Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
MASON
“ L et me know when you’re home safe,” Mira tells her friend, giving her a hug. She insisted we walk her down to the entrance and watch as she gets in the car. Enzo was spotted going into the Wrigley Building not long ago, and hasn’t been spotted coming out since.
Thankfully, I’m friendly with a handful of the Chicago Police Department, and they’re just as eager to get the Morettis off the streets as we are. I called a buddy of mine to do some off the books surveillance, making sure we knew a general location of Enzo before I had either Mira or her friend move.
“I’ll take you home,” I tell Mira and she looks a little surprised.
“I thought you’d want to talk about this.”
“We can talk in the car,” I say, already thinking about how I’m going to have to shift through the footage before anyone else sees it. My team has access to this safehouse so it’s not out of the question that I would have someone go there while I looked into something. But I don’t know what all Mira said to her friend and I don’t want to be surprised by anything. So for the sake of not having to make more work for myself, it would be easier to talk to Mira in my car.
She nods and follows me outside. I open the passenger door for her and then get in, turning on the car.
“I need you to tell me exactly what you told your friend. And don’t leave anything out.”
“Okay,” she says slowly, immediately looking defensive. “I’ll do my best, sir,” she adds pointedly. “I told her I’m working with the FBI to help get info on the Moretti family and you kind of forced me into working with you so I don’t get in trouble with the law for not having a PI license."
“Seriously? You do know I’m a federal agent, right? I didn’t force you to do anything.”
“I forgot, Agent Harris . It’s not like you remind me every chance you get.”
“You put your friend in danger by telling her the truth.”
“What was I supposed to do, lie?”
“Yeah.” I shake my head. “I didn’t think I’d have to explain the importance of a need to know basis on this.”
“No shit,” she fires back. “She needed to know why I was acting so suss and why we had to go to a freaking safe house to avoid some guy I supposedly went on one date with. If I tried to lie, she would have poked and poked and maybe even blown my cover, which is probably going to happen, by the way, because I did not sign up to go on more than one date with this guy.”
“Are you sure about that? Because you seemed to quite enjoy his company at dinner?”
“What?” Her eyes go wide as she looks at me incredulously.
“I heard every word and I don’t think you’re that good of an actress.”
“Oh, sorry Special Agent Harris for going above and beyond. I can’t help it that he found me interesting and charming even when I was pretending not to be. I guess you’re not used to that.”
Fuck, she’s irritating, yet the spark in her green yes is intoxicating. Her tenacity comes off in waves, and I don’t think there’s a damn thing she can do to put a damper on it, no matter how hard she tries. And she’s right, it’s annoyingly interesting and charming. You don’t come across people like her often. But when you do, you want to do what you can to stay in their orbit because just being around them, feeling the gravitational pull, makes you feel everything so much fuller.
“Look,” I say, trying to go back to business. “Whatever you did, worked. Enzo is clearly smitten.”
“Yeah, obsessively. If one of my clients told me they had a great date—so much so they stalked said date after dinner—I’d tell them they’d need help!”
“Aren’t you the help?”
She narrows her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
I do, but I don’t want to tell her I do.
“It doesn’t seem Enzo is used to not getting his way with women,” I go on and Mira nods.
“I thought the same. He would seek out the type of woman who would fall all over him in a glucose guardian type of way?’
“A what?”
She laughs and the way her face lightens immediately does something to me. “A sugar daddy. It’s a silly thing you say online because sometimes keywords can get you flagged.”
“Right. You have a big following.”
“My friend, Kat, has close to a million followers. It’s pretty cool, actually. She posts about the places she travels to.”
I nod, finding it interesting that she deflects a compliment about one of her accomplishments to a friend, saying how she’s even more accomplished. Trying to convince myself I’m just interested in getting to know Mira better from a psychological standpoint, I slowly take in a breath and reach over, moving a loose section of hair out of her face. She goes still and her eyes meet mine as my fingers sweep against her forehead.
“Which, um, which is why I’m a little worried,” she says, voice a little shaky.
“About what?” My hand falls back down into my lap.
“About Enzo figuring out that I’m Mira, not Mya, and I don’t work at a small practice out of the city. The longer I keep this up, the more chance there is he finds out who I really am, and it’s not like I can just go all ghost-mode and delete my social media. It’s, uh, kinda my main job.”
I nod again, fully aware how much money can be made from sponsorships and brand deals when you have a good social media following.
“I’m not asking you to do that,” I tell her.
“I know.” Her head bobs up and down and she taps the screen of her phone, checking to see if her friend texted. “Going on one date to see if someone is a cheater is different than continuing to see the same person.”
Putting the car in drive, I slowly pull out of the parking spot and head towards Lincoln Park, where Mira lives. The screen of her phone lights up, but instead of a text, it’s a notification from an app that’s usually court appointed when there are children involved in a custody situation.
