Page 87 of Shark Bait

Now I’m really worried. “Are you sending him a lawyer?”

Alessio shakes his head. “No need. Not for Miro’s case.”

“At the police station, what are they going to do with him?”

“Interrogate him,” Alessio’s jaw clenches. “Put him behind bars where someone will chop his head off with a guillotine!” He’s mumbling in foreign tongues, several different ones, if I hear correctly.

I’m mad at Shark. I’m mad at Alessio, Val, the world, but mainly at Shark for leaving me here. But also, I love him and I want him back. Shit. I’m in love with a guy who’s in jail and facing the guillotine. “Is there nothing we can do to help him?”

“There is,” Alessio says, and I perk up in the chair.

He levels me with a stare. “I can ask his brother to snap his neck.” Alessio extends his hands and jerks them to the side, showing me how he’d do it.

He’s losing it. “That’s not very helpful,” I say.

“On the contrary. It’s the one option that rules supreme over all others.”

“But there are other options?” I prompt.

Val nods but remains quiet. Smart woman. I should probably take cues from her, but I’m a student at the School of Hard Knocks, and the new semester started five minutes ago. “Shark’s your favorite lollipop,” I blurt.

Alessio frowns. “My what?”

“Never mind.”

Alessio tells Val to secure him a line so he can call someone named Niksha, and once the man answers, Alessio switches to a foreign language that sounds similar to the one he speaks with Shark.

Poor Shark. I imagine him sitting alone in the interrogation room. I wish he never went. I wish I never told him about La Falena.

I wish I married him.

I wish I never met him.

I wish this would all end.

Oh no, I don’t like where my head is going. “Make it stop. Please make it stop,” I say to nobody but God, who might hear me.

Alessio walks to his desk and grabs a key. He opens a drawer and pulls out a gun, which he tucks behind his pants. “Take whatever you want to take with you,” he says, “and meet me at the helipad in ten minutes.” With that, he rushes out of the room.

I stare at Val, then get up as she rises and stretches her hands toward me. She hugs me and tucks my hair behind my ears. “It was so nice meeting you. I wish we could keep in touch, but life often makes strangers out of good friends. Good luck.”

“Why are you saying goodbye to me?”

“Because you’re going with Alessio.” She tucks a hand under my elbow and walks me out of the office and toward the backyard. “Let’s get you packed.”

I stop. “I have nothing to take. Just talk to me, please. Tell me what going on.”

“You have a suitcase full of money,” she reminds me.

“Are we going to use it to bail Shark out of jail?”

“Mia cara, no amount of money can bail Miro out. He’llaccidentallydie in custody.”

“No,” I shake my head. “We must do something.”

“We are.” Alessio arrives with a large vest he shakes out right in front of me. When I frown, Alessio shakes it out again. “Put it on.”

Oh. Okay. He helps me into it while Val buttons it over my belly. “I’m afraid,” I tell them, hoping they’ll comfort me.

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