Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chantilly
The world was my oyster. Huh. It sure didn’t feel that way. Not when I sat in the driver’s seat of my hire car yet again staring at the jeep I’d left in a shopping mall parking lot almost two weeks ago. I rubbed my eyes. It’d been thirteen days since I’d left Valentino, yet it might as well have been a hundred.
All I wanted was to see him one last time while he was out of range of Carlo and any of the Irish mafia who wished me dead. Maybe then I’d know if Valentino’s feelings for me matched the feelings I had for him.
But I was playing a dangerous game. Staying in one place for too long was foolish. Staying in one place within range of my lover’s jeep was bordering on suicidal.
How long had Valentino watched me before he’d made his move? I’d first noticed him when I’d been working behind the bar, but had he been observing me from afar even before that initial encounter? I shivered at the memory of him spying on me with William. Had Valentino enjoyed the voyeuristic show? Had he felt a possessive pull toward me even back then?
I rubbed my brow, a headache beginning to bloom. If the pull had been so great he would have never let me go. Yet here I was pining for him like some star-struck, dizzy teenager just to plead my case.
Movement ahead snapped me out of my thoughts before I refocused on the jeep. My eyes narrowed. No fucking way! What the hell was William doing peering into the jeep’s window? I gaped. And what the hell was he doing using some kind of wedge in its door before he stuck in a metal probe to unlock it?
I was pushing open the hire car’s door, then walking swiftly toward him before I’d even thought twice about my decision. “William!” I called out. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The jeep’s door lock clunked, the door popping open simultaneously to him looking my way with wide eyes. “What am I doing here?” he grunted. “More likely, what are you doing here?”
“Valentino let me borrow the jeep. I drove it here,” I hissed, walking up to him before placing my hands on my hips and glaring. “So why are you stealing it? Have you gone completely crazy?”
He winced, his mouth firming. “After you escaped with Valentino, I’ve had to prove myself in multiple other ways. This jeep was spotted a few days ago and I was asked to bring it in.”
I blinked at him, a part of me questioning what I’d ever seen in him. He might be wearing a quality suit now, as all good mafia soldiers did, but he was still worthless. “Why would they want his jeep?”
He shrugged. “How should I know? And I don’t particularly care. To become a mademan I do whatever I’m asked without question.”
Like trying to fuck me before taking me back to Sean where I would have been tortured and killed? I swallowed hard. How had I ever trusted this man?
It didn’t mean I couldn’t warn him about the path he was heading down. It might appear smooth and bountiful, but his soul would be jarred so badly he’d end up losing whatever conscience he had left. “Can I give you one piece of advice?”
He all but rolled his eyes. “Go ahead.”
I frowned at his reaction. He had no idea what I’d been through. His life had probably been a picnic in comparison. I bit back a sarcastic retort and instead said, “Leave while you still can. Once you’re a soldier you’ll never have your own life again. You’ll live and die by the mafia’s sick and twisted rules.”
He snorted. “It’s too late to go anywhere, Suze.”
I gaped. He had yet to learn my real name. It made he realize how na?ve he really was. I doubted he’d last another month. They’d use him for a few petty little jobs, take stock of his limited worth, then get rid of him.
“I was an associate when I first met you but I wanted more,” he admitted. “I wanted women like you in my bed, I wanted all the sex and drugs, the extravagant lifestyle and the ability to literally get away with murder.”
I shook my head. “Be careful what you wish for.”
He nodded. “Yes, I’m beginning to see that now.”
Too little, too late!
I cleared my throat. “So all that time at the bar you were stalking me?”
He nodded. “Yes, I had to make certain you were the woman Sean wanted, then I had to bring you back to him.” He shrugged. “I knew for at least a week you were the woman who’d ran from him, but something held me back from taking you to him—until he threatened me.”
“Let me guess, he told you he’d roast your dick and balls while you watched on?”
He frowned, his face paling just a little. “How did you know?”
“It was his favorite threat.” Except a few times it hadn’t just been a threat, he’d gone ahead and done it to more than a few men. “And a man’s worst nightmare,” I added softly.
