Page 31 of Tease

“It w-will be fine, Arlo. Y-y-you’ll protect me, won’t you?”

His expression softened as he looked down at me.

“Of course, I will.”

“Then you don’t h-have to worry.”

He cupped my face with his free hand.

“I can’t help it,mia preziosa. You’re important to me.”

“You’re not the only one he’s overprotective of, Rina,” Zayn said.

I turned my head to find him rolling his eyes at his right-hand man with a grin plastered on his face. Arlo glared at him.

“I wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t hell-bent on throwing caution to the wind. Need I remind you of the shit you pulled just to have Ari?”

Zayn’s expression remained amused as Arlo dropped his hand from my face.

“She was worth it, as I imagine you now understand considering…” He waved at me. “Need I say more?”

“Fuck off.”

“Hit a nerve, have I?”

“I swear you are the most shameless person I know. Just shut up already.”

Zayn gave his friend a wink before he dug his hand into his inner jacket pocket and drew out his cigarillo case.

“Would you two like to come back to mine for dinner? I’m sure Ari would appreciate getting to know you better, Rina.”

“I-I-I’d like that,” I said, smiling at him.

He nodded at me and lit his cigarillo.

“Good. I’ll let her know.” He drew out his phone, fiddling with it for a moment before looking up at us again. “Now, we have business to discuss, so you two take a seat and we’ll begin, hmm?”

He rounded his desk and sat down, indicating the two chairs in front of it. Arlo looked at me with a cautious expression on his face. I tugged on his hand, and he came willingly. He drew the chairs closer together before we took a seat and kept a tight hold of my hand.

It was time we found out if the car bomb that had killed an entire family twenty-five years ago had anything to do with the Villetti’s. It couldn’t be just a coincidence that the name those men had given was the very same name that had brought this article up… could it?

Twelve

Rina

I let out a sigh as I stared at the screen in front of me. Yesterday I asked my boss if I could take some leave this week to deal with my family matters. He’d been absolutely fine about it. I was lucky he was flexible, not to mention I hadn’t exactly taken a lot of time off as it was.

I was sitting at my dead uncle’s desk going through his computer files for Zayn to see if we could find anything relevant now we knew what we were looking for. Enzo was the only one living in the family home. Gennaro’s estate was in probate, and it would take time to get everything in order, so Enzo was staying here until Zayn decided what he wanted to do with it. He was currently at work, so it was just me and Arlo at the house. He was somewhere else while I was busy searching. It wasn’t proving particularly fruitful, which was incredibly frustrating. Not to mention being in this room gave me the creeps.

Letting out a sigh, I looked down at my phone. We needed to know more information about the car bombing itself. There wasn’t a lot of information released publicly about it other than the articles we’d found. I needed the case details themselves to see what had really gone down.

Making a decision, I picked up my phone and scrolled my contacts before pressing call.

“Aren’t you meant to be doing family shit, Rina?” was the first thing Xav said when he answered. “Not that I don’t love talking to you or anything. Also, hello. Pretty sure I’d get smacked around the head by Ash or Eric if I was impolite to my star employee.”

I smiled and rubbed my face with my free hand. I’d never met his partners, but I’d heard a lot about them. He was always complaining they gave him a hard time about him constantly cracking jokes.

“I-I-I am… that’s why I’m c-calling. I n-n-need t-to ask y-you s-s-something.”

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