Chapter 2
TWO
Luisa
“He doesn’t want to be in jail,” Emilia notes, watching as her brother leans back in his chair, a lazy smirk playing at his lips.
“But if you keep him here, he’ll keep starting fights just for these moments.
Put him in solitary and he’ll figure a way out.
Angelo might be brazen, but he’s not stupid. ”
Eric rubs Emilia’s hip. I motion to it. “We’re in a jail. She’s a witness.”
“She was a witness,” he says while looking at Emilia. “Maybe you still are, Emilia. Should I keep protecting you?”
“I protect you plenty, piccolo,” she says before pressing a kiss to his neck. “Let’s go relieve the babysitter. Sylvia will be happy you’re home early.”
“I have work too,” Eric says, though his voice softens just slightly. “Go on. You know how upset my daughter gets without her favorite dragon.”
They’re deep in puppy love and it makes me roll my eyes. Emilia’s proved herself again and again, but she’s still a Rossi. I don’t let on that Italian is close enough to Spanish that I can pick out plenty of words, but I know she’s just as vicious as her brother.
“Luisa,” Chief Officer Chang says as she walks in. “We need that one in protective custody right now. Will you please take care of that?”
“Not a problem,” I say.
“Just sit in there until the lawyer comes. He’s on his way. The bail hearing has been moved up to tomorrow,” Chang continues.
I incline my head, then slide into the room.
Even with blood on his chin, a split lip, bruises blooming on his jaw, and busted knuckles, Angelo Rossi is attractive.
He has broad shoulders, an enormous body, obvious muscle definition in his arms, and a sharp jaw.
The little bit of scruff on his face and his shaggy, un-styled dark hair makes him look twice as dangerous.
His dark eyes spear through me as I sit down.
The chair he’s in lurches forward with a loud bang, telling me all the chair legs are now on the floor. I watch him, ignoring the trace of familiarity I feel when I look at him. He studies me.
“And you are?”
“Not your sister,” I say.
His lips turn up at the corner. He knows he’s attractive. I have no doubt about that. His skin is gold, a shade darker than mine, but he should have ignored the pull of mafia life and gone into modeling. He’d still be a billionaire and would be on the right side of the law.
It’s a shame... for him anyway.
I sigh and look over the paperwork. “Your lawyer will be coming in shortly. Your bail hearing is tomorrow.”
I go over more with him, trying to get some kind of information as I study the file that Emilia gave us, but then his cuffs jingle. “You have a real file.”
Raising my head, I meet his eyes. “Yes.”
“The other officer had stacks. I’m cleaner than that,” he says, holding himself tall as if this is a business meeting and he’s not in cuffs.
How can he be this arrogant, with blood rolling over his chin?
“I’d like to be cleaner. Am I allowed to shower if you’re there?
I promise to give you a view you won’t forget. ”
“A good question for your lawyer.”
He smirks and lifts his cuffed hands to rub over his lips. “You should turn the cameras off, Lusia.”
I freeze. I haven’t given him anything but my last name. “Officer Santiago” is how I introduced myself. My eyes lift from one of Emilia’s more horrible accusations–that her brother not only encouraged but was involved in a six-person homicide to clear out an up-and-coming gang.
When I look at Angelo again, he looks calm. It makes sense. The Rossi family is used to the police. Emilia wasn’t afraid when she was sitting in an interrogation room in her underwear. She treated it like it was a normal walk in the park.
Angelo’s different. He’s treating this like a board meeting where he’s the one in charge.
“The cameras stay on,” I answer.
“Luisa Santiago,” he says, turning my name into a song as he looks me over.
I’m not some girl that’s going to swoon for the bad boy. I’m the girl that guys think they can manipulate with a few comments, assuming I don’t get hit on often since I have more than a few extra pounds and I’m a thick pear shape.
I’m not hard up for attention–even if I don’t have the time to return that attention–and I don’t want any of this man’s attention unless he’s answering my questions. Still, staring into his dark gaze feels like being hypnotized.
“A beautiful name, you know. Does it have meaning?” he asks.
What’s the angle?
“Hablas Espanol?” he asks.
“Yes. I speak Spanish.”
“Italian is close to Spanish,” he comments.
I shrug.
“Let’s try this word: Topina. Does it ring any bells?” he asks, leaning forward.
“Top?” I guess. The word is close.
“Nope,” he says. There’s a sparkle in his eyes, but his smile drops. “Let me see the file. I’ll confirm what I have and haven’t done. I’ll get bail. I’ll even offer you dinner. I’ll offer you everything I didn’t give you before.”
I do not know what he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter. The door opens, and a man comes in who speaks in Italian. Angelo answers, but his eyes don’t leave me. “I hope you’ll remember me next time, Topina. Didn’t think six years would scrub your memory. It didn’t scrub mine.”
