Page 61 of Corrupted Deception

“Morales and his second-in-command.”

His mouth opened, not quite a jaw-drop, but pretty damn close. “Nacio and Julio?”

I nodded.

“Small fucking world,” he said, shaking his head.

“Si, that’s what I said. But back to the point, Charlotte’s been looking for her father. He’s the reason she was in Marín’s hotel room. But according to John Doe, her father might have been planning to make a grab for our product.”

“So, you’re thinking he might have disappeared on purpose, and who the hell knows when he plans to resurface?”

I nodded, but there was something else bothering me. “What do you know about Julio?”

“Why?” he asked, brow furrowed.

That was difficult to articulate. “Something about him wasn’t sitting right when I spoke with him.”

“Julio doesn’t ‘sit right’ with anyone,” Deo said, laughing. “Well, Cait and Nic, perhaps.”

“And Charlotte,” I said, still not pleased withthat. “He was fucking spinning her around like a child.”

Deo’s brows raised. “You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” I said dryly. The urge to rip the man’s hands from his body was a little less potent now, but not gone by any means.

Rather than responding, Deo crossed his arms over his chest and eyed me shrewdly.

When he dropped his arms, he laughed. “Fuck, you’ve still got it bad, don’t you,fratello?”

I sighed and scrubbed my fingers through my hair. Unless I wanted to dodge comments like this for the next several weeks, it was time to bring this conversation to a close.

“What I feel for Charlotte isn’t up for discussion, Deo. I love her—there’s no sense in denying it. I don’t think I ever stopped. But I can’t trust her.” A woman I couldn’t read was a woman who could lie to me day-in, day-out. Her disappearance and refusal to talk about it since turning up again didn’t help either. “No trust means she isn’t someone I can ever bring into the family.”

She was a woman I could fuck—of which I had every intention of doing—and a woman I could love from a distance. Nothing more.

“So, what I have is an unsettling feeling about Julio,” I said, bringing the conversation back on topic once again.

“Fair enough,” he said, nodding and letting the subject lie. “What I know about Julio is Morales trusts him. So far as our association at the time went, that was all I needed to know.”

I opened my mouth to respond at the same time a blurry red dot appeared on Deo’s chest.

“Get down,” I shouted as the world sped up and slowed down at the same time.

My body felt like it was moving through molasses as I dove for my brother, but the ear-splitting crash came quick as the window nearest us shattered.

We hit the ground at the same time a bullet slammed into the wooden crate where he’d been standing.

A split second. Half a heartbeat, and Deo could have been dead.

The gunfire continued, a merciless staccato that transformed into a deafening symphony as Vito and Carmine returned fire.

Deo joined in, but amid the chaos, I assumed a different role, one in which I analyzed the trajectory of each bullet’s path, visualizing the lot outside, the cars in it, the buildings across from it, and the shed in between.

“Vito, keep my brother covered and keep them distracted,” I shouted over top of the cacophony as I nodded beyond the warehouse. “Carmine and I are going to circle around and take them out,” I said, exchanging a quick glance with Carmine.

Carmine nodded as Deo shot me a questioning look, his brows arched in a silent commentary. He was used to being the one giving orders.

“I’m not taking any chance of bringing you home with bullet holes in you,fratellone,” I said, shaking my head.“Heidi would not be impressed.”

---