Page 49 of Take Me (Dark Odyssey 5)

There’s a lot of information on stolen shit. We’ve looked through a lot over the last six days and there’s still more to go through. I thought we would have had something by now.

The clock’s ticking and my patience is wearing out. Exhaustion from working so hard over the last few days is coming for me and it’s getting to the point where I’m finding it difficult to concentrate.

Salvatore leans back in his chair and sighs with frustration. I glance at him and he looks over at me.

“Sometimes I miss the days when I could just ass around,” he states. “When I had Vince and Frankie to watch my back, and I could spend my days watching my girls back instead.”

“You mean her ass, not her back.” I point out and he throws a crumpled piece of paper at me.

“You fucker, you know that’s what I mean.”

I actually laugh and the sound sounds foreign. I look at him though and think about him and Mimi.

It was always clear to me even before they liked each other that they were going to find some way to be together. I don’t know why I thought that, I just did. They’ve both been with other people before realizing they were it for each other, but that never changed my mind. Not even a little.

When they did get together, I wasn’t surprised. Now they have two kids. All the guys have their dolls and kids.

Vincent has one and a baby on the way, Gabe has two, Nick has two. I really am the last bachelor left.

“What?” Salvatore asks.

“Nothing, just thinking.”

“About what? You do realize it’s thinking that nearly got you killed last week.” He smirks. “Or maybe it wasnotthinking. You gotta sort that out Christian.” He chuckles.

“I was thinking about how we’ve all moved on. You have. You might long for the days when you used to ass around, but I know you don’t actually mean that. You wouldn’t trade what you have now with Mimi.”

“No, I definitely wouldn’t. Always my Babygirl.” He leans forward. “You… you’re sweet on that girl at the club.”

I gaze on at him completely thrown off kilter. The comment shouldn’t surprise me though. It was Mimi I spoke to about stopping Lilly’s bookings, so of course she would tell Salvatore.

He raises his brows daring me for me to say otherwise.

“Salvatore, I don’t know what to say about that,” I answer, and he gives me a lopsided grin.

I’m very aware that Lilly is going to be wondering what happened to her bookings and I will make good on my promise to compensate her. What I’m still pussyfooting around is what I’m going to do about her in regard to me.

“Christian, if you like her just take her. That’s how we roll,” Salvatore says and looks at me with narrowed slits.

That is how we roll, but that mostly works for the women we want to fuck and forget. At least that’s me and how I thought I would continue on until my dick fell off.

“I don’t know if I can do that with her. In fact, I think I shouldn’t, except I want her.”

He tilts his head to the side and looks me over. “What’s going on with you? Questioning whether or not you should be with a woman. There’s um…only one time when I’ve seen you this way and it was so long ago it’s classed as history.”

He’ll remember Amelia. Everyone does even if they don’t talk about it. they remember what happened and they don’t talk because it crushed me to no end, and it took me a long time to come back from that.

I raise my palms and shrug. “Don’t know, maybe this shit with Falcone has my mind all over the place.”

He doesn’t look like he’s buying that excuse. “You know sometimes you have to take risks. They’re not always bad even if they remind you of previous risks that didn’t work out.”

“Yeah?”

He nods. “Yeah.” He sits forward and taps on the keyboard. “Sometimes you have to try and—”

He stops talking abruptly and stares at the screen. When he doesn’t say anything more I realize he’s found something.

“What is it?” I ask getting up to see what he’s looking at.

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