Chapter Sixteen
Alara
Three days passed of me clomping around in the apartment, going a little stir crazy.
Neither Christopher nor Liam would let me help out with chores.
I wasn’t even allowed to feed my own dog.
Though, to be fair, with each passing day, it became more and more clear that Tuna was more Liam’s dog than mine.
Some part of me felt like, when this recovery period was over, it would almost be wrong to tear the two apart.
I read my books, watched Charlotte’s shows with her, and lounged in bed with my foot elevated, staring at the ceiling.
Worst of all? The guys still hadn’t found that flash drive. So there was no progress on the whole case. Which meant that the pawnshop was still closed. I was still losing money. And I had no idea how I was going to pay my bills with such a big gap in income.
“Still moping?” Christopher asked as he came into my room after finishing cleaning up breakfast. I’d tried to load the dishwasher, only to get told to sit my ass down. So I did. In my room.
“I’m not moping.”
“Babe, I live with two kids. I know moping when I see it.”
“I’m losing my mind here,” I admitted. “I’m not used to sitting around doing nothing. I’ve been working since I was in elementary school. I don’t know what to do without… something to do.”
“Sounds like you need to get outta here for a bit.”
“Can I?”
“You’re not in prison. We’re just taking care of you.”
They were, too.
Taking care of me.
Christopher was always cooking, cleaning, or bringing me coffee. Liam was taking care of Tuna. Charlotte was keeping me company, braiding my hair, or painting my nails.
It was more than I could have asked for.
But it wasn’t enough physical activity for me to feel worn out by the end of the day, leaving me tossing and turning half the night, trying not to think about why Christopher didn’t come back into my room again once it was late and the kids were out cold.
When I did finally pass out near sunrise, I dreamt of him. Only to wake up aching and disappointed.
My pride wouldn’t let me instigate again.
“And you’ve all done a really good job. I mean it. I’m just not used to all these hours with nothing to do.”
“I get that. I’m always doing something when I’m here. But we’re making you sit around.”
“Exactly.”
“How about we take a stop at your shop?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, see if you can give us some insight on where to look.”
Where to look because they still hadn’t found the damn flash drive.
So there was essentially no progress on the case.
Aside from learning Robin’s cause of death: strangulation.
Each time I thought about it, my hand went to my own throat, unable to stop myself from thinking how awful it must have been in the final moments of her life.
All the fear. All the slow understanding that it was over. Her future. Her life. Done.
According to someone Lorenzo knew at the medical examiner’s office, she’d been beaten before her death—a detail the cops were keeping from the public for… who knows what reason?
The police were stalled on her murder.
It seemed like they were essentially just waiting for someone to waltz in and confess.
It didn’t help her case that Robin appeared to be a former foster kid who had no real family of her own, so there was no one missing her and pressing the cops to figure out who took her from their lives.
She had me, though.
And through me, the Costas.
We weren’t going to let these bastards get away with what they did to her. They had to pay. Maybe at Brio’s hands to make them really understand fear. Like they’d made Robin feel.
“I can do that,” I agreed, already knifing up in the bed.
“We’ve got time,” Christopher said, holding up a hand as I nearly fell off the bed, reaching for the boot I’d taken off before I climbed in. “Whoa,” he said, reaching out to grab my arm when my boot caught the edge of a pillow I must have kicked off the bed without realizing.
There was a beat when my gaze lifted to his and his held mine, where I was sure this was the end of the drought, that he was finally going to lean down and seal his lips to mine.
But he broke the eye contact, then the touch.
“I’ll go grab Tuna,” he said, turning and walking out of the room.
Alone, I exhaled hard and tried to convince my system to relax.
I needed to get a grip.
Clearly, he was still hung up on my relation to Brio and my age. Sure, being around him day and night was only making me like him more on a personal level, which, in turn, made me want him more on a physical level.
I just had to accept that the same wasn’t true for him.
“Need a lift?” Christopher asked when I finally made my way back to him.
“No, I can walk.”
It was looking like Salvatore was right. All the resting meant my ankle was already feeling better. If I kept it up, I could see myself out of the boot in another week; if I was careful, maybe only using it when I was going to be on my feet for long periods of time.
“You alright?” Christopher asked in the backseat of the cab on the way to my shop.
