Page 174 of Rosetti Family New York
Emilio squints at me, more annoyed than afraid. “That’s my thing, bro,” he says, sounding bored. “You do muscles, I do intelligence. There’s not much I don’t know, especially about my own family.”
He doesn’t even flinch, and that just pisses me off more. I shove him away, releasing him with enough force to send him back against the wall.
“Fuck off, Milo,” I snarl.
He shrugs, straightening his hoodie like we’re just having a casual chat. I know he’s not leaving until he’s got the answers he wants. His calmness sends a fresh wave of anger through me.
“Just find out about the hit,” I snap.
But Emilio's right. I want to know if Sloane’s got a target on her back. I want to know how deep she is, and how worried I should be.
The place smells like sweat and leather and adrenaline. Bullets explode from guns as other men fire away. The room vibrates with it all, but I’m still stuck on the look on Sloane’s face when I dropped her home. Like she wasn’t scared at all. Like she wasn’t living in a shitty apartment that needed a brand new front door just to keep it standing.
“I assume we’re keeping this quiet?” Emilio asks.
“As a tomb.”
“Sure, Rafe.” He flips his knife and sets it back on the table. “Whatever you say.”
This was supposed to be a place to get away, to clear my head. But there’s no escape. I keep thinking about how I should be keeping my distance. Letting the girl live her life without me hovering. Instead, I’m beefing up security at her apartment. Installing alarms. Fixing the goddamn door so she doesn’t freeze to death before anyone gets a chance to kill her.
I fire again. The target shreds.
Emilio smirks. “What happened to staying out of it?”
I ignore him. Just like I ignored the promise I made to myself when I first saw her. A nice girl like that, I told myself, deserves better than a bad boy like me. I was supposed to watch her from afar. I wasn’t supposed to let it get complicated.
She wasn't supposed to smile at me like I wasn’t some kind of monster.
The thought distracts me. I imagine her in that little apartment, crying over her friend, pretending she isn’t scared.
“Jesus, Rafe,” Emilio says, shaking his head. “This is bad. You’re in too deep.”
I don’t know how the hell my brother knows so much without even asking, but he’s not wrong.
I’ve fixed her entire apartment. The way I’ve got it rigged, I’ll get an alert if anyone who doesn’t live there even sneezes near her building. She doesn’t know about it, doesn’t need to, because I won’t be setting foot near her again and risking her life, not unless the alarms get triggered.
Emilio knows better. He’s probably already betting on how long before I crack and stop pretending I don’t care.
I grab the rest of the gear and throw it in the bag.
“Make sure her name stays out of it,” I say. “I don’t want your research being the thing that kicks off alarm bells for the Callahans.”
“You know me better than that, asshole,” Emilio says, arching an eyebrow.
“Just fucking doing it.”
I shoulder the bag and head toward the door. The other guys look up and nod as we pass, their targets shot clean through. I nod back, but my mind's somewhere else. It’s in a tiny apartment with bad heating and an optimistic girl who should’ve been my last job.
Outside, the air’s frigid. January in New York. The wind cuts like a knife. I’m already freezing, and I’ve got three layers and my gloves on. I don’t know how Sloane stands it. Then again, she’s full of surprises.
I swore I'd stay away, but I’ve already broken every other promise I made to myself about her.
What’s one more?
7
Sloane
