I look at her for a moment, then pull out my phone and talk into the receiver. “Siri, send Neo a message. The brother was here.”
Chapter Seven
There’s a niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach. Marco is hiding something. He seems… off. I really hope he’s not going against the family somehow, because it’d be a shame to see him disappear.
The walk back to my apartment is silent. He doesn’t say a word, simply strolls alongside me. He opens the door and waits for me to brush past him before following. He reaches out and presses the button on the elevator, and we both step inside. Again, silently.
It’s starting to grate on my nerves. I don’t know why, but I don’t like it. “Okay, whatever it is, fix it,” I tell him.
“Fix what?”
“Whatever you’ve done. You’re acting cagey,” I tell him.
“Cagey how?” He smirks.
“Just cagey. And drop the smirk, because if you’ve betrayed my brother, you won’t have a mouth to be smirking with anymore,” I hiss.
“Betray them how? By fucking his little sister, who was very clearly labeled asdo not fucking touch?” he asks me.
Is that what’s bothering him? What we did? What I plan to repeat?
“He’s not going to find out about that,” I say.
“Nothing happens in this city that your brother doesn’t find out about.” Marco shrugs.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I have a list of names of guys I’ve slept with that no one knows about.” I laugh, but when I look up, Marco isn’t laughing with me. Not even a little bit.
“I’m going to need that list,” he says through clenched teeth.
“That’s not happening,” I tell him as the doors open and I walk out. “Now, if you want a repeat of last night, then I suggest you lose the caveman bullshit. It’s not attractive.”
Marco follows me, and as soon as I open my door, he barges past. “Stay behind me,” he says.
“Oh my god, no one is coming into my apartment. Whatever threats Kye made, they’re…” My words drop off when I see the current state of my living room. “What the…?” The place has been ransacked. Everything is destroyed.
“Fuck.” Marco pulls his gun from the back of his pants, taking my hand in his before he leads me down the hall. “Do not leave my side,” he says.
“Okay,” I agree. Because, well, someone broke in, and I don’t know if that person is still here or not.
Once Marco clears every room in the house, all of which have been vandalized in some way, he escorts me back into the living room. “I need to call your brother,” he says.
I nod my head and stare at the spray-painted message on the wall. If this is Kye, then I have no idea who the man I was dating was. Because I honestly would not have thought him capable of this.
“What does it say?” Marco asks in a quiet voice, and my gaze bounces from the wall back to him.
“What?”
“What does it say?” he repeats, and it hits me.
Oh my god...The menu he wouldn’t look at, his constant use of voice to text. He can’t read. “Ready or not, here I come,” I whisper. “That’s what it says.”
“Thank you.” Marco looks down, around the room, everywhere that’s not in my direction.
“Do you really think this was Kye? I mean, he’s an accountant. He spends his free time putting together Lego kits. I just don’t see him as the type to do… all this.” I gesture a hand in the air.
“You got other people who would want to cause you harm?” Marco asks me.
“I’m a Valentino. The list is longer than you’d think.” I roll my eyes. It’s not untrue. My family has a lot of haters, a lot of people in the underworld who wouldn’t blink twice at using me to get to my brother or my cousin.