“Fine.”
“Never a less true word in the female language.” Getting no response from that, he tried again. “Do you want to stop off to get some pain meds?”
“It’s not hurting.” Okay, there was a bit of an ache, but I wasn’t about to complain because I didn’t want him to say we had to turn back and go home.
“Thought you’d be happy to be out of the house.”
“I am.”
“Right. Because you seem over the fucking moon,” he said, shooting me a smirk.
I ignored that and opened my door as soon as we pulled up out front of the shop.
“They played down how bad your face is,” Leo greeted me as soon as he saw me.
“Gee, thanks,” I said with a small laugh.
“When I find that fucker…”
“You’ll have to fight Brio to get to him.”
“Might not just be Brio,” Leo said, looking past me to where Christopher was approaching with Tuna.
“It’s not like that. Anyway, any luck yet?”
“Your store is an endless pit of places for something to hide.”
“And you are a bunch of men.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Ask any woman,” I said, patting him on the arm. “You guys can’t find the mayonnaise jar if it’s sitting behind the ketchup. I bet if you brought one of the wives in, she would have found it days ago.”
I moved into the store, finding Nero on his hands and knees—in his suit—looking under one of the display stands in the back.
“We already looked back there for a day and a half,” he said as I passed on my way into the back storage room.
“I don’t think it’s possible for it to have gotten all the way in the front of the store from where we were,” I explained.
“If you guys want to go grab something to eat,” Christopher said, “we can take over for a bit.”
“Think I might take you up on that,” Leo said. “You wanna share a pie?” he asked Nero.
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“We’ll be back in under an hour,” Leo said. “We’ll lock up on our way out.”
I moved forward, determined to find the flash drive and get this situation moving forward. And, well, prove to the guys that they could, in fact, be completely useless with some things.
I paused just a foot inside the back room, though, my heart starting to flutter, my belly flipping.
Memories flooded back—the fear, the panic, the pain.
“You’re okay,” Christopher said, coming up behind me, his hand going to my hip. “You’re here with me.”
I sucked in a breath and exhaled it hard.
“No one can hurt you here,” he assured me.
A little voice in my head whispered that that wasn’t exactly true. That maybe the person in the shop with me was the one at risk of hurting me the worst.
I nodded and took another breath.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked, moving in closer.
His whole front was against my back, his face pressing into the side of my head.
“I thought I’d be stronger,” I admitted.
“I’ve thought about being attacked a lot more than is probably healthy.
But I’ve heard all of the stories from the Family.
So, I’ve imagined what I would do. How I would handle myself.
And I always thought I’d be stronger. More aggressive. That I would do more damage.”
“I think in our fantasies we can all lift cars, kick ass, save the day. That’s just how the mind works.
But reality is, sometimes we’re caught off guard.
Sometimes our attacker is bigger, faster, stronger.
Sometimes we trip or freeze. There are so many ways a fight can go sideways. None of them are your fault.”
“I just really wish I’d hurt him. Clawed up his face. Broken his nose. Something.”
“I get that. It sucks to feel helpless. But most of your damage was from being sandwiched between the shelving units. Who knows how much you might have whaled on him if you hadn’t been pinned.”
“Yeah.”
“We both know your stubborn ass never would have given up the fight.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, giving in to the urge to lean slightly into him.
He didn’t pull away.
His arm slid around my waist, pulling me more tightly to him. His head shifted, and I felt the press of his lips against the side of my head.
I didn’t overthink the urge.
I just turned in his arms, pressing my face into the crook of his neck, melting into the way his arms went automatically around me. His one arm drifted up and down my spine, the sensation calming at first, but it quickly shifted to longing, a deep ache that spread until it overtook me completely.
I angled my head up to find Christopher already looking down at me. The look in his eyes had my breath catching.
“Alara—”
“Don’t overthink it,” I demanded, my hand sliding to the back of his neck, pulling him down toward me.
I saw the decision just a moment before his lips claimed mine.
I expected tentative, a man still trying to fight his feelings.
But his lips slanted over mine, taking the kiss deeper. His lips pressed, teeth nipped, tongue teased.
My hands slid down, pushing at his jacket, shoving it down his arms until it fell to the floor.