18. Chapter 12
Dashiell
The Next Morning
When I text Wolfe to tell him that he can pick me up from the diner after breakfast, he’s not happy.
Wolfe: Mr. Diamante wants you to come straight home after work and remain there until he comes home.
Um, what? Absolutely not.
Me: Yeah, no, that’s not going to work for me. You can tell him to remember what I told him before. I have a life outside of this, and I don’t plan on not living it.
Wolfe, however, isn’t one to give up an argument that easily.
Wolfe: I’m sorry, Mr. Novak, but I have my orders. I work for Mr. Diamante, not you, and I’ll be picking you up from the station, as Mr. Diamante asked.
With a huff, I put my phone away and turn to Nick. The shift is over and everyone is getting ready to leave for the diner. “Can I ride with you?” I suggest. “And what if we try a new place for breakfast today?”
The new diner we try isn’t as good as the one we normally go to, but they have massive, fluffy waffles that come with mountains of whipped cream and sliced strawberries, so I’m pretty happy.
And I feel an extra flush of success because I’ve successfully dodged Wolfe. The bodyguard blows up my phone while I’m at the diner, demanding to know where I am, why I’m not at the station, why I’m not at the diner I said I’d be at, and if I’ve been kidnapped.
Finally, I turn off my phone, annoyed by its constant buzzing.
Halfway through breakfast, I notice a man sitting at the counter without anything to eat or drink, and a small alarm bell goes off in my brain.
Don’t be stupid, Dashiell. It’s probably nothing.
The man’s back is mostly to me. He wears a brown leather jacket and dark pants. There’s a suspicious bulge in the back of his pants that might, maybe, be a gun.
Stop thinking like that. Lorenzo got in your head.
Briefly, I consider turning my phone back on and texting Wolfe, but that’s just my paranoia talking.
“You good there, Dash?” Azul asks across the table.
“Hm?”
She smiles at me. “Looks like you zoned out for a second there. Could you pass the syrup?”
“Oh, sorry, yes.”
“What’s on your mind?” Nick asks.
Aside from Beck, most of the other firefighters at Station 27 are a decade or more older than me. They treat me like a little brother, which bothered me at first, but now I appreciate how they care about me.
“Obviously, he’s thinking about that mafia di—” Vinnie starts to say, but I cut him off.
“No, but I am thinking about the fire at the Diamante house,” I say carefully.
Not entirely true, but it has been on my mind recently.
Clearly, someone is threatening me because they think I saw something.
I don’t know what they think I saw, but maybe someone else from my station saw it.
“It just seemed…weird. Did any of you guys notice anything during the fire?”
“Aside from an obscenely expensive house purchased with blood money?” Charlie says. “No.”
“I meant about the fire, wise-ass.”
“What are you suggesting?” Nick asks, looking at me with interest.
“I don’t know, really. I just…have a feeling that we may have missed something there. I know that the police have ruled it an accident, but…”
“But you don’t think it is,” Vinnie finishes. “Huh. Lorenzo talk you into that theory?”
“No, he didn’t. I’m perfectly capable of thinking for myself, without the assistance of my boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend, huh?” Nick says. “You’ve already decided on that label? Not judging. Tristan and I were engaged in married in a little over a year, you know.”
“I didn’t say we’re getting married,” I protest.
He raises his hands in surrender. “Hey, just do what makes you happy, kid.”
Suddenly, I want to get out of the diner. Want to get away from all of this, from the confusion of the last few days, from the phantom threats that are apparently stalking me, from Lorenzo and the powerful, erotic hold that he has on my mind.
“I’ll see you guys next shift,” I mutter, standing and going to pay my check.
When I pass the solitary man at the counter, I notice out of my periphery that his gaze follows me.
Stop it. You’re being paranoid.
Outside, it’s gray and sticky, and I shed my coat so that I’m just wearing a T-shirt with my jeans.
