Page 33 of Temporary Vows

When I’m done, I pressSend.

Chapter 8

Dorian

Men with money always find the places that let them be monsters in peace.

The Dark Odyssey is such a place.

I’m not here for pleasure tonight.

I’m here because—with the exception of immediate family—I can’t trust anyone in my own house.

Sitting across from me is my old friend Salvatore Giordano, the club’s owner.

He’s based in Chicago but is here on business. I’ve utilized his presence to help me investigate the mole at Vale Global.

My old friend here makes his living selling dark sexual fantasies, but he’s also the Capo of the Giordano family, one of the biggest mafia families on this side of the globe.

At twenty years my senior, he’s one of my biggest assets.

How did I meet him?

Business.

I’ve always kept a wide scope of resources and people who can get me what I want. In my world, you can’t afford to be too clean. Or too dirty.

You have to be just right. That’s where men like Salvatore come in.

My father would beg to differ. And he’d have my head if he found out I was associated with mobsters. But I’d love to see him do better. We didn’t get a mole on my watch. It happened while my father sat pretty in his chair, acting like an emperor.

Salvatore and I sit in his office on the top floor of the club, drinking hundred-year-old scotch while he updates me on the investigation.

He’s got a private underground PI on the case. The kind of man who’s supposed to be able to dig up intel on anything—even secrets people thought they buried. His name’s Gibbs.

He’s been digging through the access logs, comms, spending patterns, and anything that smells off at Vale Global.

Spread out on the table between us are more files Gibbs sent over from his sweep of the company.

Salvatore has been talking me through the findings. I’ve been listening… and trying not to think about Elodie.

It’s Monday. Five days since I last saw her.

Her name shouldn’t even be in my mind anymore. But Elodie Harper has been sitting under my skin since our little meeting at the coffeehouse, like a splinter I can’t dig out without bleeding.

When you work with people for as long as I have, you pick up on their tells. I’ve dealt with every kind of financial situation—from the overly wealthy to those on the brink of collapse. And then there are the ones with no hope at all. The desperate who keep fighting even when they know they’re cornered.

That was her.

I knew it from the moment she sat down. I didn’t have time during our first run-in to make the assessment. I was also shocked to see her. But her working at the coffeehouse was enough to give me the scent of trouble.

I could have her investigated and find out what’s going on.

But I won’t.

That would be overstepping a line I have no right to cross, no matter what she stirs in me.

I did something I never do by extending an olive branch. It’s up to her now if she wants to take it.