Chapter 6
Gio eyes me as we make our way into the lower part of the house, not saying anything. The instant I walked out of the office, my shirt unbuttoned and not looking as put together as I always do, he chuckled in knowing and shook his head.
But I know the silence won’t last long. Gio isn’t capable of keeping his thoughts to himself. He’s like a child at times. He'll combust from frustration if he doesn’t express what is plaguing him.
It doesn’t help that I probably look like a man that just fucked.
“Did you get any info from her?”
He asks. “Or did she distract you? I swear I heard you two fighting.”
I ignore him, controlling the smirk that spreads across my face. “Did they talk?”
I ask, referring to Tommaso’s men, who were moved from my trunk to the interrogation room once I’d gotten Echo in my office.
He shrugs. “Not much. They say that they were just there to confirm if she was. They weren’t supposed to enter the building.”
But they did anyway. Overachievers?
“Did they say how they found her?”
Gio walks ahead of me for a second and opens the heavy door that hides an entire underground– An underground that isn’t in the blueprints and looks like a built-in bookshelf. It has been soundproofed and has everything I need, including rooms to hold people.
“No. They were just sent. Low errand boys for Tommaso.”
That makes sense.
Aldo probably confided in his brother, who took matters into his own hands. What bothers me the most is that Echo made it clear that if they had left her alone, she wouldn’t have bothered coming out of witness protection.
I believe her, which raises many questions. The main one is why they are looking for her.
The only reason they would have motivation like that was if the baby had survived and been a boy.
But the baby had to have died.
She’d been four months at the time of the murders, in an induced coma for almost a month or maybe two, then in the hospital for four months after that.
There was no way a pregnancy thrived under all of those conditions. If the baby had survived, the odds would be low. Intensive medical would have been necessary, but it wasn’t available then, especially with the hospital in her old neighborhood.
Right?
There was no way the baby survived.
I remind myself that I will ask her later.
The image of her on my desk with her legs open reminds me that I need to hurry.
We stop at the door where the men are held, then enter. When both of the men look up and see me, I chuckle. One shows immediate fear, giving away that he’s either new or heard stories, but the second looks angry. He’s trying to be tough, making me love this even more.
I don’t enjoy killing people. In truth, I haven’t killed anyone in at least six years, but I will when necessary. In part, it’s because I spent so much of my youth creating misguided havoc and spilling blood that it doesn’t appeal to me anymore.
That’s what The Council is for– To prevent unnecessary bloodshed.
The frowning one spits on the floor, blood coating the cement, and he looks up at me with menace in his eyes. I know that he’ll be dead before the night is over. “The Council will hear about this. You’re starting a war you can’t finish.”
Bold.
At his words, I look at Gio and Vlad. Both men smirk, not giving away the true story that the war started years ago, and the pieces are just now in motion.
“War is a relative term– Starting it, even more so.”
I reach behind me without looking, and Gio hands me a gun. I take the safety off but leave it by my side. “Now, going after what’s mine, that’s worth a war.
“Yours?”
He spits on the floor again. His bloodied teeth seem to glint off the dull light in the area. “You’re gonna start a war over a bitch? A nobody?”
The angry one questions me, his tone too loud to address me.
He’s fortunate that my energy just went into cumming inside Echo because I had too much before that.
“Hey, hey, hey.”
I shush him by lifting my finger to my lips. “Hear that?”
He gets quiet. “That’s the sound of you breathing because you’re not disrespecting me or my woman.”
I feel Gio looking at me and ignore it.
I don’t know what I’m doing calling her my woman when nothing is set in stone. We haven’t gotten my uncle’s blessing, haven’t gotten married, and haven’t talked for more than a few minutes before I fucked her. Yet, I know that she’s mine. I feel she was waiting for me to find her and accept it.
If she hasn’t, she will.
The younger of the two men looks at me nervously. His light brown eyes jump frantically in all directions, taking in everyone in the room while I’m sure he says some prayer in his head.
“Why did Tommaso send you?”
I ask. “What does he want?”
They’re both silent, exchanging a brief look with each other that says a million words. To get their attention, I snap my fingers. The older one’s eyes cut to me, but not before he issues a silent order to the younger one. I immediately know that I’m not going to like what he says.
He believes he’s Rossi Famiglia through and through. Getting any confession from him is moot. “Tommaso said she was nothing, just a puttana nera we had to watch and keep an eye on.”
I exhale a breath, already over this interrogation. I just want to bury myself back inside Echo and sleep there.
I ignore the older one, stepping closer to the younger, scared one. He cranes his neck back a bit to look up at me. “What were you doing there?”
He flusters, his lips flap blubberingly, but no words come out. Before he can look to the older guy for answers, I tsk. “Don’t do that, don’t look at him.”
His gaze returns to mine. The fear I see spurs me on. “Not even God can save you if you don’t answer.”
Next to us, the older guy begins to curse, continuously speaking over the second one, but we disregard him. In front of this kid, my body poised over his. I’m positive that I’m frightening. “He never told us– “ He stops when the older man yells louder, and the expletives he throws out only seem to frighten the young guy. “We weren’t supposed to do anything, just watch her, follow her, and report back.”
