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It takes me a moment to process what he just said. It’s not what I expected, and I’m still coming to terms with the fact that it isn’t you’re going to die when the actual words catch up with me.
“What?” My voice trembles, and I see the man’s mouth tighten.
“What were you to him?” The words come out sharp, edged with something that I don’t quite understand. I wonder if there’s an answer that doesn’t end in my being allowed to leave—if I’m still in danger of being killed, or taken somewhere by this man to be questioned about my relationship to Alfio. I have no idea what answer is the safest.
“Not—much.” I lick my lips nervously. “We had an—arrangement.” I force myself to look up into the man’s face, to meet his gaze, desperately hoping that he understands my meaning and doesn’t force me to elaborate. I don’t want to go into the particulars here, with this stranger. “I hadn’t heard from him, and I needed to see him. So I came here. I know it was a bad idea, and—” I let out a shaky breath. “There’s someone who depends on me. Please. Just let me go, and you’ll never have to see me again.”
If Alfio is dead, then this man isn’t an associate or someone who works for him—unless there was a mutiny in the ranks. I truly have no idea who he is, and I’m suddenly grateful that he didn’t tell me earlier. My ignorance might be the only chance I have of getting out of this in one piece.
The man pauses, and I force myself to hold his gaze. I can see him working through something in his head. “Please,” I whisper again. “I shouldn’t have come here, I know that. I don’t want any trouble.”
He shifts, and I feel his foot hit what’s spilled out of my purse. He looks down, and I tense as he lets go of me with one hand and scoops up what’s lying on the wooden floor. It’s only then that I realize how strong he really is, for a man so leanly built—even holding onto me with only one hand, I’m not getting free.
The man shifts so that he’s closer to me, his body angled to one side to prevent my squirming away, and I feel that traitorous thud of my pulse again. “Well, then,” he murmurs, a hint of amusement in his tone as he looks at what he’s picked up. “Not looking for trouble? You’re a little thief.”
I glance hesitantly towards his hand, and see that he’s holding some of the contents of my purse—my phone, lipstick…and the money clip and watch that I stole. “I?—”
“Don’t bother telling me that this is something you normally carry around in your purse.” He tilts his head, glancing at me. “Do you want to explain yourself?”
No. But whoever he is, he clearly doesn’t have any love for Alfio, if he delivered the news of his death so bluntly. I take another slow, shaky breath.
“We had an arrangement,” I repeat. “And when I got here and saw how empty and quiet the house was, with all of the guards gone—I thought maybe he’d left LA altogether, and abandoned me.”
“So you went snooping through the mansion to loot what you could?” There’s a dry humor in the man’s voice that suggests he’s amused by all of this, and I don’t know what to make of it. It’s certainly not funny to me.
“No! I thought the house was empty, but I was still looking for Alfio, and I heard footsteps. I got scared and ducked into a bedroom, and—” The pieces fit together in my scrambled brain, and I look up at him. “Oh. The footsteps were you.”
“So far as I can tell, you and I are the only ones here. But go on. You were in the bedroom?—”
I don’t think he means for it to sound as dirty as it does. But there’s something in his voice that sends another pulse of heat through me at the mention of a bedroom. There are several on this floor, and it’s suddenly all too easy to imagine what might happen if he were to pull me into one of them.
I’m not sure I’d be unwilling, and that’s really something I don’t want to examine too closely just now.
“I saw the money and the watch on a dresser,” I whisper. “And I grabbed it without thinking, because if Alfio had abandoned me, I was going to have to figure some things out—and I panicked. That’s it, I swear. I was just going to leave, and then?—”
“Then you ran into me.” The man looks down at me, his gaze unreadable. “So Alfio was taking advantage of you.”
“He—we had an arrangement.”
“So you keep saying.” A beat passes, and another, and I’m suddenly too afraid to say anything at all. There’s nothing else to say that I can think of. This man is going to decide my fate, one way or another, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not strong enough to get away, and even if I was, I can’t outrun a bullet. I’m dead if this man wants me to be. If he wants to take me somewhere and decide what to do with me later, he’ll get to do that, too. There are no good outcomes that I can anticipate.
And then, to my utter surprise, he reaches for my purse and drops everything that he’s holding back inside.
Including the money and watch.
“I shouldn’t be doing this.” He tips my purse so that it’s no longer in danger of spilling over, adjusting it on my shoulder, and then both of his hands are on my upper arms again. My skin burns where he’s touching it. “But it’s clear you stumbled into something you didn’t mean to. I can’t hurt you for that. So here’s the deal, piccolo topo. I’m going to let you go. I’m even going to let you take what you stole, because I truly don’t give a shit about Altiere’s things, or those of anyone associated with him. But you keep quiet about what happened here.”
He looks down at me, and his face is stony, so serious that I have no doubt he means what he’s saying. “I have eyes and ears everywhere, topo. If you go to the police, or if you try to talk to someone about the circumstances of where Altiere has gone, I will know. And then I will have no choice but to deal with the problem of you.” His eyes narrow. “Do you understand me?”
It feels as if all the breath has been squeezed out of my lungs. I nod rapidly, feeling dizzy. “I won’t say anything. I don’t know what’s happened here. I swear?—”
His gaze searches my face. Whatever he sees there must make him feel as if he can trust me, because he lets go of my arms at last, taking several steps back. The distance between us feels sudden and significant, and I try not to think about what it means that I suddenly feel the absence of having him so close to me.
“Leave.” He jerks his head towards the stairs. “Get out of here.”
He doesn’t say before I change my mind, but he doesn’t have to. The cold look on his face is enough. I don’t wait to find out if he’s going to say anything else. I nearly sprint for the stairs, clutching my purse to my side as I hurry down the staircase and towards the front door, out into the cool summer night.
I’m an entire block away from the mansion before I slow down to call an Uber. I stand anxiously on the sidewalk as I go through the motions, not realizing until I’m already in the car ten minutes later that I once again forgot to text Darcy.
