Chapter 2 #2
I unlock the door and open it six inches.
Emilio stands in the corridor holding two cups of coffee and a plate of toast balanced on his forearm with the ease of someone who's carried trays before.
He's wearing jeans and a black t-shirt that's fighting a losing battle with his shoulders and his hair is wet from a recent shower.
"Black, one sugar," he says, holding out a cup. "Spoon's in there. Didn't have intel on the toast so I went butter, no jam. Tell me if I fucked it up."
I stare at him. He looks like he slept about as well as I did, which is to say not at all, but he's covering it with the energy of someone with ADHD.
I take the coffee and open the door wider. He walks in without waiting for an invitation, sets the toast on the desk, and drops into the chair with the confidence of a man who thinks every room belongs to him.
"How'd you know how I take my coffee?"
"You told me at the diner. Black, one sugar. You told the waitress three times because she kept bringing cream."
I don't remember telling him. But he's right. I said it to the waitress, said it to him when he offered, said it again when the second cup came out wrong.
He was listening. Through the eggs and the pancakes and the conversation about Delaware and the marina, he was paying attention to details that had nothing to do with intelligence or operations or whatever his boss needed from me.
He was paying attention to how I take my coffee.
I sit on the bed and drink. The coffee is right. Hot, bitter, the sugar hitting at the bottom of the sip where it's sweetest.
"Thank you," I say. Second time in twelve hours. Getting easier every time, which is annoying as fuck.
"Don't thank me, thank the kitchen. I just carried it." He bites into a piece of toast. Crumbs on his shirt. He doesn't notice or doesn't give a shit. "Leone wants to talk to you whenever you're ready. No rush."
"Leone. That's the boss."
"Leone's the right hand. Was. Aurelio's the Don, but he's..." He pauses long enough to chew and swallow. "He's not well. Leone runs everything. Has for a while."
"And you?"
"I'm the muscle. The charm. The one they send when they need someone to smile at a problem until it goes away."
"And if it doesn't go away?"
"Then I stop smiling." He says it the way you'd say you're going to the store. But his weight shifts in the chair, and for half a second the man in front of me isn't the pancake-buying, coffee-carrying, grinning rescue mission from last night. He's something dark and dangerous.
And incredibly fucking sexy, holy fuck.
I feel it and sip my coffee and don't comment.
"Your brother," I say. "Claudio. He lives here too?"
"Three doors down with Charlotte. She's his person." The grin comes back. "You'll meet her. She's terrifying and brilliant and she'll know your shoe size before you've finished introducing yourself."
"Sounds like a bartender."
"Sounds like my future sister-in-law, if my brother ever pulls his head out of his ass long enough to ask." He stands and brushes the crumbs off his shirt, fails, gives up. "Whenever you're ready for Leone. He'll be in the war room all morning."
"Emilio, question. Or statement, maybe."
He stops at the door.
"The conversation I overheard, at the club. You know it's not just names and schedules. You know what I'm sitting on."
His face changes. The grin drops and what's underneath is the version of him I saw for half a second in the chair. He's looking at me the way I look at a customer who just pulled a weapon, attentive and still and ready for whatever happens next.
"I know," he says.
"Then you know I'm not going to hand it over because someone brought me coffee and toast. I'll talk to your boss.
I'll tell him what I know. But not because I owe you or because I'm scared or because this room has a lock that works from the inside.
I'm doing it because I don’t want to live looking over my fucking shoulder forever. "
He watches me for a long moment and then nods. Not the easy nod, not the one that comes with the grin. The harder one, the one that says I hear you.
"I'll be in the hall," he says.
He leaves and the door closes behind him.
I listen to his footsteps go three doors down and stop, and then a door opens and a voice that isn't his, deeper, quieter, says something I can't catch.
His brother. Then a laugh, Emilio's laugh, too loud for the hour, and the door shuts and the corridor goes quiet.
I drink my coffee and eat the toast and wash my face one more time.
Then I pull the bottle cap from the nightstand and press it between my thumb and forefinger.
Gigi used to say the most dangerous thing a woman can do is walk into a room full of men and tell the truth. She said it makes them nervous. Nervous men make mistakes, and mistakes are how you find out who's real and who's full of shit.
I pocket the cap and sigh, straightening my shirt past my hips before I head out the door.
Emilio is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his eyes closed and his head tipped back. He opens one eye when he hears me.
"Ready, vixen?"
I roll my eyes, "Sure."
He pushes off the wall and walks beside me. Not in front, not behind. Beside.
I don't trust him.
Or any of them, for that matter.