I resist the urge to see if Gio is getting this. I’m sure he is, but this leaves more questions. “Why’d you go in the building then?”
“Shut the fuck up! Don’t say anything! If you say anything, you’re dead. D’ya hear me? You’re fuckin de-”
My gun goes off without warning. Unmoved, I watch the angry one’s head snap back from the velocity of the bullet that splattered pieces of his skull all over the room. Blood coats the floor, chunks of brain matter triangulating and landing in places I hadn’t expected. That all-too-familiar smell of fresh blood clouds my senses. Next to him, the other one shuts his eyes tight and begins to pray rapidly. Fresh piss permeates the room, and I look down as the jeans of the younger guy darken from urine.
I cross my arms in front of me, my gun braced and ready, but I hold off. I wait until the young man finishes his first prayer, then step forward, careful not to step in any fluids. He keeps his head down and his eyes shut, fearful to look up at me.
“Hey.”
I tap his chin with the gun. “Guardami.”
He looks up. “What’s your name?”
His eyes bounce from Gio to me, Vlad to Gio, then back to me. “Antonio.”
I nod, my lips pursing together. “Antonio, I’m gonna be honest, okay? I don’t want to kill you, but I will. I know Tommaso sent you under false pretenses that the woman you were after was nobody, but she’s mine.”
The gun taps on my leg, and I debate taking this fool’s life based on the fact that they did go after Echo. “I need you to take a message back to Tommaso, capisci?”
I get down to my haunches and am eye-to-eye with the young man. I don’t bother to wait for him to answer. It was never an actual question. “You tell him I know what he’s doing in his warehouses. Tell him that if he even thinks my woman’s name, I will end him.”
I stand, and the young man nods emphatically, undoubtedly relieved that he didn’t end up like his partner. I turn to Gio. “Get him some fresh pants and take him back to his car. Take the other guy with him.”
Though it’s a gruff and dirty job, Gio knows it’s a message. We all leave the room so Gio can find someone to delegate the task to. Even as my best friend, I trust him to find the right person to care for everything.
The walk back to the main house is long and quiet. The air is pregnant with questions I don’t want to ask but must. I stop before we enter the main house. Gio and Vlad follow suit. “I need you to get access to everything about her. If you’re not able to or come across any hurdles, have Marino do it. If he can’t do it, find someone else. Time is important, Gio.”
Gio nods. “Anything specific I’m looking for?”
“The baby,”
I answer, frustrated by my thoughts. “I don’t see Rossi being this determined to find her without any knowledge or incentive. She’s lived twice for a reason, not a coincidence.”
My second frowns, thinking the same as I am. “You think the baby is still alive somehow? Wouldn’t she have it?”
“Not if her hand was forced to give it up.”
She was a baby, having the baby of the man who had murdered her family. Giving it up probably hadn’t been difficult.
“Why not just ask her?”
Gio questions, but he already knows the answer.
I’d rather have the facts before I ask the questions.
When I don’t answer, he shakes his head. We enter the house, and Marco is standing across the hall waiting. As soon as he sees me, he steps forward. “Do you want me to prepare a room for our guest?”
I shake my head, tsking no before I keep walking. “She stays with me. Make an appointment with Alyssia.”
“Yes, sir.”
I stop at the office door. “I need protection around the clock for her, Vlad. When I’m not here, you are. She doesn’t leave your sight.”
The mountain of a man nods stoically. I don’t think I’ve heard him say more than a sentence at a time or ask an open-ended question.
I need a man like him guarding Echo.
Without the entourage, I reenter the office. The sight stops me, and my lips twitch upwards, begging me to smile. “So, you listened?”
I close the door.
Echo is sitting on my desk, pants still ripped asunder, feet braced on the desk, and her lace panties to me that are soaked. She leans back on her elbows, smirking at me. “Well, you did say to stay right here.”
She sits up as I walk towards her. “Or should I have moved?”
Her scent is intoxicating. “No, this is perfect.”
With a mind of their own, my fingers run over her exposed front, and she moans, arching into my touch. I watch her tongue coat her bottom lip before she bites it.
She’ll be the death of me.
Removing my hand, I step back and extend my hand out. “Come, we’ll get you changed and ready for dinner.”
Her dark brown eyes that almost match her skin complexion look up at me, blazing with a hunger I’ve never seen in a woman before. She sits up entirely and lets her legs hang over the side of the desk. “Should I walk around with my ass out? I’m sure that’s exactly what you want, but maybe not in front of your men and staff.”
She’s right. If they look at her, I’ll gorge their eyes out with a hot poker.
I remove my suit blazer, draping it over her shoulders, and she adjusts it to where she’s covered. Then, she turns to me. It takes everything in me to not rip it off her and fuck her again.
I can see that having her here will be a problem, so I’ll have to start working from my other office to avoid distractions. On top of everything, I have multiple businesses to run that require a lot of attention daily.
“Ready?”
She asks me, an alluring smile on her face.
I’m not sure if it’s because she’s still got the newly fucked glow or because she wants another one. I push down my testosterone, which seems to have sprouted worse than it did when I was a teen, and walk towards the office door. I turn the knob and pull the door open, allowing her to walk through first, then I start toward the staircase.