“No idea what you’re talking about, Rossi. I hope you and your lawyer can come to agreeable terms about acceptable ways to speak to police, and–more importantly–the judge,” I say with a quick dismissal.
I feel his gaze on me as I walk to the door, stroking over me. It’s not calculating, it’s not murderous, it’s something else. Something that raises the hair on the back of my neck makes me blush and has me feeling warm.
“Prendi ogni centimetro, Bellissima,” Angelo says in a low growl of a voice that raises goosebumps on my skin.
I slip out of the room and Eric gives me a look, but I breeze by. “Time for paperwork.”
When I’m safe at home, I sit on my bed after trying to scrub those words off of my skin. There’s no way. It’s not possible I slept with Angelo Rossi. There were no names back then. I was out with friends, getting over a breakup, and eager to fall into anyone who offered.
I remember a sexy man with tan skin and a cocky, yet charming attitude. He was fun to sass. He took me to some hidden room at the back of the club. I purred to him in Spanish as he kissed my neck and fingered me. I blew him. He was so thick I was worried he wouldn’t fit in my mouth.
In his car he’d grabbed my then brown-red hair in his hand and purred those words,
prendi ogni centimetro, Bellissima, before stepping on the gas and lifting his hips gagging me on his cock.
Once we’d gotten ... somewhere, maybe a hotel, maybe his house, I don’t remember, he’d fucked me senseless.
I hadn’t believed that it was possible to have multiple orgasms until he existed.
He’d set a new bar. No names were exchanged.
He’d switched between English and Italian until I answered him in Spanish.
Then it had been English and Spanish between us.
He’d given orders, told me how much he loved my thick ass and gorgeous thighs. Nothing had been gentle. All of it needy, hungry, and demanding. Six years ago.
Shaking my head, I fall back, fighting the urge to touch myself while thinking about him cupping my breasts and licking my nipples as if he was on a timer. I think about his teeth in my skin, the growled compliment of “You take me so fucking well. So good to be rough with you.”
My hand pulls at my towel so I can touch myself, but I can’t.
I force myself to stand up. I will not masturbate while thinking about Angelo.
Especially not the more muscular, denser, more busted-up version of him I just saw.
With that smirk and the tease of some word I don’t know .
.. him slipping that he knows my first name in when I don’t remember giving it to him . ..
He was playing with my head. Trying to get under my skin! To prove that I have something to lose.
I don’t. It was a fling six years ago, and it doesn’t change a thing. I left while he was in the shower, got in a cab, and went home, not wanting to ruin the memory with morning-after conversation. No phone numbers. No names. It was just ... hot.
More importantly, it’s in the past. I will not let it make me awkward like I am with boyfriends or flirting.
No. I’ll hold to what I know and push myself forward.
I know I’m a capable officer. I know I can handle this.
With my fingers crossed, I’ll never have to see Angelo Rossi again.
I won’t think about him. I will forget my liaison with a killer and mafia member. Easy.
And it is easy for the next few days. I throw myself into work. I reaffirm that I’m good at my job by booking plenty of people. However, then Eric appears at my desk. “You and I are about to have a lot more in common, Luisa.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good thing, Eric.”
“Remember a problem you helped with a few days ago?” he asks.
“Don’t tell me I’m looking at O.T.,” I groan.
“It might be viewed as a step up. You were chosen,” Eric keeps hedging.
I don’t like where this is going. “Eric ... you’re only used to delivering bad news. Just spit it out so I can take my lunch break and curse at you outside the building.”
“Angelo Rossi made bail on the condition of house arrest. Of course, he’s staying at his mansion.
The judge added a secondary condition based on the charges filed, his bank account, the potential flight risk, and other factors and considering choosing police officers is difficult, you were selected,” Eric says.
“It means you’re going to be his babysitter the same way I was with Emilia, hopefully with a better outcome. ”
“He won’t tempt me,” I growl. “But I don’t like this.”
“Overtime pay is incredible. I promise. Plus, you’ll be living in a mansion and he has to be obedient.”
“He wouldn’t know obedience if it bit him.”
“If he touches you, it’s one phone call, and he has to come right back here for solitary jail time until his trial. I don’t know how he got the deal,” Eric says. “Except he’s a Rossi.”
“Unless there’s a rat in our department. And that rat would have swept what he did in lock up under the rug,” I say.
“Which is why you’re the only person I could trust with this when Chang gave me the option of three different agents,” he says.
“Ah, so you’re throwing me under the bus? Are you punishing me because I don’t approve of Emilia?” I demand.
“No. I know that you’re capable, trustworthy, and won’t make my mistakes. So don’t, Luisa. Give him hell. Make him regret this deal and keep him in line the next few weeks until trial. Then you get to be smug as fuck at the trial,” Eric finishes.
I don’t have a choice but to agree, even though both of us know it will not be that easy.