Page 62 of Hot for Hostage

I actually had no idea if he knew how dogs were, but his stare was unnerving.

Antonio finally blinked—thank god—before rubbing a hand over his thick mustache. A long moment passed before he nodded. “All right, then. We’ll share the kitchen. You can bake your treats.”

It was my turn to stare.

“Really?” I asked, surprised he’d changed his tune. Should that make me suspicious? “I mean, are you sure? I don’t want to intrude.”

“Nonsense.” He gestured to the mostly empty island. “I’m just prepping dinner. You can use as much space as you need, and I won’t mention any more about you and the boss.”

The tightness in my shoulders eased. “That sounds great. Thank you, Antonio.”

“Don’t mention it. Now, we have the staples for baking,” he said, “but the store can deliver whatever else you need. Come. I’ll show you the inventory.”

Not needing to be told twice, I followed him into a beautiful walk-in pantry with a skip in my step.

Turned out, “the staples” equated to “every single baking ingredient I could ever dream of having,” and I almost fainted at the top-of-the-line stand mixers Antonio proudly showed off. Not even my school shelled out the money for those babies.

And he hadtwo.

Antonio smirked when I gushed over them.

“They’re one of the great perks of working here,” he admitted, patting one of the mixers lovingly.

I was tempted to ask if he was open to hiring a sous-chef.

He left me to explore the pantry—which was bigger than the entire kitchen area of my apartment—while he prepped dinner, and all the choices I needed to make overwhelmed me.

“Do you know what Dav’s favorite flavor and color are?” I called to Antonio as I inspected all the food coloring options. There were dozens; Antonio sure knew how to hook a girl up.

“I can’t say I’ve seen the boss eat many sweets or talk about a favorite color, but he wears a lot of black.”

I scrunched my nose. There was nothing cheery about black icing, and it didn’t do any favors to your teeth. “Maybe I’ll just do flowers.”

It took six trips to carry all the supplies I needed out to the kitchen, and my smile widened with each one.

If this was how Davian normally treated his prisoner-slash-guests, then I might never leave.

fetch

. . .

Davian

Few things were sweeter than the squeal of a rat as it thrashed in my grasp.

Now that I’d tasted Sadie, she topped the sweetness chart by a mile, but listening to Lorenzo sing about every way he’d betrayed me was its own symphony worth savoring.

And, boy, did he sing.

What I hadn’t expected was for Zain Ali to be on the other side of Lorenzo’s secret meetings. Zain’s old man had barely been in the ground a month, and his son should be grieving—not making territory plays.

We’d known the Ali family for years, since they carved out a nice slice of territory in the north side of the city. Zain’s pop had gotten along fine with mine, and they’d had an alliance that benefited both of them, but Zain was a young buck whose appetite had always been bigger than his stomach. Without a father figure to rein in his hotheadedness, the new head of the family was bound to make a move.

And I was the lucky one who got to deal with him.

“Pull Dante in on this,” I told Malcolm as we backtracked through the woods, leaving Lorenzo behind in the shed with Shane. “We’re cleaning house and going after Ali.”

Malcolm glanced my way. “What should I say if Old Seb calls?”

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