Isaac is cutting a red ribbon with a massive pair of scissors. He’s being watched by over three dozen waiters, a handful of chefs, and two maître Ds more interested in him than posing for the camera. There’s a man at the back of the group who could pass as Roberto Petretti if he didn’t have a rounded stomach and a badly hacked receding hairline. If my memories aren’t failing me, he’s the same man Isaac warned I’d wash dishes with if I couldn’t afford the exorbitant prices of the meals at the restaurant we were dining at.
I still when the fog in my head clears even more. “You called the dish washer Roberto.” When Isaac winks, my mouth gapes. “You hid him in plain sight?”
“If you don’t want a treasure found, hide it in plain sight.” The hairs on my arms bristle when he drags his index finger up my arm, advising who his treasure is. “Roberto wasn’t my treasure, but he was very much Col’s.”
He balks when I push my lips to his. He just admitted he brutalized a man before aiding in his disappearance, but I’m going to kiss him anyway as it could have been so much worse.
“Isabelle…”
His growl of my name is as sexy as sin, and it would usually have my knees knocking, but I can’t approve the lashings of his tongue. We have details to discuss, ones that will prove time and time again he isn’t the man his FBI file portrays. He was immersed in the underworld of corruption and greed, but he rose above that, and I’m so fucking proud of him.
“Does Hugo know?” My excitement takes a backseat when Isaac shakes his head. “Why not?”
“Because I told Hugo I would take care of it. I said I would make Roberto pay.”
“And you did. He’s a thirty-five-year-old dish washer. His penance has been paid in full.”
Isaac smirks, appreciative I’m going to bat for him, but it doesn’t leash his retaliation. “Hugo wanted him dead—”
“Back then. You don’t know if that’s still the case now.” When his brows furrow like I may be getting through to him, I fatten up my campaign. “I overheard part of your conversation the day we collected Callie from the airport. Hugo said if he could go back and fix the mistakes he made, he would—”
“That was regarding your kiss.”
“No, it wasn’t.” I swallow harshly when his furious eyes rocket to mine. “Entirely.He said years ago, as well. Perhaps he was referencing this? People have a change of heart all the time, Isaac. Take this very instant as an example. You went into that scenario intending to kill Roberto.” I don’t need to see the confirmation in his eyes to know my statement is true, but he gives it to me anyway. “Yet, you didn’t.”
“That wasn’t because I believed he had been punished enough. It was realizing killing him would free him from the torment. That’s why I brutalized him the way I did. I wanted him to feel the pain Hugo was experiencing—”
“And you?”
He takes a moment to consider my question before jerking up his chin. “But it didn’t take the pain away. It was still there… thick, black, and heavy on my chest. That’s when I realized killing him wasn’t the right thing to do. It was the easy way out. He didn’t deserve that.”
My heart pains for him. I hate the hurt in his eyes, but I can’t give in to the urge to heal him. We need to start expressing ourselves like the smart, like-minded adults we are. “How did you get Roberto to agree to your plan?”
Isaac’s smirk has my inner vixen stomping her feet like a child. It’s sultry and seductive and one hundred percent like its owner. “I didn’t give him a choice. He either followed my demands, or I’d expose him as the man he truly is.”
“A heinous, cold-blooded monster?”
Confusion stiffens my spine when Isaac shakes his head. “Quite the opposite, actually.”
I stare at him, wordlessly begging for him to fill in the gaps. Mercifully, he doesn’t leave me hanging for long. “Roberto didn’t goad Hugo to kill him because he refused to bow to someone below him. It was because the grief crippling him was too much for him to bear.”
When he taps on his tablet, I adjust my position, so my back is splayed against one half of Isaac’s chest. Now that I’m cocooned by him, I feel more protected than I’ve ever been. “This was taken the morning after Roberto was released on bail.”
The video was shot in a similar location where Roberto’s ‘murder’ occurred, but a makeshift office is set up next to an industrial-size boiler and rusty steel pipes. The desk, which is the size of the one in Isaac’s home office, is covered with stacks upon stacks of bank-sealed bundles. Roberto’s hair is thicker than it is in the photograph at Isaac’s restaurant. His stomach has also had a massive reduction in size. For the short amount of time from the date of this video and the opening of Isaac’s restaurant, I’m beginning to suspect Isaac didn’t just snatch Roberto from his old life, he stole his looks as well.
Forever diligent, Isaac snickers. “Just because you hide someone in plain sight doesn’t mean you can’t ugly them up a little. The fewer eyes Roberto had on him, the more likely his ruse to blend in would work.”
“Hisruse? Roberto wanted to be a dish washer.”
Isaac laughs. It’s not his full-hearted laugh, but I’ll take it. “No, but he had a penance to pay, and that was one way he could do it.”
Before I can seek further clarification of his comment, a horrified cry rips through my eardrums. It came from the tablet in Isaac’s hand. Or should I say, from the man in the video playing on the tablet.
After upending the table covered with what appears to be freshly printed hundred-dollar bills, Roberto throws his office chair through a glass windowpane on his right. Even with it sending shards of glass pelting across the floor, he continues trashing his office, only stopping when every piece of furniture is demolished, and the stacks of bills are dumped into the furnace.
They crumble as quickly as he does to the ground.
With his head burrowed in his knees, and his hands clutching his hair, sobs as gut-wrenching as the one that started his rampage rip from his throat for the next several minutes.
