22. Chapter 16
Dashiell
The Next morning
"How was work?” Lorenzo asks when I get home from my shift, and I yelp in surprise.
“Fuck! You’re home!”
He’s sitting at the kitchen island, wearing a white tank top and gray sweatpants, drinking coffee.
His dark hair is still wet from the shower, the gray at the temples glistening almost like silver.
His beard is trimmed down to his skin, and I catch myself imagining what it would feel like to have that stubble dragging across me.
“Where else would I be?” he asks with a small smile. “I live here, don’t I?”
“Do you?” I ask, going to the coffee maker and pouring myself a cup. I was planning on taking a nap when I got home from work, but I’m definitely going to need energy to get through a conversation with Lorenzo without throwing myself at him. “You’re never here.”
“Well, I have work.”
“At all hours?”
“Sometimes. You didn’t answer my question. How was work?”
I sip the coffee. I don’t know what wizardry there is in Lorenzo’s machine, but it’s the best fucking coffee I’ve ever tasted.
“Work was work.” I lean against the counter, putting the island between us on purpose.
I want to go up and sit next to him, and that’s the problem.
I can’t do that. “There was a fire in Dogpatch. Turns out it might be connected to a serial arsonist that the city’s been tracking. You know, just an average shift.”
“How much sleep did you get?”
“What, you’re not going to ask me about the potential serial arsonist?”
I spent most of my shift debating if I was going to tell him about what I remember from the night of his father’s death.
Finally, I decided that I would tell him, but I needed to make sure I could trust him, and that he would trust me with further information, too.
He hasn’t told me anything about what happened with the guy who tried to take me off the street.
I deserve to know, and I’m going to get him to tell me. However I have to do it.
“I mean,” he says, “the serial arsonist part sounds a little interesting. Want to tell me about that?”
“How about you tell me about how your day was first, my love?”
The use of the pet name has the effect I hoped it would: he frowns at me, those dark eyebrows drawing close. “No one else is here, Dashiell. We don’t have to pretend right now.”
I shrug. “Okay. But why don’t you tell me about your day? What does a mobster do in a nine-to-five? Though I guess yesterday was a Sunday. Does the mafia get weekends off?”
His scowl deepens. “I worked.”
“Okay. Doing what?”
Finally, he leans back in his stool and studies me, crossing his arms over his broad chest. I force myself not to stare at his forearms, not to gawk at how muscular they are, not to think about how much I want to rub my face all over the dark hair that coats them.
“It’s safer if you don’t know what I do every day, Dashiell. Safer for you.”
I scoff. “Safer for me? Listen, Lorenzo. You might be guarding me, which I’ll finally admit I’m thankful for, but you aren’t in control of me. You don’t get to decide what I know and what I don’t know. I’m not a child.”
He looks sharply at me. “What if I was?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if I was? In charge of you.”
I swallow carefully. “Then,” I murmur, “I would listen.” My voice strengthens. “But you’re not. Besides, I’m a part of this whole…mess…now, whether or not either of us likes it.” I hold up my arm. “Look. I have the scars to prove it.”
“Fine. I interrogated the man who tried to grab you on the street. I wanted to know who sent him.”
My blood chills at the mention of that morning. I’d been doing so well on not thinking about it, but suddenly that prickling, sickly feeling of fear is back. Like that man is lurking around every corner, ready to grab me again.
I fight to keep my voice steady. “Okay. And what did you find out?”
“He wouldn’t give me his name,” Lorenzo says with a sigh. “But I got him to tell me what broker he used to get the job.”
“And?” I ask, straightening. I don’t know shit about the mechanisms of organized crime, but getting the broker seems like a good step.
“I paid him a visit, too. Talked to him. He wouldn’t tell me who paid him to hire the thug, but he gave me a hint.”
“A hint? What sort of hint?”
Lorenzo turns his coffee mug a quarter turn, precise and controlled. “He told me to ask myself who stood to gain the most from my father’s death.”
The pull to be near him suddenly becomes irresistible. I round the counter and sit in the stool beside him. “And who do you think that is?”
Lorenzo looks up, meets my gaze. A shiver runs through my nervous system at the eye contact. We’re so close to each other right now. If I shifted my knee just a little bit, our legs would touch.
