’ I was feeling pissed. Even though, every now and then, I let Marco have free rein and to follow his judgement. When you were juggling the number of eggs in the air I was, it was good business sense to have someone you could trust. And Marco, I trusted with my life, but I knew that whatever the fuck went down from now onwards, it wouldn’t just be my life in danger.

‘She knew far too much about it; people, places and even Trevor, the club pimp’s penchant for teenage boys.’

I pictured the disgusting, ugly, one-eyed bastard, and felt myself sneer.

‘I planted her in the casinos as a croupier—a croupier who gives extras.’

‘Extras? What the fuck did you promise her in return?’ I lifted my head, took the phone in my hand and stood up tall.

‘She’s being well paid… and I might have said that you’d look upon her favourably.’

‘Sure you did… Right, cut to the chase,’ I added impatiently. ‘What’s she come up with and can we trust it?’

‘Oh yeah, we can,’ he laughed. ‘Did you know Ricco is impotent?’

‘How the fuck would I know that?’ I shook my head, and the corners of my mouth twitched when I remembered the look on Ricco’s face as I’d led his wife away to their bedroom. It made even more sense now. Although he wasn’t to know at the time, I hadn’t fucked her, even when she’d got down on her knees and begged. I just put her down as some insatiable bitch. Like every other woman who had fallen to their knees for me since Giovanna.

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