I think I’ll walk for a bit and then have Wolfe pick me up and take me back to Lorenzo’s apartment. There, maybe, I can get some thoughts in order and prepare an argument for Lorenzo about why this might have seemed like a good idea at first, but it clearly isn’t going to work.
Behind me, the door to the diner dings open.
Automatically, I glance over my shoulder.
The guy from the counter steps onto the sidewalk, lights a cigarette, and blows a stream of smoke. He doesn’t look in my direction, but I can’t help but feel that he’s following me. Watching me. Tracking me.
Fuck this, I think, taking my phone out of my pocket and starting to walk down the sidewalk, fighting the urge to run. I keep my pace easy and casual, and refuse to look over my shoulder to see if the man is following me.
Don’t be paranoid, don’t be paranoid, don’t be paranoid, I tell myself, but repeating it doesn’t make it any easier.
I turn my phone back on, and it immediately starts buzzing as texts and voicemails load. They’re all from Wolfe and Lorenzo, furiously demanding I tell them where I am.
Trying to look as casual and unbothered as possible, I type a careful message to Wolfe.
Me: I think I’m being followed.
Thankfully, he doesn’t waste words telling me that I was stupid for ditching him, and that he could’ve protected me from this in the first place.
Wolfe: Where are you?
I tell him. He’s five minutes away, he tells me. Don’t move, he says, and he’ll get here as soon as he can.
Don’t move? Seriously?
The sidewalk isn’t exactly deserted, but it’s by no means crowded. Cars trundle past, and pedestrians are caught up in their conversations or their phones. I pause nonchalantly on the sidewalk, looking at my phone and then looking up and around me.
Ten paces behind me, the man from the diner stands by a telephone pole, his eyes fixed on me.
Fuck.
Our gazes lock, and a grim smile spreads over his face.
Shit, shit, shit. Think, Dashiell, think.
Firefighting is all about handling emergencies, about keeping your head in a crisis. Rarely, though, am I the one in crisis. Rarely do I find myself facing immediate danger.
I perform some quick and dirty crisis calculus in my head. The guy is taller and broader than me, and if he’s a mob thug, probably way more ruthless and trained in fighting than I am.
There are witnesses on the street, so I doubt he’ll, like, shoot me in broad daylight. But then, I have no idea what the mob is capable of. Maybe that’s their MO.
My calculation ends there, because the man moves.
Not quickly. He doesn’t rush me, doesn’t lunge, just closes the distance between us with an unhurried walk. I’ve got all the time in the world, the walk says, and you’re not going anywhere.
I back up unconsciously, my shoulder blades hitting the brick wall of a boutique that hasn’t yet opened. To my right is an alley, yawning dark in the morning light. The perfect place for him to drag me and…do who knows what.
And I don’t want to find out.
“Dashiell Novak, right?” the man says. Up close, he’s older than I thought. Bald, with a broad, brutishly handsome face. “Come with me, and be quiet.”
My hands shake uncontrollably and sick fear curdles my breakfast in my stomach. But when I speak, my voice, sounding far away from my ears, is almost jaunty. “You know, I don’t think I will!”
“It wasn’t a request,” he growls.
He reaches for my arm.
I move on instinct, not thought, twisting away from him, putting enough distance between us that he can’t grab me. It’ll buy me maybe two seconds before he reaches me, but—
“Help!” I shout, but the pedestrians don’t even turn. I mentally curse every time that I’ve ignored someone on the street. What happened to humanity?
Before I know it, the man has a fist in the collar of my T-shirt, and he hauls me toward the alley. I lean into his momentum and drive my elbow into his ribs, shocking a grunt from him.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he snaps, tugging me toward the alley.
“Eat shit, dogfucker!”
Apparently I need some lessons in “Fighting Banter 101.”
Before the man can fully process my deeply creative insult, a black car takes the corner practically on two wheels, its tires screaming so loud that my attacker’s grip loosens on reflex. For just a second, I have enough freedom to wrench out of his grip and stumble back onto the open sidewalk.
