But we hadn’t exactly been something yet either.
Zeno leaned over his desk, glancing between us. “Please,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “I can smell the sexual tension between you two.”
“What do you know about sex?” Alara teased. “When’s the last time you left this apartment?”
Zeno glanced up at her, his smile going devilish. He twisted his tongue and bit it for a second before answering. “Who says I need to go out to get laid?”
“Oh, you’re justsoattractive that women line up at your door, huh?”
“Something like that,” he agreed. He leaned closer to her. “Want to see why?”
“Hey,” I snapped.
Zeno looked over his shoulder at me.
“Oh, but nothing’s going on here, huh?” he asked.
“That’s Brio’s sister-in-law,” I reminded him.
“And I’m sure that would mean something if she wasn’t a full-grown woman who can decide who she wants to take a ride with.”
Huh.
I would have thought that the other Costa guys who hadn’t been away from the Family as long as I had would have been more protective.
But, I guess, these guys were all around for Isabella and Lore both marrying rival family bosses. So maybe they weren’t as old-school with their thinking as I was.
Or I was trying to come up with a reason not to date Alara because, quite frankly, I hadn’t felt ready; because I wasn’t prepared to care so much so quickly. Because this wasn’t anywhere in my plans.
“Welp,” Zeno said, snapping me out of my thoughts, “it’s password-protected.”
“But you can get in, right?” Alara asked.
“Eventually, sure. It would help to know more about the woman who had it. People are predictably uninventive with their passwords. Most of the time, if I know a little about them, I can just guess it.”
“Her name was Robin Moody. She was recently murdered in her apartment near my shop.”
To that, Zeno nodded as he dropped into his seat and turned toward one of his many monitors, and started typing.
It was only seconds before Robin’s face was half-filling the screen. “This her?”
“Yes,” Alara said, looking suddenly sad. “An Ethan Locke lived at the same address…”
“He got locked up,” I supplied.
“So, this might be more his flash drive than hers. Alright. Well, you guys are free to hang out, but this could take me a few hours. Or a few days. Depends on how smart they were. Judging by this guy’s rap sheet, he’s no genius, though…”
“Alright. We don’t want to get in your way,” I said.
Alara grabbed a pad of sticky notes and a pen and passed them to me. “I’m writing down my number for you to call when you have something.”
But we’d already lost Zeno.
He was scrolling with one hand while using the other to crack open the top of another energy drink.
Alara gave me a shrug, and we both walked toward the door, her needing to tug a reluctant Tuna along with her.
“You’d pick anyone over me, huh?” she chided the dog as she reached down to pick him up. Then, to me, “This felt really anticlimactic.”
