“Luigi.” My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was thin and reedy. But I wasn’t me right now, not the strong, confident, kick butt scientist with a seven figure paycheck. I was a stranger standing in an alley at two-thirty in the morning with another man’s blood on her. “I’m sorry. Wrong number. I meant to call—”
“Where are you?” Each word was heavy, daring me to refuse to answer.
“In the city,” I clipped out.
“Be specific.”
Reluctantly, I obeyed. I was five blocks from Central Park now, moving west, the buildings a dark mass to my right. The streets were empty. A taxi idled at a red light half a block ahead, its rooftop light off. “Near the park. East side. Seventy-second and Fifth.”
“Stay there. Don’t move.”
On the street? In the middle of the night? He was out of his mind. I should just hang up.
But the memory of the dead body slammed into me, making my knees buckle. I wasn’t fragile, but I would give anything to sit down and curl up like a ball. It wasn’t the long arm of the law that I feared.
Someone took out my acquaintance with benefits.
The gust of wind raked ethereal talons down my exposed skin.
“I didn’t—” I started, then stopped. What was I going to say? I didn’t do it? I didn’t kill him? The words sounded ridiculous even in my head. “Luigi, I’m in trouble.”
“I gathered, furbacchiona.”
Sly one.
I felt neither sly nor crafty right now.
I was lost.
This was the closest I’d ever come to feeling broken. I always had power and control, even in my most vulnerable moments. But not tonight.
The sound of movement came from his end, the rustle of fabric, the soft click of a lighter. “What kind of trouble?”
The kind where a state representative was dead, and I was covered in his blood. Trouble that would involve the police, probably the Feds. The sort where calling the cops meant handcuffs and questions I couldn’t answer. Or even a jail cell while they figure out if I was a witness or something worse.
Those I could live with. It was the unknown, the threat of violence against me that haunted me here on the sidewalk.
“The kind where I need help,” I said instead.
He paused. I could picture him, walking through his Boston penthouse, one hand holding the phone, the other rubbing the stubble on his jaw. My insides tightened. He was a killer. Sinfully handsome, much too old for me…and Dominico’s best friend. That combination made him dangerous.
“You’re bleeding,” he said. Not a question.
I looked down at my hand. The phone was smeared with a faint pink residue. “It’s not mine.”
“Whose is it?”
I closed my eyes. The cold air bit at my cheeks. “Harrison Cole’s.”
Silence pulsed through the line like a living creature. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears. The rhythm was slightly off.
“State Representative Cole,” Luigi growled.
I jumped.
His tone was downright vicious.
Of course, he wouldn’t want to deal with a scandal of this magnitude. I was stupid for not hanging up on him and calling the don. Dominico would help me because we were bonded through history.