The car doesn’t even stop before Lorenzo’s out of it.
Lorenzo.
I’ve seen him composed.
I’ve seen him in funeral clothes.
I’ve seen him covered in soot and sweat, and I’ve seen him holding back his fury in impressive restraint.
This, though, I haven’t seen.
The man who emerges from the still-moving car is, unmistakably, a mafia prince.
A god, almost, of fury and rage and darkness.
An avenging angel in a suit.
He moves toward my attacker with near-inhuman speed. The guy sees him coming and reaches behind him for that bulge I clocked at the diner.
That’s when my own instinct grabs the steering wheel of my nervous system, and I throw myself forward.
We crash to the sidewalk, the impact knocking the air from my lungs, and we tangle for a moment, grappling for the gun. My brain doesn’t process what I’m doing, or if it does, I ignore every danger alarm blaring down my nerves.
“Get off me, you—”
He doesn’t finish his sentence, because my knee connects with his groin, and then his gun is in my hands.
Shaking, sweating, and in pain, I jump to my feet and shove the gun in Lorenzo’s direction.
I don’t want a fucking gun. Lorenzo takes it and tucks it into his waistband, assesses me coolly, then seizes the man by the throat, lifts him bodily to his feet, and slams him against the brick wall of the boutique.
“Who. Sent. You.” he growls.
The man answers too quietly for me to understand, and then spits on the ground.
Our scuffle finally got the attention of some passersby. “Lorenzo,” I hiss. “Lorenzo. People are filming us.”
Lorenzo’s shoulders stiffen, and he glances around, catching sight of the shaking pedestrians with their phones up.
“We have to go,” he mutters.
No shit.
Wolfe’s SUV screeches to a halt behind Lorenzo’s car, and then Wolfe is out and moving toward us, his phone to his ear, barking orders in fast, angry Italian.
Two more men appear from somewhere, God knows where, and between the three of them, my attacker is restrained and folded into the back of Wolfe’s SUV.
Seconds later, Wolfe peels away from the curb with the man.
“Are you hurt?” Lorenzo asks, turning to me. Behind him, his men are talking to the pedestrians. I catch some of their words—they’re flashing forged police badges and claiming this was some undercover sting.
Nifty.
“I’m—” But my voice breaks, and uncontrollable trembling takes over me.
“Get in the car,” Lorenzo orders, a firm hand on my back, pushing me toward his Bentley.
I obey.
It’s not until we’re in the car, driving quickly away from this spot, that Lorenzo speaks again.
“You disobeyed me again.”
For once, I don’t argue, don’t hit him with a smart retort. “I’m sorry. I just…I wanted to get breakfast with my friends.”
“You went somewhere I didn’t account for, without my tracking and without my protection.” His jaw works as he rounds a turn. “Do you understand what almost happened? Do you have any idea—”
I snap. “I know exactly what almost happened, Lorenzo! I was there!”
My adrenaline is quickly draining away, leaving my hands cold and my mouth dry.
“I get that you’re upset, but I’m not just going to sit in your apartment while you figure this out. I’m not going to be your prisoner!”
We stop at a red light and Lorenzo takes a deep breath. “I am asking you, not ordering, but asking you, to let me keep you safer than this. That’s all I want from you. That’s all I’m asking.”
“What if I say no?”
“Then I’ll keep you safe anyway, and if you’re angry at me, at least you’re alive to be angry.”
I want to argue with him—more out of principle than conviction—and shout about autonomy and not needing a keeper and how I’m a grown man who runs into fucking burning buildings for a living, but there’s no fight left in me.
“Fine,” I whisper. “Tighter lease. Temporarily.”
“Temporarily,” he agrees.
And then, just before the light turns green, one of his large hands comes to rest on my knee. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he whispers.
He removes the hand almost immediately, but I feel it lingering there for the rest of the drive to his apartment.