Page 44 of Deception & Desire

She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t need to.

“The point is,” she recovers after a moment, “I care about my brother. A lot. And Cas says you’re a good person, but the thing is, I’m not sure ifI knowthat’s true. So you’re really going to need to prove yourself to me.”

“Are you seriously giving me the shotgun talk right now?”

“Yes,” she says, unwavering. “Because my brotherisa good person. And if you hurt him, Mia. I swear to God?—”

My phone suddenly begins to ring. Which I’m sure I should probably completely ignore right now, given the circumstances.

Except it’s my burner. And there’s only one number on that phone.

“Excuse me,” I mutter as I pull it out.

“I wasn’t finished!”

“Bigger fish, Mrs. Vitale.” I hold a finger up to silence her as I put it to my ear. “Carmen Rubio! It’s been a while.”

Isabella’s face is absolutely priceless as she recognizes the name.

“Red!” A cheerful voice comes down the line. “I was just wondering, are you around this weekend?”

I look directly into Isabella’s eyes, so like her brothers, as I reply. “For you, I’m free as a bird.”

12

LEON

Atech-bro’s beachfront villa. Practically a glorified frat house.

That’s where mywifeis going in denim short shorts and a backwards baseball cap. Both of which look entirely indecent on her.

The hat, because it pulls her hair from her face in a way that stops it from falling around her features with its usual heart-stopping softness. The shorts, because they are completely and utterly distracting and leave nothing to the imagination.

Not that I need to imagine, I try desperately to reassure myself. But there’s an angry possessiveness inside me that a week's worth of distance has done nothing to subdue.

“Just…be careful, all right?” I ask as she leaves.

She doesn’t look at me or bother responding as she steps out the door of the brownstone. That much I probably deserve after our previous spat about the pros and cons of heart rate monitors.

Mia wouldn’t wear one. I tagged her anyway. She found it and threw it at my face.

I run a hand through my hair, suddenly wondering if it would be entirely unprofessional to start drinking.

It was inevitable that I would see her again, of course. But somehow, I’d managed to delude myself into just not thinking about it.

My insane workload was entirely to blame for this. The breakthrough we had had to search private dockyards, thanks to the information Mia had obtained, led to the very successful extraction of the Cartel’s merchandise.

Now Teo and I were together on a near-daily basis to form plans to best utilize Amos Rubio’s sudden loss of revenue.

My phone rings and I answer it as I return to my office, which is already set up for total surveillance tonight.

“She’s arrived. Carmen Rubio just got in her car,” Max reports immediately.

It’s a reassurance to have him working on this with me. Unlike Dante, my second seems to inherently understand why I prefer to be constantly updated.

Despite not formally knowing who Mia is to me, he was quick to pick up on my anxiety around her involvement. I’d called her a mercenary for hire. Max hadn’t even blinked when he gave me the concealable heart rate monitor.

A nice gesture if it didn’t now lay broken on the floor.

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