13. Emma #5
I want him to trust me enough to turn his back on me without wondering whether I’ll still be standing there when he turns around again. I want him to believe my first answer instead of searching my face for the second, truer one underneath it.
Mel’s promised few days keep dragging, and the truth gets harder to hold every time Alex hands me one more reason to want to hand it over.
A few nights later, Alex falls asleep with his head resting against my stomach before he even makes it beneath the covers. He came home late, found me reading in bed, and lay down sideways across the mattress with one arm thrown over my hips like gravity itself had made the decision for him.
“Move,” I tell him, mostly for form’s sake.
“No.”
“You’re crushing my leg.”
“You have another one.”
“I kind of need them both, Alex.”
He grunts something that might have been agreement and might have been nothing at all, and within minutes his breathing deepens into sleep, heavy and unguarded, nothing like the sleep he manages when he thinks I’m watching.
One hand stays spread warm over my thigh even unconscious.
Bee sits near his feet at the end of the bed, staring at me.
“She thinks we’ve forgotten her,” I whisper.
Alex doesn’t stir. Bee gives a short, accusatory meow in response.
“I know. You’ve suffered terribly,” I tell her, and she begins washing one paw.
I wait until Alex’s breathing settles into a deep, steady rhythm before I ease myself out from beneath his arm.
His fingers tighten reflexively even in sleep, and for one long second I can’t make myself move at all, my chest caving in at the sight of his hand chasing the space where I’d been.
I lift it carefully and set it on the pillow instead. His brow creases.
“Belle,” he murmurs, not awake, not quite anywhere close to it.
I freeze. “I’m here.”
The line in his forehead smooths out again. I stand beside the bed longer than I should, watching him settle, before I finally pick up my phone and slip into the hallway to call Mel.
She answers fast. “Emma?”
“It’s been days.”
“I know.”
“Tell me you have something.”
“I’m still waiting on final clearance.” Papers shift on her end of the line. “Has something changed?”
“Everything’s changed.” I press my back against the wall and glance toward the bedroom door, left open just enough that I can see Alex’s bare foot hanging off the edge of the mattress. “We’re sleeping together.”
“I gathered that much from the last conversation.”
“No. I mean we’re pretending nothing exists when we’re together. Pretending none of the rest of it is real.”
“That sounds sustainable.”
“Thank you for the support.”
“You called me, not your therapist.”
“I don’t have a therapist.”
“You should.”
I almost laugh despite everything. Mel’s voice snaps back into business a beat later, all softness gone. “Has he asked more questions about the past?”
“No.”
“That concerns me more than if he had.”
“He’s still investigating. I know he is.”
“I know he is too.” A pause, and something in the quality of it makes every nerve in my body go on alert before she says another word. “Because too many questions are being raised.”
“Dante.”
Silence, different from the pause before, sharper somehow.
“What?”
“Dante Valenti.”
“How do you know that name?”
The shock in her voice is sharp enough that I pull the phone away from my ear for a second. “He helped me, Mel.”
“Start over. Now.”
So I do. Not every detail, but enough. Dante appearing out of nowhere the first time I was attacked.
Dante knowing more about what happened to me than a stranger reasonably should.
The debt he insists he owes me, something about a sister he says I helped the FBI find years ago, though he’s never once explained how.
The way he’s intervened more than once without ever asking for anything in return that I can see.
When I finish, Mel swears, low and vicious, nothing like her usual clipped precision.
“That bad?”
“Stay away from him.”
“What? He’s done nothing but help me.”
“I heard you. Stay away from Dante Valenti.”
“Why?”
She exhales, long and controlled, like she’s deciding how much to actually tell me. “Because Valenti exists in a part of New York organized crime, that’s kept several federal agencies very interested in him for a very long time.”
The floor tilts under me. “Dante?”
“Yes.”
“There has to be some mistake.”
“There’s no prosecutable evidence tying him directly to most of what circles his name. That doesn’t make him harmless, Emma.”
“He’s never once threatened me.”
“I didn’t say he had.”
“He’s protecting Liam.”
“I thought Hartley was doing that.”
”They both are.”
“Jesus Christ. The billionaire and the mobster. No wonder you declined federal protection.”
“Neither of them has tried to kill me, yet.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel considerably worse.”
I press the heel of my hand against my forehead. “He was kind to me.”
Mel gives a short, humorless laugh. “Wonderful.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” A beat of quiet, and then, almost to herself, “This is a clusterfuck.”
I actually laugh at that, a small, disbelieving sound, because hearing Mel Torres use that particular word with genuine despair might be the strangest thing that’s happened to me all week, and I’ve had a fairly strange week.