Page 50 of Wedlocked

“Are you okay?” Salvatore asked, his voice low and concerned.

I ripped off the brown wig and threw it on the floor. It looked like something a cat might drag in. I looked at him, then said unconvincingly, “Yes, I’m…fine.”

He started the car and pulled out onto the road, no doubt before Ethan and his soldiers came running with guns blazing. I sighed fitfully even before my brother glanced at me and growled, “Who hurt you? Who bruised your face?”

Shit. When I’d splashed my face I’d exposed the damn bruise. No doubt even faded it looked bad. It was only lucky no one else had connected the dots and exposed my true identity. “I hit my head.”

“Liar,” he bit out. “How can you protect that piece of shit after everything he’s done?”

It took me a moment to realize he was blaming my husband, when really it’d been Lorenzo who’d been responsible. Whatever. I was too weary to argue in Ethan’s defense…too weary to argue, period.

I rolled my head to the side, my lashes then drifting closed…and I slept.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Ethan

I stared out my penthouse window to the Manhattan skyline beyond, my eyes unseeing and my mind in turmoil. It’d been three days since my wife had left me, though she’d promised never to do so. That she’d lied to me and I’d actually started to trust in her only rubbed salt into my wounds.

I traced an unsteady finger over the scar on my face. Even before I’d spun the blonde-wigged woman around at the nightclub who’d been dressed in my wife’s pantsuit, I’d known somehow it wasn’t her. The female substitute had been a bargain-basement version of my wife, with her outraged stare and squawking voice.

One that had only pitched higher when I’d dragged her out of the nightclub and into a nearby room to interrogate her. It hadn’t taken long for her mouth to snap shut, but not until after she’d admitted to everything. From the money my wife had given her—the same damn money Sabrina and I had won together at the casino—to the clothes they’d exchanged and the phone call my wife had taken.

Despite the roiling anger inside of me, I’d been impressed by my wife’s ingenuity. No one could ever say she was foolish, even if she’d done a foolish thing by running from me. She must have known her actions would send her to an earlier grave, which begged the question—what, or who had scared her?

Though I’d been tempted to shoot the woman, along with all my so-called security men who’d let Sabrina waltz right past them, I’d instead focused all my energy on finding my fugitive wife.

That a part of me hoped she’d run and keep running, and that I’d never find her and therefore never kill her, was offset by a deep need to right a wrong. She’d made me look like a fool, and I had to rectify that, before I lost my title of don.

Bad enough my father was basking in my mess, without my own men questioning their loyalty.

My dark thoughts changed direction as I wondered, not for the first time, why it’d been Nico who’d been murdered while I’d been spared. My scar was a constant reminder of my fight for survival while my brother had lain dead in his own blood and brain matter.

Though I’d locked away the memory of what exactly had happened, the vault inside my head suddenly swung open, right along with the recollection that took me straight back to the past…to the last few minutes I’d seen my brother alive.

“I don’t trust the manager of this club,” I said to Nico as we approached the dingy strip club then stepped inside to an upgraded world full of velvet walls, comfortable padded seats at round tables, a long wooden bar and a central stage with a vertical pole for those more athletic strippers.

“Neither do I,” Nico conceded, his lips thinning. “He’s a greasy prick with shifty eyes, but he keeps the girls in line and the patrons seem too intimidated to disrespect him.”

The silver-haired manager, his bull-neck covered in gold chains, saw us enter the club and he smiled and nodded as he approached. “Gentlemen, what can I do for you today?”

I stayed silent while Nico ran through his usual spiel. “Just a routine check of the premises and the books, I’m sure you understand.”

The manager nodded again, though his dark eyes flared with irritation. “Of course, right this way,” he said magnanimously, as fake as ever as he led us to a small room at the back that was his office, a room which I had no doubt was also where the girls working here were coerced into giving into his physical demands.

As Nico flicked through the accounting program on the computer screen, I crossed my arms and stared balefully at the other man. “Just so you know,” I said softly, but with undercurrents of warning that made him gulp. “No one touches the girls who work here, including you. Not even the men who pay for lap dances get to touch the merchandise.”

The manager nodded. “Understood.”

I smiled. “We’ll be sure to let the bouncers know too,” I added. “Just so they can keep an eye out for anything…untoward.”

Nico pushed the chair back from the computer and stood. “The books appear to be in order, though if we suspect otherwise there will be an audit. We don’t need to tell you what will happen then if we find any discrepancies.”

“I can assure you there won’t ever be any. I value my life too much.”

“Good.” Nico smiled benignly, though his eyes remained hard. “Until next time then…”

It wasn’t until we left the greasy man behind and were halfway across the floor with its many round tables and chairs that Nico said, “Why do you care if the manager has some fun with the girls? They’re already selling their bodies.”

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