While I should keep her in another wing of the house for protective measures, something about Echo makes me feel like I need her to be next to me.
This could be a trap. She could be out to save herself, but I don’t care. She mentioned that she was looking for protection, and Tommaso’s men confirmed that she was under surveillance but that they had no direct orders to do anything to her. While I find this entire situation fucked, I think that it’s even crazier that they upended her life twice in the past, and she escaped.
There are lucky people, but nobody’s that lucky.
Tommaso’s men are sloppy.
I regard my thoughts but push them away when we enter my suite. Echo stays quiet as she takes in the room, an expression on her face that I can’t place.
I notice she’s got a good poker face. I saw her looking around outside before, watching the cameras, but I don't know what she was searching for. She divulged that she was taken in by two cops while in WITSEC and that they trained her, and I’m not entirely sure what they taught her in.
Even then, they weren’t protected against Aldo and their men.
“Your place is beautiful, " she finally says a moment later. A brief smile crosses her face before she turns back to the room and moves to look out the overcompensated alcove window that shows the expanse of land. You have a pool?”
I nod. “You swim?”
She shakes her head. “Not since I was younger.”
I sense that she means since before she lost her family, so I move towards the closet. “I have an appointment for you to go to a boutique tomorrow to get you new clothes.”
She turns to me, her black hair billowing around her face for a second. “Tomorrow? What do I wear in the meantime?”
Her footsteps come closer to the closet and stop inches from me. I look to my right down at her and am once again captivated by her beauty. Though she’s different, she has the same young energy that my one and only girlfriend in life did. Something about Echo has pulled me towards her from the moment I saw her at the bar. She exudes confidence and regality that make her appear untouchable, but in the few hours I’ve been around her, I sense the youthful softness within her. I can also feel the rage sweltering within her that she’s trying to contain.
She’s an enigma. One that I’m going to enjoy figuring out.
“What’s that?”
I’m brought out of my thoughts. “What?”
Her head tilts back a little as she looks up at me, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “That look that was on your face. Like you were studying me.”
I like how observant she is. “I was,” I admit.
Echo lets out a scoff-like chuckle. “Figure anything out?”
My index finger circles one of her curls, stretching past her breast. “No.”
I reach out, opening a drawer built into the wall. I pull out a shirt for her, open another drawer, and give her some pajama pants. I know these items will be too big for her, but I revel in the image of seeing her silhouette swim in my clothes.
Without hesitation, she shrugs off my jacket and hands it to me, then unbuttons her ruined pants and pulls them down. I take in her legs, enjoying their thick, muscular look. Images of me between those thighs cease when she removes her shirt. She stands in front of me with a matching bra and thong on, but my eyes only focus on the scars covering the expanse of her body.
I observe the thin marks that can only be razor blade cuts and cover her in zig-zag patterns. They’re so fine that they look like they could be stretchmarks or colored tattoos, but I know better. I’ve seen the same type of cuts multiple times over the years. I’ve seen the delicate, precise work. There have to be hundreds of tiny cuts on her. Some follow a pattern, some cut across others, and the rest are there, making their presence known.
Then I see them.
Two bullet wounds stand out on her among the other scars. One is on the left side of her chest, where I assume Aldo figured he shot her in the heart, and the other is below her bra on her ribs.
Finally, my eyes meet hers. I crowd her space unintentionally and touch the razor cuts. The skin isn’t raised like I expect it to be, but the straight lines infuriate me. “Luca?”
She nods, her breath hitched and coming out shallow. “From the second time they found me. Aldo didn’t come himself– I don’t even know if he was there the first time, but he sent Luca and someone else.”
“Someone else?”
I want to know who did it.
As if she can read my thoughts, she gently places a hand on my chest. “I don’t know who it was.”
She nods, reaffirming her words, and then pulls the shirt over her head when she looks back up at me. A second passes where I see that contained rage she’s withholding before she hides it. “Any other time they got close, I ran. I never signed a long lease, stayed anywhere long enough to make connections, and moved back here.”
There’s so much behind her words.
She ran for years and happened to come back?
While I believe she did get tired of running, I still find it hard to believe she didn’t have a plan.
“Where did I come into play?”
Echo puts on the pants I gave her, rolling the waistband several times to be comfortable. She looks at me after a moment. “Not until a few months ago. I remembered that Aldo mentioned you years ago. I guess he hated you then. And I figured I would have to get protection from someone who hated Aldo Rossi as much as I did.”
I feel hate is too weak of a word for how I feel about Aldo. I want to annihilate him. I want to hurt him the way that he broke her. I want to hunt him down, cornering him just enough to feel him cower, then back off and give him hope. Finally, when his hope becomes too much, I want to pounce and end him. I want to torture him, have him endure every cut that she did.
Even then, I feel like that’s not enough.
I already balk at the obsession I feel towards Echo, the passion beneath that’s been tepid for so long and is ready to boil over to protect her.
A sigh escapes me. “Let’s get you fed.”
She smiles gently, leaving the closet.