He shuddered. “You don’t say.” He climbed into the front seat of the jeep, then bent low and fiddled with the wiring beneath the dashboard. “We can only be glad the bastard’s dead. I just hope the new don will focus more on the business and less on revenge.”
“That would be nice,” I conceded. I didn’t ask who the new don was, I really didn’t want to know. I was leaving behind that life for good reason. I watched him try to hot-wire the engine for a little longer before I said, “You know, you could have just asked me for the key.”
He paused, then looked back at me. “You’d give it to me?”
“No,” I conceded. “There would be too many questions asked about how you got it.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
I stepped back. “I guess this is it, then.” I looked around, honing in on my surroundings. That I’d imagined I’d be reunited with Valentino had been nothing more than wishful thinking. I pushed my hand over my face, sighing dejectedly. “Goodbye, William. I’d say it was nice seeing you again, but it’d be a lie.”
He chuckled. “I only wish I could have finished what we started.”
I couldn’t say the same. Any sexual interest I’d had for him had died out long ago, superseded by Valentino’s remarkable skill. I managed a smile. “On that note, I think I’m overdue to disappear—for good this time.”
He nodded sagely. “Good idea. You don’t want to end up like Valentino.”
About to retreat, I froze, my eyes wide. “What?”
He frowned. “You didn’t hear?”
My heart was turning in on itself. “No.” I kept my voice carefully neutral. “What happened?”
“I heard he attacked some random fishermen.”
Those fishermen hadn’t been random, but William didn’t need to know that. I swiped a bead of sweat from my brow. They’d been one and the same men who’d ignored my cries for help.
“He killed them but was seriously injured,” William added. “Last I heard he was in a coma.”
I swayed, my entire body shutting down while my ears rang and hysteria threatened to drown out my sanity.My pulse then slowed to a sluggish beat that seemed to make everything around me move in slow motion.
“What the hell, Suze. Are you okay?” His voice sharpened, comprehension dawning. “Don’t tell me you’ve developed feelings for that enforcer fucker.” He must have read my expression when he added scathingly, “Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire! Do you have any idea how mentally unstable and dangerous men like him are? He’d weigh you down and throw you to the fishes quicker than you could—“
“He already saved me from drowning,” I interjected. I opened my eyes, focusing on the man who now stood beside my man’s jeep. My man’s? I managed somehow to pull myself together, though my thoughts were a jumbled mess. “It’s more than what I could say for you and the don you worked for.”
“It’s hardly the same thing,” he said defensively.
“Not from where I’m standing. Jesus, William. What do you think Sean would have done if you’d managed to take me back to him?”
He looked down and shuffled his feet. “I have a fair idea.” He looked back up, his face tinged with pink. “But it probably wouldn’t have been any worse than what Valentino did to Sean.”
I didn’t want to know how Valentino had killed the man who’d made my life miserable, though I kind of hoped it’d been a terrible end for him. Sean deserved it after exploiting and hurting not just me, but so many others.
I sucked in a steadying breath. “Where is Valentino now?”
“Last I heard he was in the Agostino household receiving around the clock care.”
“Where do they live?”
William’s eyes hardened fractionally. “Why would you think I’d know that? And if I did why would I hand that piece of information over to you?”
“You mean other than the fact you intended to fuck me knowing you’d then hand me back to Sean who would take pleasure in making me die a slow and gruesome death?”
He flinched, then looked away and I knew with a heavy heart he was never going to make it as a soldier in the Irish mafia. He really was too soft and na?ve, too law abiding to step over into the darker side of criminal life.
“If I give you that address,” he said, “I want you to promise that we never met, never had this conversation.”
“What conversation?”
He nodded, seemingly appeased. Damn he was a pushover, yet another reason he’d never make it in the mafia. After he rattled off the address, I stepped away, lifting my hand that was part salute, part-wave. “Thank you, and good luck, William.”
You’re going to need it.
I walked away without looking back. I had to get to Valentino. This might be my last chance to admit my feelings to him. If he survived, and he didn’t return those same feelings in return, then I’d leave.
For good this time.