“Why are you using that?” I ask and she sighs.
“My ex is really good at crying to the judge and was able to get this somehow written in.” Shaking her head, she opens the app to read the message. “Hmm, guess he must be up late fighting with his girlfriend.”
I glance over. “What makes you say that?”
She lets out a snort of laughter and starts reading. “‘Mira, my mother informed me about the incident yesterday and your behavior has been documented. You really need to’—oh this gets good—‘one, stop lying on all your posts. No one believes you. Two, pay for the damaged model cars. Three, worry about yourself and what you’re doing.’” She sighs and then laughs.
“I…I don’t get it. Model cars?”
Mira laughs again. “My ex used to put together model cars and when we divided up our property, he forgot to put them on the list. Anything he didn’t list was to stay at the house with me. But I was nice and since I’m not a child, I gave him the stupid cars. They were all in boxes and I guess some pieces came off during the move so he says I owe him five grand for the fucking cars.” She rolls her eyes. “He won’t let it go.”
“Won’t let it go or you go?”
“Me.” She blacks out her phone screen and tips her head. “You know about true narcissists.”
“I do. You’re the one that got away and he’ll never actually be able to move on.”
“It’s almost a good thing that I—“ she says but stops, turning to look out the window. “It doesn’t matter. It’s been years and I just wish the guy would leave me alone.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her genuinely. “I, uh, have a little confession.”
“Yeah?”
“I looked up your divorce case.”
“Oh.” She shrugs. “I assumed you’d do your due diligence.”
“The guy is an asshole.” I slow at a stop sign and look over at her. “But you came out of it stronger. And it takes a lot of strength to even leave an abusive relationship so I have a lot of respect for you.”
“Thank you,” she says softly. How anyone could hurt her is beyond me.
“What do you lie about in your reels?” I ask and she laughs again, shaking her head at the insanity.
“I post a lot of made up scenarios to get a point across if there’s anything to do with how to handle an ex’s new partner, Cory thinks I’m talking about him and his girlfriend. The whole situation is kinda weird.”
“I like weird.”
“You want to know my baggage?” She raises her eyebrows.
I want to know everything about her. How does she take her coffee? What’s her favorite color? What does she need for me to make her feel safe? Fuck, I want to know what she tastes like, how good it would feel to push my cock inside of her. “Yeah. Why not?”
“Okay, well you know I have my whole social media thing where I talk about my past experiences and the lessons I’ve learned. But the whole “making up lies” thing is really when I go into situations that happened to clients. I can’t say that my client, Kristina Benson, found out the first guy she dated after filing for divorce was actually married and his sister he talked so much about was really his wife. Ya know, HIPPA and all.”
“Yeah.”
“So I say it in the first person, like it happened to me. Which is a great marketing technique, by the way. People love some good spilled tea. Well, Noel, the girlfriend, does the same thing and is supposedly writing a book about all her past experiences, too. Which is fine, it's just…weird.”
“That’s really fucking weird. Is he pushing her to do it because you were successful? I did see in the court docs that he seemed rather money-hungry and was salty he couldn’t take away your social media accounts.”
“I’m actually impressed you did your homework.” Her smile is back and I would do fucking anything to keep it on her face. “And I think so. I have this morbid curiosity about it. Like it doesn’t matter, it doesn't affect my life, but I can’t help but wonder why?” She shakes her head. “Does she have no self respect? I wouldn’t want to try to become my boyfriend’s ex-wife, ever.”
“Well, if you go missing I’ll know whose basement to check.”
She laughs. “Seriously. A few friends happened to stumble on her posts and called to make sure I still had my skin because she wants to wear it.”
“A narcissist and someone with a personality disorder are a match made in heaven in the narc’s eyes.”
“Right? I actually feel sorry for her.” Mira’s face grows somber. “It’s sad to be so broken you’d stay with someone cruel. I don’t know the extent of the manipulation, but I’m sure she believes I’m the bad guy and he’s a poor innocent victim. And I can’t fault her too much since there was a time when I thought Cory really loved me too.” She bites her lips and shrugs. “I pray for her. Like really, at night when I say my prayers, I pray that they’re both happy because if they are truly happy, they’d leave me alone. So it’s a little selfish, but everyone deserves to be happy. Cory and I met when we were young, things didn’t work out, and that’s okay. I moved on and I really wish he could find it in himself to let go and live a life without me in it.”
I look at her again, taken aback by her emotional intelligence and general kindness. While she said the girlfriend’s behavior is odd—which is really fucking is—she hasn’t said anything bad about her, or really even her ex.
No…you don’t come across people like Mira often, so when you do, you’ll do whatever you can to hold onto them.
Which is exactly what Enzo Moretti is going to do.