27. Dante
27
DANTE
“W hat, no barging in without knocking? Isn’t that how prisoners are usually treated?”
She folds her arms across her chest defiantly and cocks a hip smartly, meaning to show me her tough side. She fails miserably, but she stirs something in me that has long laid dormant. She wants to play with fire. She means to challenge me. I want to take her up on her empty challenge.
“And prisoners – especially those as beautiful as you,” I start, taking a lock of her dark hair in my hand and wrapping it around a finger before I move closer to sniff it. She smells divine. She reeks of sin. And danger. “Are usually subjected to brutality. Rape, murder… malnourishment. Are you inviting me to watch you as you shower, Moneybags?”
She slaps my hand away and turns away from the door in a huff. I follow her, joining her at the French doors that lead out to the balcony.
“You’re free to walk out onto the balcony, you know.”
“There’s no need,” she retorts.
“Don’t worry,” my voice takes on a reassuring tone. “I know you won’t jump – there’s no way you could do so without breaking your neck on the blackberries below.”
Her eyes swing toward the balcony, her inquisitive mind hankering to know whether or not I’m bluffing. Which tells me she has at some point considered the possibility of jumping from the balcony. Before she realized she’d be leaping to her certain death…
“You really are evil, you know that?”
“Believe me, I don’t want you here any more than you want to be here, but I think it’s in your best interest that you remain here until it’s safe for you to leave.”
“So now you’re doing me a favor?” She scoffs, looking at me in disbelief.
“Ask yourself how the Savages knew where you were when they burst through my front door and seriously injured one of my best men. Think about how they found you, Moneybags. And why they want you.”
My words have the desired effect. Her mind takes off and just keeps running, her brain working overtime to answer the questions that I’ve thrown her way.
“You’re lying,” she accuses.
“Why do they want you so bad?”
Moneybags gives me a defiant shrug. The confusion in her eyes isn’t the type that can be faked. She takes the side of her bottom lip between her teeth and proceeds to gnaw at her lip until it is raw and chafed.
“The night at the club was the first interaction I had with that man. Nothing remarkable about the meeting. His following me to the service station was unexpected, but I can’t imagine that’s what he’s still sore about.”
“Some men can really hold a grudge,” I remind her.
“You speaking from experience?”
“Tell me something I don’t know. Give me something I can work with.”
“Why do you care so much? Wouldn’t you be better off if you let me loose and the Savages rid you of this problem? You’d be rid of me. Unless… what is it that you want from me? You never did say.”
She cocks a curious glance my way that tells me she has fallen back into unknown territory – where she is weary of me and my motivations towards her.
“That’s inconsequential. My father, out of respect for the friendship he once shared with your father, has asked me to look out for you until the Savages forget about you and move on to greener pastures.”
“There’s no need. I am certainly capable of looking after myself.”
“Yes. As demonstrated in the club the night we met and then at the service station. As obviously as you would have been able to take care of yourself when we were under fire in my home.”
“I managed to get away from you once before,” she points out.
“Oh yes. The cabin. About that. What was Tate’s reaction when you turned up at home that night?”
“What’s this obsession with Tate?”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t relevant. Tell me what happened.”
Moneybags shakes her head and lets her arms hang loose at her sides. She flings her head up to the ceiling, as though to gather her thoughts, then tells me Tate had gone ballistic the night she came home in the early hours of the morning.
“Does he have that leeway to get mad and scream at you? Does he do that often?”
“He’s always considered me the bane of his existence. Supposedly, I’m reckless and selfish and a real threat to my father’s empire.”
“What happened then?”
“He had a go at me, I screamed back and reminded him to know his place, then I went to bed.”
“What about my car?”
“What about it?”
“You drove all the way home?”
“Yes. I left the car out on the road. That was the last time I saw it.”
“Interesting,” I muse.
“Interesting how?”
“Where did you go the next morning?”
“To the hospital. Where my dead father lay.”
She snaps at me and I guess I deserve the treatment for being so insensitive to her feelings. I follow her as she turns back to the sitting area, where she tucks a leg under her thigh and sits staring toward the French doors. The poor girl probably hasn’t even had time to grieve properly.
“How long will I be here?” she asks, a sigh of resignation in her soft voice.
“As long as it takes to ensure your safety.”
“You want me to believe you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart? I know our fathers haven’t spoken in many years. What compels you now to protect me? What do you get out of this?”
Instead of replying, I take a seat next to her and turn my body to face her. We aren’t all that different, she and I. At the end of the day, we both come from the same world, with similar backgrounds and upbringings. We both belong to families laced neck deep in criminal activity, and we both have more money than we could ever hope to burn through in thirty lifetimes. In a way, I feel sorry for her. Sorry that her life has been reduced to this. That she has to live with this uncertainty and mayhem so early on in her life. And the irony is that she has no one to rely on when it comes to such affairs. Her father – her one time protector and provider – is now gone. She’s on her own, fending for herself in a sea of piranhas. And something about that image just doesn’t sit right with me.