Page 42 of Complications

Their conversation lasted maybe three minutes, but the grim line of Joey’s mouth didn’t bode well for the outcome.

“Are you sure?” I hadn’t heard the question, but there was no mistaking the shouted obscenities that came through in his response. “I’ll let him know. But Connor is okay?”

“What the fuck happened to Connor?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Joey ground out through clenched teeth before returning his attention to the phone call. “Boss, I don’t feel good about being up here with you down there.”

There was more back-and-forth that ended with more swearing, then Joey disconnected the call.

“Tell me.”

“Connor was working in the garden and someone made it onto the grounds. He’s okay, but…”

“There’s no goddamn way we’re staying up here.”

“Gosh, why didn’t I think of that?” Joey smirked.

“What the hell can you do?”

His pride might be important to him, but he was still recovering. It had only been a week. Joey would tell me to fuck right off if I said I was worried about his health, but questioning his ability to do his job was always on the table. Joey was so pissed off that it took more than a minute for the sputtering to stop and the obscene suggestions to begin.

“How does fucking myself with dynamite help anything?”

“Fuck off. I’m more useful on my worst day than your usual fucked-up ones.”

“Careful, Jojo.”

The name slipped out of my mouth, but we both stopped breathing when it hit the charged air around us. His dirty look spoke volumes about how much he wanted to murder me right now, but I wasn’t going to apologize for using the name I’d christened him with when we were three and met for the first time.

“Don’t fucking call me that,” he spat out. The white scar on his face stood out against his flushed cheeks.

“It’s your name,” I answered simply. “And it’s how I think of you.”

“You don’t think jack shit about me.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong. I think about you more than you know.”

With my admittedly unfair parting shot, I turned on my heel and started packing. Without looking to see who owned what, I grabbed whatever I could find and shoved it into bags all mixed together. I swallowed any disappointment that he hadn’t followed me.

This man was going to be the death of me.

“How the fuck did he get in?”

Theoretically, after a week at a remote cabin in the woods with the man I’d been in love with since we were teenagers, and who let me fuck him every night, I should’ve been the most relaxed man on earth. Instead, I felt like I needed to rip the skin off my bones because the level of nervous energy circulating through my body was enough to light up the whole goddamn night. I hated the feeling, and I hated even more that the odds of Joey finding his way into my bed tonight were somewhere between zero and no fucking way.

“We think he bribed someone on the inside,” Matteo bit out.

The controlled fury in his voice was unstable, as was the unquestioning determination to keep Connor safe. He’d burn the world down before he let something happen to him. Joey would never want to hear me say the same, but I understood exactly how Matteo felt.

“Any thoughts on who?”

“More than thoughts. The rats in the basement told them we had someone coming in, so we needed to get the room ready. Those motherfuckers down there are laying tarp.” Matteo said it with a low chuckle, but there was nothing funny about the way he sounded. He was ready to burn down the world.

“Has that agent worked out?” Joey asked from the doorway.

If Matteo had questions about the sling Joey still wore, he kept them to himself. Beyond the speculative look, he hadn’t addressed Joey’s injury at all.

“The investigation’s over. Files are wiped. That man is worth every penny, but he did find something odd.”