Page 33 of Hard Lessons

“What?”

“The settling of scores.”

“Really? I’m not some guy who has done a dodgy deal, you know. I don’t owe the family for gear or weapons.”

“No, but you do have debts to pay.”

“Like what? Living in the apartment? I took care of that place. Empty, it would have been a target for squatters and vandals.”

He laughed and straightened, dumping the sandwich in her lap. “You keep telling yourself that’s the debt.”

“I will, because there are no other scores to settle. You got yourself thrown in jail within hours of us landing here.”

He glared at her. “And you got off because Giovanni used the photographs I took to gag David Watson. Your name was never even mentioned alongside the words accomplice or guilt. You were a safe woman the moment I sent those pictures to my uncle, Serena. I’d made that deal with him while you’d been getting changed before the job, when you were putting on that sexy fucking dress, heels, and lipstick that got David so fucking hard.”

The door slammed, shaking the car. He turned and strode to the hedge.

He’d had her protected all along... but now... now she didn’t feel safe at all.

Wriggling her wrists, Serena tried to free them, tugging and pulling as he relieved himself against a patch of ferns. But it was no good. She was bound tight and the more she struggled the tighter the leather seemed to get.

He got back into the car and started the engine.

Within minutes they were flying along again, still heading north.

“Here.” He passed a carton of juice through the seats and dropped it onto her lap. “Drink too.”

She didn’t answer. Instead she hunched down in the seat, every curse word she knew in English and Italian spilling through her mind with his name attached.

This was not how her day was supposed to end.

Not by a long shot.

Chapter Six

“Ineed to pee.”

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