Chapter 10
GIOVANNI
Amber sits back down.
She does it slowly, like the chair might bite her. Like she’s not sure whether she’s making a smart choice or a stupid one, and she’s too proud to let me see her hesitate.
Good.
Anger suits her. Suspicion suits her. Fear doesn’t.
I watch her hands as she grips the edge of the table. Her bracelet catches the light when she shifts—coral and amber beads. I wonder if it has a special meaning. She’s worn it every day I’ve watched her, so it must.
I keep my eyes on her face instead of where my attention wants to go. “Rose got mixed up with people she didn’t understand.” My voice is steady. “People who don’t take no for an answer.”
Amber’s jaw tightens. She doesn’t speak, but the accusation is written all over her expression.
I don’t blame her.
In her eyes, men like me are all the same. The difference between a stalker and a Don isn’t obvious to civilians. Power looks like power from the outside.
“She’s being protected,” I continue. “Right now, that’s the only reason she’s safe.”
“By who?” Amber asks. Her voice is sharp, but it wavers at the end. She hates that it wavers.
I don’t answer the question. I made a promise, and I am not one to go back on my words.
Instead, I give her the truth that matters. “If you know where she is, you can be used. If you know who has her, you can be followed. If someone is watching you—and I’m not saying they are, but I can’t rule it out—then you knowing anything puts both of you at risk.”
She opens her mouth like she’s going to argue.
I lift a hand, palm down, not to silence her, but to hold the line. I’ve had to hold lines my whole life. This is an easy one.
“This isn’t about shutting you out,” I say. “It’s about keeping you breathing.”
Her eyes flash.
The urge hits me, sudden and stupid, to reach across the table and brush my thumb over that expression until it softens. To take the anger out of her mouth another way.
I don’t move.
Wanting things is how men like me lose.
Amber sits very still for a long moment. I can see the fight in her working itself out—every instinct telling her to push, every ounce of survival telling her to choose the path that keeps her friend alive.
Finally, she exhales.
“Fine,” she says, like the word tastes bitter. “But I’m not going home and waiting in the dark.”
I tilt my head. “Then what do you want?”
Her gaze locks onto mine. “We meet here every night. You give me updates. Even if you have none, you show up. I want to see your face when you tell me there’s nothing. I want to know you didn’t disappear.”
There’s a threat underneath the demand, and I respect her for saying it plainly.
“And the second you don’t show,” she adds, “I go to the police and find the greenest cop they have. Anyone you can’t possibly have bought yet. And I bring you down.”
I almost smile.
She thinks that’s leverage.
It is, in the way a match is leverage against gasoline.
But I don’t laugh at her. I don’t patronize her. She’s already sitting across from a man she now knows is mafia, and she’s still trying to negotiate.
That takes the sort of courage that many who have walked the earth lack.
“All right,” I say.
Her brows knit. “That’s it? You agree?”
She sounds surprised. “I agree,” I repeat. “Every night. Here.”
She studies me like she’s trying to find the trick. When she doesn’t, she pushes her hand across the table.
I take it.
Her grip is firm. Her skin is warm. Her pulse is fast where our hands meet.
My thumb brushes her knuckles once. It’s barely a movement, nothing anyone else would notice, but I do. It feels like a jolt of electricity is traveling up my spine. I force myself to let go before that touch becomes something I can’t undo.
We shake on it like it’s business.
For me, that’s all it can be.
Because if she keeps coming back to this table, I can keep her close enough to watch. Close enough to protect. Far enough that she still thinks I feel nothing for her.
I finish my drink and stand.
Amber’s eyes track me. Guarded now. Wary. Like she’s filing my movements away, building a case in her head.
Good.
Let her see me as an enemy.
It’s better that way.
She can’t ever know what I really feel when she looks at me. She can’t know how quickly I would tear the world apart if someone tried to take her from it. She can’t know that the most dangerous thing near her isn’t the stalker, or the mafia, or any enemy with a gun.
It’s me.
Not because I would hurt her.
Because I would do anything to keep her safe.
Even from myself.