Chapter 1 #2
“Ever since Digger started dating that reality star, he’s been super conscious of any bad publicity. He wants you silenced immediately.”
“But you can keep that from happening, right?” Since Cash is the Reivers’ head enforcer, he’s been keeping them off my tail. “You can pretend you can’t find me.”
“Sure,” Cash says, and I take a deep breath of relief I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “I can stall for a while, but as you know, Digger is a crazy, unpredictable bastard. He might send another chapter after you or wake up one morning and decide to do it himself.”
“But—”
“Trust me. You don’t want them to find you without anyone there to protect you. It will make me scaring the shit out of you and burning down your cabin look like I came over for afternoon tea.”
I gulp and look around my place and, for the first time, realize how easily it would be to break into my crappy apartment.
Cash must read my sudden concern in my silence. “Relax, Evan. That’s why we sent Luca over there. He’s going to watch out for you.”
I’d been purposely ignoring Luca’s presence in my apartment, but now I turn back toward him, let my eyes travel over him, and perform a thorough inspection.
This time, not with lust—well, maybe a little lust—but my main objective is to judge his ability to go against the Reivers and keep them from killing me.
What I see is impressive. Very impressive. A body seemingly designed for power and strength. Is that enough, though?
“How can he protect me from the kind of threat you and Johnny keep telling me I’m under?” I don’t bother lowering my voice. My apartment is tiny. Luca will hear my words even if I whisper. “He’s only one man.”
Cash lets out a laugh that sounds more edged with irony than humor. “Look into some of the Reivers lore that I know you’ve collected over the years and you’ll realize Luca is the exact man you want going into battle for you with a bunch of Reivers.”
The journalist in me prods to question his assertion. “How can you be sure about that?”
“Because I’ve seen it for myself, and I think we’ve had enough interactions between us, both good and bad, that you know I don’t bullshit you.”
“We have,” I admit.
“Then do me a solid and play nice with Luca, keep up your part in this fight, and write your next article, so one day, none of us will have to worry about the Reivers being a threat to any of us ever again.”
He hangs up, and I’m left staring at the man looking at me a little too smugly now that we both know he’s not going anywhere.
It pisses me off, and in danger or not, I refuse to let him rule my life.
“We need some ground rules,” I tell him.
“Sounds good,” he says easily. “I’ll start.”
“Wait! I meant—”
“I’m here to keep you safe,” he says, then stops speaking.
“And?” I wait for him to expand.
He shrugs. “That’s it. This is your home. You can set all the ground rules you want, and I’ll respect them.” He meets my eyes, and I ignore the way having all his attention focused on me causes my skin to warm. “Unless I think those ground rules of yours will put you in danger.”
“And then what happens?”
He shrugs. “I ignore them.”
Paying no attention to my sputtering reaction, he walks around my apartment. His examination of my personal belongings feels too intimate in the small space, making me feel exposed. When he starts moving my writing desk from its place in front of my window, he’s gone too far.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demand while getting in his way and blocking him from moving my desk an inch more than he already has.
“Moving your desk.”
“I see that,” I hiss. “And why exactly are you redecorating my apartment?”
“So you don’t get a bullet in the head while you write your next brilliant article.”
At the word brilliant, my brain goes offline for a few seconds. Call it the cost of a lifetime of being hungry for praise and being denied it. Luca uses my distraction to sidestep me and move my desk to the half wall in front of the kitchen.
Has he really read my articles? Which one is his favorite? Wait—what was that about a bullet to my head?
“Did you just say bullet to my head?”
“Yep,” he says with a slight pop to the p. “I watched you most of the morning from across the street sitting at that window.”
My head bolts up to look up at him. “You—you were watching me?”
He nods.
“You had no right to inv—”
He puts out both hands in defense. “I needed to see how easy of a target you were. I couldn’t see details, but I could identify your body position and track your movements.”
He walks over to the window and points across the street. “That was my vantage point. All I needed was any rifle with a scope, and I could have ensured you never wrote another word again.”
My stomach drops at his words.
He examines the window’s old locks. “First thing tomorrow, I’m replacing the window and door locks and getting some blackout curtains so no one can follow your movements from room to room.”
“You think the Reivers would use a sniper on me?”
“It’s not their usual MO. They prefer messier, bloodier kills, but with all the pressure on them right now, who knows what the fuck they’re capable of. My job is to prepare for every threat.”
“How exactly do you plan on doing that?”
He starts spouting off a mental list. “I’ve already done surveillance over your apartment’s exterior.
It’s security sucks ass. Tomorrow, I plan on getting close and personal with the building’s superintendent about replacing the lights in the hallways and stairwells and adding cameras and an intercom system that requires tenants to buzz visitors in before they can enter the building. ”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” I bite out bitterly. “The superintendent is also the owner of the building. I spent all last winter begging him to fix my heater, and he still hasn’t gotten around to it.”
Luca’s jaw tenses. “Oh, he’ll be doing that and more.
” His lips form into a cross between a grimace and a smile that really shouldn’t be so threatening and sexy all at the same time, but it so is.
“He’ll also be apologizing and throwing in a few months of free rent to make up for his maintenance oversight. ”
I don’t know what to say to that. No one has ever stood up for me before. I stay quiet and watch Luca as he continues his inspection. Walking to my bathroom door, he looks in and seems satisfied that the tiny room poses no threat. Then he turns his attention to my bedroom.
“There aren’t any windows in there, so you don’t need to see my bedroom,” I insist, not wanting his observant eyes cataloging my room and seeing it decorated in lonely loser chic.
“Old buildings like this one usually have a crawl space between floors,” he says as he barges into my room before I can stop him. “I need to make sure there are no access points.”
I watch him take in the details of my room with its dingy white walls and cheap thrift store furniture.
Messy, tangled sheets show the evidence of my tortured attempts to turn off my brain to achieve a few hours of sleep.
No pictures of friends or family make it clear I don’t have either—or at least any that claim me, anyway.
When he turns back to me, I expect to see the scorn I’m used to seeing when people spend more than ten minutes with me, or worse, the pity, but his face is set in a concentrated frown as he begins his inspection.
Somehow, his nonreaction reignites my anger from earlier.
As I watch him knocking on walls and looking for any false panels in the ceiling, that anger simmers until it boils down to a thick, irrational rage.
How dare he hide his judgment from me? And worse, pretend he really cares about my safety.
“All good.” He dusts his hands as he comes out of the closet. Your bedroom is officially a safe zone.”
Not with him in it, it’s not.
“Why are you here?” I demand, my breath almost huffing as I practically vibrate with frustration. “And don’t tell me it’s to keep me safe.”
He looks at me for a long time, and just when I’m about to give up getting a response and storm off, he answers. “Because I used to wear the Reivers patch and hurt nosy reporters like you. I’m here because it’s past time that I stopped running from my past and started making up for it.”