Page 4 of Mistletoe in the Mafia

I roll my eyes. “Do you even hear yourself when you speak?”

“Yeah, and I sound amazing,” he retorts.

Joshua Benson is a lost cause. I learned that for a fact when I was thirteen. There are two things he’s never going to do: stop being annoying, and leave me alone. He’s said so himself, and I’ve given up trying to change his mind.

Technically, he is my best friend, he and Carly. I’ve known them both for more than half my life. And if I’m being honest, I probably wouldn’t be here without them.

The waiter arrives to collect our order. She shows us the menu, which of course is Christmas themed, and I go for a turkey and cranberry sandwich, something simple. Josh orders a burger with some mulled wine I don’t really care for. I request a cup of coffee with my meal. She leaves to deliver our order to the kitchen.

As soon as I’m gone, my eyes meet Josh’s light blue ones.

“What?” he asks unassumingly, pulling at the tie around his neck.

He takes it off outright, shoving it in the briefcase he placed on the chair beside him. He runs a hand through his dark hair, ruffling it. It’s unfortunate the kind of work he does requires him to be put together at all times. Josh is a coil of tight control waiting to snap. Restless energy circles him, kind of the opposite of me. It’s a wonder we’re even friends.

“This is the part where you tell me what you’ve found,” I reply. “Don’t keep me waiting, Benson. Did you find anything?”

He makes a face and reaches into his briefcase once again, pulling out a file. He seems to hesitate before placing it on the table between us.

“Yes, I did. But I don’t like what I found,” he says, his expression strained.

Interesting.

I reach for the file, but he puts one hand on it, keeping it in place. I raise an eyebrow in his direction, my expression unamused.

“First tell me what you want with her,” he states. “You’re not going to kill her, are you?”

I shrug. “It depends.”

“See, this is my problem with you, asshole. You can see I’m already struggling here. The least you could do is lie and ease my guilt so I can hand this over in good conscience.”

“There’s nothing about this that spells good conscience, Joshua,” I state. “Plus, I’m always honest.”

“A quality of yours that pisses me off to no end,” he mutters.

“Are you going to hand it over or not?”

He doesn’t reply, keeping his hand in place. Something in my chest squeezes lightly.

“You know her.”

It’s not a question. Josh nods slowly.

“You were right. She also happens to work on my team,” he says, giving me the answer I’d been hoping for. The pressure in my chest increases. “Listen, man, she’s a good person, okay. She doesn’t deserve to be mixed into whatever shit you’ve got going on?—”

I stop listening to him, taking advantage of the distraction to snatch the file from under his hand. He makes a face of resignation as I open it and start going through the papers. It’s exactly what I expected.

I’ve been looking for someone for a while now. I don’t even remember how long anymore. The timeline has blurred in my need to find her—a woman I’ve never met, a woman who has nothing to do with me. And yet, the need to find her continued to grow until it bordered on obsession. Until I knew, I’d do anything to figure out who she was.

I have access to any and all information I could possibly want in the States. But when it comes to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, things are a little dicey. I can’t exactly just hack into their server, but I’ve had my suspicions for a while that the reason I can’t find her was because they’d hidden her.

Luckily for me, I have a friend who happens to work for the organization. I debated asking Josh for help for a long time.Like he said, it goes against his conscience, and despite his appearance, he’s actually one of the most straight-laced people I know. Maybe that’s why he became something akin to a cop.

My fingers fall to a stop when I reach a piece of paper with her face on it. I pause, studying it, memorizing her features. Objectively, she’s a beautiful woman. Long black hair, green eyes. It’s a face that has eluded me for a long time. If I tried to run a facial recognition through every single server I have access to right now, it would come up with nothing.

Like me, she’s a ghost in her own right. Which is why I was so intent on finding her.

“Dominic,” Joshua calls, drawing my attention. I look up at him with a raised eyebrow. “What are you going to do with her?”

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