Page 2 of Vincenzo
I watch the scene unfold for the next couple minutes, nothing but the sound of his shallow gasps for air filling the room, and wait for him to bleed out while his words play on repeat in my head.
“But haven’t you wondered who did it?”
Snapping my eyes open, I suck in a sharp breath as I awaken from the recollection of events plaguing my sleep multiple times a week for over a month now.
There’s a warm solid frame wrapped around me, and I nearly attack it when a familiar voice sounds through the night. “Hey, you okay?”
“Carlos… what the fuck are you doing in here?”
“I heard you making noise in your sleep. It sounded like you were having a bad dream.” His arm across my waist tightens. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I wince at the intimacy and push myself up to a seated position, causing his arm to fall off me. “I’m fine. You know you shouldn’t be in here.” Placing my feet on the floor, I turn my back on him and sit on the edge of the bed.
Carlos lets out a sigh. “Come on, Amalia. You didn’t think I was going to let you suffer through one of your nightmares again, did you?”
“It wasn’t a nightmare.”It was the past.
“Okay, you’ve had thisnot nightmarenearly every night since we’ve gotten to New York City. Why don’t we talk about it?”
I whip my gaze over my shoulder, which is pointless because all I can see is Carlos’s broad-framed silhouette in the middle of the night. “I told you I’m fine. Now you need to leave. You have your own bedroom.”
“Amalia,” he sighs out, like he’s not privy to the conditions I told him he’d be held to the first night we hooked up.
“Amalia nothing. You know what it’s always been between us.”
“Yeah. Sex.”
“And?”
“And nothing more.”
“Exactly,” I say. “So please tell me why the fuck you’re still in my bed, Carlos.”
The sound of sheets ruffling comes through the pitch-black night, and his silhouette moves from lying down to standing at the side of the bed.
“Fine, but if you need to talk about it, you know where to find me.”
Facing forward again, I give Carlos my back. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
I close my eyes and silently pray he gets the hint I’ve laid out so fucking clearly for him. After a few seconds, the thud of his footsteps sound across the floor, and I don’t let out another breath until the click of the door latching fills the air.
Carlos and I have only hooked up a few times over the past month. It’s never been serious, and it never will be, but ever since my uncle sent us to NYC to gather intel on the DiMaggios, he’s been up my ass, and I don’t fucking like it.
Lying down in my bed, I close my eyes and will my body to fall back asleep. But as I lie here in the dead of night, all I can hear are the words I haven’t been able to get out of my head for over a month:“But haven’t you wondered who did it?”
2
VINCENZO
Trying to wake myself up, I rub my hand over the newfound scruff I’ve grown accustomed to on my face since Amalia Velasco and Carlos Montoya entered my life. The long nights of surveillance on them have proven to be more than I thought it would be.
Waiting around to see what move they’re going to make has been driving me to the brink of insanity. They haven’t done anything except go about their day-to-day lives like they’re regular fucking tourists visiting the Big fucking Apple.What the hell is their plan?
The intel I’ve accumulated is fucking shit. You’d think with how much I’ve been watching them, I’d have figured out why they decided to visit the city, but no. They’ve hit up the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, even went to a fucking Broadway show that I also had to endure for three fucking hours.
As I stand here, hovering over the kitchen sink, I rub my temples and think about what the hell I’m going to tell my brother, Teo. He’s expecting an update this morning, but I have nothing.
Small footsteps sound from behind me, then my sister-in-law’s voice follows. “Oh, hey, babe. What’re you?—”
