37. Chapter 30
Lorenzo
Dash’s message catches me off-guard. We need to talk—but about what? Is the BDSM checklist too much for him? Did he decide he actually doesn’t want this? Driving back from Marin County into San Francisco, I pick up my phone and call him immediately.
He answers on the third ring. “Hey.”
“You said we need to talk.” I fight to keep my voice level, in control, though I’ve already started running through the worst-case scenarios. “Is everything okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
I breathe out carefully as I merge off the highway. “Okay. So what did you want to talk about?”
I want to ask him if it’s about the checklist, but I refrain.
“I just met with a fire marshal for the city. There have been some…suspicious fires lately. And I think you’re gonna want to hear this. Are you at the apartment?”
“No, but I’m almost there. Have you had lunch yet?”
“Not yet,” Dash says. “I had coffee, though.”
“That’s not lunch. Are you with Wolfe?”
“Yes.”
“Good boy.” It slips out before I can stop it. I decide to breeze past it. “Meet me at Perbacco, on Front Street. I’m buying.”
My goal when I get to the restaurant is twofold: one, figure out what the hell Dash wants to talk about, and two, not let him see that his desire to talk made me uncharacteristically anxious.
He’s already seated at my usual table when I arrive. I hide my pleasure at the fact that the maitre d’ knew to seat him at my place. What did he tell them to get that spot? That he is my boyfriend?
The thought is secretly thrilling.
And I try not to focus on it.
“Hey,” he says when he sees me, and stands as if he’s going to give me a hug, but then he sits back down before I’ve reached the table. “Nice place.”
“One of my father’s favorites,” I admit, sitting across from him. “Lots of Diamante business has been conducted here.”
“Fitting,” Dash says, “because that’s what we’re going to talk about.”
“Diamante business?”
He nods. “You know how I said I talked to a fire marshal today?”
“Yeah.”
“Well…” And then he tells me all of it. The coffee shop where he met Mila Chaudhary.
The photographs of the burned buildings.
The shell company that she traced to my family’s name.
I listen without interrupting, letting myself gather as much information as possible before reacting, though some of what he says has a chill settling in my chest.
“The company is called Saturn Industrial Holdings. Ring any bells?”
I turn the name over in my mind, but it is stubbornly unfamiliar. “No. But I know someone who might recognize it. Remember Pepe?”
“Your friend at the club, yeah.”
“Right. His father is—was—my father’s consigliere. He’s stayed on in the position for Giovanni. I’m pretty sure, though, that he was more loyal to my father than he is to my brother. He would know every entity my father has ever touched. He kept the books for thirty years.”
“And you think he’d tell you?”
Would Carlo tell me? I think back to the issue with the docks, to how he approved of my choice to not lean into violence to deal with the people who owed us money. “Yes. I think he would. Now, with the marshal. What did you tell her?”
“Nothing about Giovanni, I promise. Nothing about what you—what we—suspect.” He meets my eyes steadily, and I sense in his gaze a certainty. He would not betray me like that. “That’s not my information to hand over. Though I think we could trust Chaudhary with it, I’ll leave that decision to you.”
While that should give me comfort, and it mostly does, there is a small, more territorial part of me that registers just how easily he could betray me.
I’ve let Dash in almost completely to my life in these last few days.
I’ve given him so much of myself—and when he was given the opportunity to give those pieces away, he didn’t.
That sort of care, that sort of respect, is not something I’m used to.
“Thank you.”
He shrugs. “Don’t thank me too hard, not yet.
I told her I’d try to get some information for her.
Mostly about these properties and that shell company, Saturn.
” He hesitates, then goes on. “Basically, I offered to be a bridge. Between you and whatever she’s doing.
I’m not sure that’s a good idea, but it’s what I did. ”
My instinct is to refuse. It’s an old instinct, one that’s kept me safe and has kept the people I love out of danger—simply by keeping them uninformed and away from harm.
I want to protect him by cutting him out of this investigation, the same primal reflex that made me carry him to his own bed last night instead of letting him stay in mine.
By staying away from me, you’ll be safe, I think.
But I can’t indulge that reflex, that instinct, now.
Whatever this is between us, it isn’t built on me unilaterally deciding what’s best. I have to trust his own autonomy, his own strength.
“That’s a risky idea,” I say instead of refusing. “But it’s not a bad one. I’ll talk to Carlo, see what he knows about these properties, if anything, and if there’s anything worthwhile, I’ll share it with you. You can be the one who decides what the fire marshal does and doesn’t need to know.”
He looks relieved. “Thank you, Lorenzo. We’re trying to stop another fire before it starts.
She thinks that if we can figure out the pattern, figure out what these businesses might’ve been used for, we might be able to anticipate the arsonist’s next target.
Do you have any theories about what the properties used for. ”
I think back to my own conversation earlier today, with Yuri Volkov. About how my father was reconsidering the role of the Diamante Family, perhaps trying to redefine our legacy.
I’ve never heard of Saturn Industrial Holdings, but there’s plenty about the Diamante business that exists solely in silos.
Very few people in our organization know everything.
It’s safer that way. And it’s entirely possible that Father had some sort of side project that he was working on in the shadows.
“I don’t have a theory, but I have some ideas that might become a theory someday.”
He raises his eyebrows, curious, but I don’t elaborate. I don’t want to give shape to the dark thoughts forming in my head.
We order our food, and while we’re sipping wine—even though it’s lunchtime—Dash casually adds, “You know, on a different topic, I’m almost done with that checklist.”
Suddenly, all my other concerns are forgotten. “Are you?”
He smiles at me, something wicked gleaming in those beautiful eyes. “I did. After lunch, want to see what I wrote?”
My appetite flies away, but I force myself to eat anyway. Because yes, I want to see what he wrote, more than I want almost anything else in the world.