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He did neither.
He sat there so long that I started to get uncomfortable standing, so I sat, too.
In fact, it continued for over an hour, and I started to get really nervous.
Then he just…broke.
I heard the first sob leave his throat, and I rocketed up to my feet.
I stared at Rome in horror.
This big, huge man was crying like a child, and I’d done that to him.
“Rome, God.” I hurried to him. “I’m so sorry!”
I’d never meant to make him cry.
In fact, if you’d asked me before this, I wasn’t sure that he could cry.
I’d seen him do it once and only once, and that was on the day that Matias had passed away in his arms.
All the other times that every single person was crying, he was dry-eyed.
I never in a million years would’ve thought that I would’ve elicited this response out of him.
“Rome.” I touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Rome moved like a cobra, latching onto my arm before I could pull away and tugging me into his body.
He held me tight like that, his head buried in my neck, as he cried.
“I love you, Isadora,” he said between hitched breaths. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you in my life, but I’m thanking my lucky stars right now. I would’ve never had the courage to get that tortoise…but I’m happy that you did. You push me every day to be a man that Matias would be proud of, and I can never repay you. You’re making me remember my boy, and for that, I’ll always love you. You’ve brought me back from the brink, baby.”
I felt things inside of me take off in a flourish of stars and sparks.
“I love you, too, Rome Pierce,” I whispered into his hair. “And we’ve saved each other, baby. Don’t you forget it.”
Rome looked up, his eyes were wet with his last tears, and I kissed them away.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
We hadn’t eaten at all today, and it was going on two in the afternoon.
But before he could answer, his phone rang.
Then my phone rang.
Followed by a knock at the door.
Rome frowned and got up to answer the door.
I went for his phone since nobody but clients or my parents called mine.
His phone flashed Bayou’s name across the screen, and I pressed answer just as Rome pulled open the door to his home and revealed Wade.
“Shit’s gone down,” Wade said just as I answered, “Hello?”
“Hey, honey,” Bayou murmured in his deep, Cajun drawl. “You okay?”
I frowned as I looked at the door where Wade was pushing through without waiting for Rome to let him in. “I’m fine.”
He heaved a sigh of relief. “Good.”
“Why?” I questioned. “Is everything okay with you?”
“Your brother heard some shit in the yard today about something, and I wanted to make sure that you were okay. I’d intended to ask Rome, though, and not worry you at all,” he said hesitantly.
I rolled my eyes.
That was such a man thing to say.
“What did my brother hear?” I asked carefully.
Rome took the phone from me before Bayou could likely deny me, and I was left staring at Rome’s chest as he rumbled about a meeting in an hour.
I leaned forward and let my forehead rest against his chest as I tried to think of what my brother could have possibly heard, in jail of all places, about me.
I had nothing to do with that kind of stuff…did I?
Apparently, I was wrong, and I did.
***
I stared blankly at Wade and Bayou, who were seated directly across the table from me.
“Senator Antilles is what?”
“Dead,” Wade repeated again.
It was his fourth time to say it, after all.
My eyes traveled over Wade’s hard, unyielding face, to Rome’s, then to Bayou’s.
“You’re not joking.” I paused. “Do they think I had something to do with it?”
Wade shook his head. “It happened about an hour before I came over to your place,” he explained. “And I’ll have to say where I got the photos from now. With a murder investigation pending, I don’t have the right to withhold that kind of information.”
I looked down at my hands. “Rodrigo will know that I was involved.”
“Rodrigo is the number one suspect,” Wade explained. “He will likely be under close scrutiny until he can be exonerated. He won’t hurt you.”
I closed my eyes. “So, they arrested Rodrigo yesterday, he was released on bail today, and Senator Antilles dies within two hours of him being released?”
Wade nodded.
I felt a headache coming on.
“Did you find out who the other man was?” I asked.
Wade nodded. “An associate of Rodrigo’s at his law firm.”
My belly roiled at that news.
“They wouldn’t have known it was me at all if Senator Antilles hadn’t been killed,” I whispered, feeling a bad sense of foreboding coming on. “You know he’s going to kill me, right?”
Rome threw his arm over my shoulder and pulled me in close. “Over my dead body.”
