Chapter 14
DIANGELO
Present
“You don’t think it was venomous?” Rina listened intently to my conversation with Renzo on the ride to my place and is now peppering me with questions. I’m glad. It shows she’s worried.
She should be.
“That’s not what I said. I said that I didn’t think it was meant to kill you. I think it was a message more than anything.”
The snake was too fucking exotic not to be deadly. It looked like something Nat Geo films in the middle of a South American rainforest. The sleek scales glistened in the light, the stripes so stark they appeared painted on.
“And what message is that?” she asks quietly.
My eyes study her as the elevator doors close us in. “You’ve been marked. Things just got a lot more dangerous.”
The color drains from her face.
It’s the appropriate response, and in a way, I’m glad, but at the same time, it pisses me the fuck off.
Terina is an innocent victim in all this.
We may have been responsible for Biba’s death, but that bastard was far from innocent.
Painting a target on Renzo’s sister is a whole other level of evil.
I won’t let them lay a finger on her.
When I open the door to my apartment, Bonny is waiting in the entry.
“Oh! Who’s this?” Terina asks with renewed life, not at all intimidated by the 100-pound Rottweiler across from her. She extends her hand for Bonny to sniff, then scratches behind her ear. My guard dog grins like a buffoon.
“That’s Bonny,” I tell her with a note of disapproval.
“Bonny? You named your big, scary dog Bonny?”
“You don’t seem so scared.” I drop the duffel bag she packed next to her suitcase.
She continues to make friends with Bonny, smiling and cooing at her. “I would have expected a name like Onyx or Xena.”
“As in … the warrior princess?” I give her an incredulous look.
“Yeah, exactly. Not something soft and sweet.”
“It’s not soft and sweet. She’s a pirate.” Fuck, that sounds dumb. I shouldn’t have said anything, but she was dissing my dog.
Terina finally turns her focus back to me. “A pirate?”
I run my hand through my hair and sigh. “Dog was as clumsy as a drunken sailor when I first got her. Anne Bonny was a famous pirate in the 1700s. Thought it was fitting. We done with twenty-one questions now?”
The smile that splits her face could power the city for a week. “A pirate. I love it.”
I grunt, ignoring the small swell of pride that warms my chest. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”
My apartment is a good size—a four-bedroom with two of those used as an office and a workout room. I appreciate how spacious each room is. At six feet, five inches, a lot of places can feel claustrophobic to me. The high ceilings and big rooms here allow me to breathe.
“You can take my bedroom,” I tell her as we enter the main suite.
She looks at me with wide eyes, making me realize the implication of my words.
“Relax, I won’t be in here with you. I’m staying on the couch.”
Her brows crease. “But you have a guest room. One of us could easily stay there.”
“I want to be close to the door, and you’re safest back in the primary.”
“You’re going to sleep on the couch? What if this goes on for weeks?”
“Then I sleep on the couch for weeks. My comfort is insignificant when your life is at risk.”
Her teeth graze across her lip. “I’m not sure what to say, except thank you.”
Fuck, the sweet side of Rina Donati does things to me. Things best ignored.
“I made a promise to your brother, and I intend to keep it,” I speak the words out loud more as a reminder for me than a response to her, which is probably why they come out gruffer than I intend.
I don’t throw around promises I don’t intend to keep because I know what it’s like to break a promise. That sort of failure can haunt a person for the rest of their life.