Page 81 of Enforcer

Someone she’s let behind the walls I’ll never see the interior of.

“Yeah, maybe I’d better.”

I hear Brynne shushing Alyssa as I slam my car door and beat the steering wheel a few times before cranking it and driving off into the night with a penchant to make something fucking bleed.

I just lost the love of my fucking life, and it’s because of a man who hurt her before I even knew she existed.

It’s then and there that I promise myself if I ever have a daughter, she’ll know only kindness from me. I’ll be the example that her boyfriends must live up to, not ruining her idea of men altogether.

I’ll be the one setting the bar higher, not lower.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ALYSSA

When I got back to the apartment, Lorenzo was there to greet me at the door. He let me in and told me he’d stay if I wanted him to. I told him to go home, as he looked like death warmed over and didn’t need to be haunting the hallway all night. It looked as if he’d had way too much to drink at the wedding and needed to sleep for three days.

“I’m sorry, by the way,” he tells me as the elevator dings and opens on our floor. “I didn’t know he hadn’t told you. I wasn’t trying to stir up anything.”

“I know, Renzo.” I turn away from him at the door, thinking better of it. “I still want to hear the rest of that song one of these days,” I tell him, watching as he turns and flashes me his beautiful smile.

“It’s a date.” The elevator closes, and I’m left with a sad ache in my chest after everything that happened.

Brynne said she’d be by before she and Slate headed off for the cabin for their honeymoon in the morning to give me the keys to my new apartment.

Living alone will be a relief and something I’ll need to get used to. I’ve only spent a week with Dante, but I’ve come to like some of the things living with someone offers, like waking up to a pot of coffee already made or the sounds of him moving around. Just knowing I’m not alone in general was lovely.

The apartment is dark and silent when I walk in, and my eyes burn again.

He hasn’t come home. He knows I’m here, he knows he’s hurt me, and he’s giving me space.

The knowledge of that looming over me is overwhelming. I toss my empty clutch inside my suitcase first, realizing Dante still has my gun and sighing.

I’m sure he’ll return it, but it means interacting with him to get it back.

Working with Brynne is going to be this way now: awkward. He’s Slate’s enforcer. He’s always going to be a part of the equation, not that I don’t think that Slate wouldn’t get rid of him for me.

He would.

That’s not fair, though. This is his life.

My stomach cramps, and I grab it tightly, a wave of nausea springing over me like a breeze through a field of wildflowers.

“Fuck,” I groan, running for the toilet.

I hadn’t read the side effects on the back of that pill before I downed it earlier, and I hadn’t eaten with it, either.

The second I get to the toilet, I vomit up coffee, and the little bits of breakfast are left undigested. Tears leave my eyes from the ferocity.

It’s been hours since I took the pill, so I’m not worried it hasn’t metabolized yet, but this still sucks if this is how it’s going to make me feel as it does its thing.

I sit back against the wall and curse Dante and his feelings and how I feel.

He’d been spot on with everything he’d said to me, even if it was so fucking hard to admit.

I feel so much for him, and fear is at the top of that fucking list of things.

I don’t want to become my mother, even if I love her dearly. The way I watched her suffer during her divorce left lasting scars on my psyche that I thought no man could ever erase. Then, here came Dante with his pack of pencils and fresh erasers, ready to blur the lines of what I always believed about men.

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