Chapter Thirteen #2
“Being devilishly good-looking and charming?” I asked, smiling because I knew there wasn’t a charming bone in either of our bodies.
She smiled too, and it wiped some of the despair out of her eyes, making me realize that soon, as soon as it was possible for me to do so, I needed to find a way to wipe that look away completely.
That, on top of keeping her safe, was my new mission in life.
“It’s… I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. You both are… hard, unbending, really just kind of… well…”
“Spit it out, babe. I’ve got a thick skin; you won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Really just kind of hard to like,” she said with a small smile meant to soften the blow of the words. But, having known the people I had known and done the things I had done, I had been called way fucking worse than ‘hard to like.’
“But,” I prompted.
“But I like you anyway.”
There was a strange constricting feeling in my chest at that. I promptly tried to ignore it, reaching out and tugging on a strand of her hair. “You like me, huh?”
She rolled her eyes, swatting my hand away. “You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, my hand settling on the side of her neck, watching as her eyes got a little hazy, her lips parting slightly.
I’d been good.
I’d been a motherfucking saint since I felt her up in the kitchen.
I wouldn’t say it was easy. I’d say I gave thought to bursting in to her room and giving into something we both wanted at least five times a day.
But it had been necessary. She was coping, adjusting.
And, past actions aside, I was a good man.
I didn’t take advantage of vulnerability.
That was for lazy, opportunist shits who couldn’t get pussy any other way.
But there were moments when she wasn’t sad and wasn’t hurting and had those fucking eyes… and yeah, I was sure it would take some superhuman force to keep me from her.
Or, I realized as my phone started ringing in my pocket, a call.
I sighed as I reached for my cell. “Yeah?”
“Nice phone manners, Anderson,” the smooth voice said on the other end of the line.
“Luca,” I said, turning my attention out the windshield.
Luca Grassi, along with his brother, Matteo, and their father, Antony, owned Famiglia. It was an Italian restaurant on stilts out of the water. Italian instead of seafood because the Grassi family were Italian Italian. Meaning, they were in the mob. They ran the docks.
I had put a call out to Luca days before, knowing that because they were in the mob, they were crazy about security. That meant that they not only had highly trained doormen and bouncers and shit, but they also had cameras fucking everywhere.
Riya being dropped off there was a sign that whoever did it knew nothing about the people who owned it.
They likely only did enough research to know that Famiglia was not open for lunch ever and the staff didn’t start showing up until around two or three in the afternoon and, therefore, the lot would be empty of overseeing eyes.
If I was lucky, they didn’t erase their footage after looking it over. They were, I hoped, too smart for that amateur shit.
“I got your call. Sorry it took so long to get back to you. Lot of shit going on lately. But I have Tony working on getting the footage onto an external drive and over to you.”
“You didn’t erase it.”
There was a short pause. “You should know better than that. We don’t erase anything ever. Much easier these days. We have our own servers to store this shit.”
“I really appreciate this, Luca.”
“Don’t mention it. Pops is pissed that anyone would dare drop a woman behind our dumpsters. When you figure out who it is, he might feel the need to pay a visit too. Is she okay?”
I looked over at Riya, flipping through her paperwork, a line between her brows. “Yeah, she is.”
“But she’ll be better when you figure out who did this to her,” he guessed. “Bring her up to Familgia for dinner one night. I mean,” he said, as if realizing what he was saying, “if she’s not too traumatized by the place.”
“She’s stronger than that,” I said. “Thanks,” I added, ending the call.
“Who is stronger than that?” she asked a little distractedly.
“Marg,” I improvised. “She can deadlift a fucking SUV when she’s in a mood,” I shrugged, knowing the lie fell a little flat. And just about then, my phone started ringing again.
“Popular today,” she said, reaching to turn on the heat.
“Hey, Marg. Just talking about you,” I answered.
“All good things, I trust,” she said, and there was a clanging noise on the line. “Listen, mijo, I will drop everything off at your place at four tomorrow. But you need to make sure you get around to it no later than five or it will all start to turn,” she lectured.
“Got it, Marg. And thanks again.”
My whole team was helping me track down some things for the surprise I had planned for Riya the next day, something she needed, a win.
“No, no,” she brushed off my gratitude, as she always did, despite this being an even bigger favor than I usually asked her. “It makes my heart so happy that you finally have a woman in your life.”
“Marg,” I said, dragging it out, warning in my voice. “It’s not like that.”
“Sure, sure it’s not, mijo. For what it’s worth, I like her much better than the others.”
“Marg…”
“A mother can dream, Sawyer,” she said, hanging up.
“What was all that about?” Riya asked, watching me with drawn-together brows. “You’re smiling.”
“Marg is helping me on a special project. And she somehow believes I am her child in desperate need of advice.”
“It’s sweet that you have her, though,” Riya said, a small amount of sadness in her own voice, likely remembering the too-short time she had with her adoptive mother.
Another reminder of why she needed what I had planned.
And while she was at work the next day, I was going to set things in motion.
I was ignoring the fact that Marg was right in a way; it wasn’t something a man generally did for just any woman. But Riya wasn’t just any woman. She had been through hell and was really holding it together better than anyone else could expect.
She deserved all the work that it was going to take.
And I was just pretending that I wasn’t maybe a bit too invested in seeing her happy than I should have been for a client.