“My brother.”
His answer lands heavy and hoarse. Lorenzo’s hands grip his mug and his shoulders tense.
“Your…brother?”
“Yes, my brother. Giovanni. He’s three years older than me.
With Father dead, he’s assumed the role of the boss in our organization.
” He shakes his head. “I don’t have any proof.
But if I connect all these threads, it starts to make sense.
Giovanni sets the fire in Father’s house, killing him to take his place.
You respond to the fire, and one of his spies reports they think you saw something.
You save my life. I offer to protect you.
Giovanni hires someone to send a threatening message to you, and when you move in with me, he sends someone else—either to eliminate you or knock some sense into you. ”
“Couldn’t you use that same logic to connect any suspect?” I press.
“I could, but the motive isn’t there, not as powerfully, for the other suspects. I had a working theory before meeting with Reiner, but it’s got holes in it. I didn’t even consider Giovanni. I don’t think I wanted to.”
“Would your brother really do that? Kill your—his—father to take his place?”
He shrugs. “I’d like to say no. That no one in my family would do something like that. But Giovanni…he’s ruthless. He can, would do, and has done terrible things if he’s pushed enough. Not that it takes much pushing.”
“Shit, Lorenzo.”
“I come from a fucked-up family, Dash. We all have darkness in us. Even me.”
I look away. Earlier, it would’ve been easy for me to believe that he has darkness in him. Now, though, I don’t want to.
“Speaking of family. Maybe it’s time for me to meet yours.”
He blinks. “What?”
“Family dinner. Your family. I want to meet them.”
“I just told you that my brother might be responsible for murder and might be the one hunting you, and you want to meet him?”
I lean forward, letting our knees press together.
“Yes, I do. Because that threat? That picture of my parents’ house burning, with the note on the back, telling me I didn’t see something?
I realized yesterday that I did see something.
I didn’t register it until I saw it again, yesterday, at that arson site.
I saw a distinctive burn pattern that the fire marshal thinks might be the trait of a serial arsonist. I remembered seeing the same thing at your house.
So that means your house fire was very likely the work of this arsonist. It could also mean that… ”
“That Giovanni is an arsonist?” Lorenzo whispers.
“Maybe. Listen. If you take me to family dinner, we can see how he acts around me. I’m great at reading people, especially when they’re in danger or they’re afraid.
That’s part of what I do. I’ll know if he feels a certain way about me being there.
” I shrug. “And maybe I can find a way to convince him that I didn’t see something there, and he’ll call off his hounds.
Then I can finally go back to my normal life. ”
Lorenzo takes an angry sip of coffee. “No. Absolutely not. I’m not going to use you as some sort of bait.”
“Why not?”
“Because it wouldn’t be safe!”
“Lorenzo! I’m not helpless!”
“Maybe not. But up against the wrath of the Diamante Family? If he were to become convinced that you were a threat he absolutely had to eliminate?”
I shake my head. “I wouldn’t be up against the wrath of the Family.
Not the whole Family, at least. You’re with me.
” Then, on impulse, I grip his knee, forcing his attention to me.
“And, besides, whoever did this to your father is the same person who threatened my family. The same person who’s caused terror and chaos across the city with these arsons.
This isn’t just your problem. It’s mine, too, and the city’s.
I refuse to just wait around safely, letting you handle it.
You see it as your job to see this through?
Well, so do I. Whoever’s responsible for this—I will watch them burn, Lorenzo. I mean every word of that.”
My voice has steel and sparks in it that I almost don’t recognize, like I’ve become a hardened, fury-driven version of myself. A stronger, darker version.
Something in Lorenzo’s expression changes. Not with surprise, not exactly. It’s something closer to recognition, like he’s finally seeing a version of me that he’s only gotten glimpses of before.
You and me both, I think.
“Okay,” he says finally.
“Okay?”
“Okay.” He takes my hand—my blood blazes—and then drops it immediately in my lap. “I will think about dinner. That’s not an immediate yes, but it is a promise that I’ll think about it.”
A small victory, but one I’ll take.
On impulse, I lean forward and kiss his cheek. “Thank you,” I whisper, my lips near his ear, before pulling back, jumping off my stool, and hurrying away from him.