Page 59 of Traitor

I stretched my arms over my head. “Well, you called your contractor, and he’s coming over today, right?”

“Mhm.”

“And your staff cleaned up the inside of the house a lot before we finally crashed into bed.”

He sighed. “Yeah, they did.”

“So, now it’s just a game of waiting, I guess.”

He shot up in bed. “It was a diversion.”

I peeked an eye open. “What?”

He turned to face me. “I’ve been thinking about why some of my local business storefronts were destroyed yesterday as well, and it just clicked. The attack on the house was a diversion.”

I slowly sat myself upright. “You didn’t tell me some of your businesses had been attacked.”

He rubbed his hands down his face. “You were already asleep when I got the call and I didn’t want to disturb you. But, that must be it. Lorenzo and his fucking family attacked us when we knew we’d be home in order to keep us from going out and defending the businesses.”

I cleared my throat. “Did they deface property? Or blow it out of the water?”

He swung his feet over the edge of his bed. “We need to get into town. We need to take stock of the--.”

I leapt out of bed and caught his arm. “Oh, no no no no. No, you don’t. You’re staying right here.”

He yanked away from me. “I can’t leave my businesses in disarray, Char.”

“Just think about this for a second. If they want--.”

He spun around, buckling his pants. “I don’t care what they want. What I care about is--.”

“They’re expecting you to react this way!”

I threw my hands into the air as Teo’s eyes met mine. And when he didn’t speak, I knew he was listening.

“Teo, listen to me: they’re expecting you to act this way. They attack us, attack your businesses, and they know you’re going to coop me up here or at your other home to protect me while you go tend to those businesses. They’re trying to split us up. That should be painfully obvious, but you’re too emotionally wrapped up in your businesses to see that.”

He blinked. “Holy shit, you’re right.”

I puffed my cheeks out with a sigh. “Have you heard any word on Lorenzo? Last I heard, he was--.”

He waved his hand in the air. “You didn’t kill the man. Missed his heart by about an inch.”

“Sounds like I need to work on my aim, then.”

Teo cocked his head. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were sounding a little more like me.”

I scoffed. “Let’s just say I have reason to hate the man a little more than you do right now.”

He nodded. “I’ll give you that one. He is in an actual hospital, though.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “Please tell me he’s handcuffed to the bed.”

He held up his phone. “Even got a picture of it. Want to see?”

The two of us scurried to the middle of the bed and he started flipping through pictures of Lorenzo lying helplessly in a hospital bed. I covered my mouth, trying to stifle my giggles as I zoomed in on the shining silver cuffs keeping him adhered to the bed. Oh, it felt so good to see that asshole locked up the way he deserved to be.

“Guess the cuffs are better than nothing,” I said.

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