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Dante noticed Tai slip around the corner. He focused on the back parking lot by the dumpster. The smell of the gulf air and garbage hit him. “You’re welcome.”
“Welcome?” Harley choked.
“If I hadn’t intervened, you would have been sitting in a jail cell right next to Hannah.”
“At least I could keep her safe!”
“And Leonardo would be after the two of you. He’s not going to stop until he gets Javier. Can’t you see how fast he moves?”
Harley looked away, nibbling on her bottom lip while she contemplated his words. “He blew up my family’s beach house and somehow managed to frame Hannah for it.”
“Sounds like him. It also means he’s somewhere on this island. Do you want to help me bring him in?”
“I do.”
Dante stopped frowning and smiled, “You keep saying those two words to me.”
Harley rolled her eyes, just as he expected, and turned when the sound of a jeep approached. When she turned, Dante noticed the crimson stripes on her shoulder. The black of her shirt masked the blood dripping down the backside of her shoulders. “You’re bleeding.”
Effortlessly Harley cast a casual glance over her left shoulder. “Oh.”
Stepping forward, Dante touched her skin for a better look. She flinched and moved away. “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. Trust me.”
Chapter 9
“Trust me?”
The two little words were scarier than the “I do” Dante teased Harley about earlier.
Now they were alone, really alone. No kids to come barreling down the stairs or best friend to barge in the room. Tai dropped them off at the hotel and left to seek comfort on her ship. Dante made mention Roman would catch up with them.
Harley fought against the frightening shiver at the thought of being with Dante without interruptions. She had the option to throw Dante over the edge of the balcony, if needed. His physical strength did not scare her, his mental strength did. His hovering made her nervous, causing her heart to pound against her ribcage. He held an unexplainable power. Now she was faced to deal with him.
Since Harley refused to stay at the Torres Towers, the heart of Villa San Juan, they settled on a two bedroom suite—Harley’s insistence—on the eleventh floor at the Brutti Hotel overlooking the white beaches of the quiet Gulf of Mexico. Across the small area of water stood fancier hotels; Harley enjoyed the safety of the Brutti Hotel. The owner of the luxury chain, Gianni Brutti took double precautions by reinforcing their windows; a fear during hurricane season and even though this side of the island was peaceful, all it took was one good knock for the windows to come crashing in with water.
The island wasn’t a big giant city, but definitely a lot bigger than the southern tip of Florida’s four-mile Key West. People lived here throughout the year but Harley and her family came for vacation, this was the closest to ‘back home’ for her mother. The buildings on either side of hers held the elite of those who could afford the beachfront view. A lot of visitors spent the night here but several traveled back to the mainland over the bridge connecting to Pensacola. Harley faced the balcony. Below, the scantily clad beach-combers enjoyed the warm evening breeze and pink sunset staining the white sands with its pink embers. Sunsets were always best here on the west side of the island.
Behind her, the metal of the bottom of the door hissed as it slid open. His heavy footsteps neared and her heart raced. Dante’s fingers feathered her shoulder toward the wound.
“You took a pretty serious scratch. I don’t think you even flinched,” he said.
“I was kind of busy at the time,” Harley gave a sarcastic laugh.
“The police station has a log of you being there, running was not the option.”
A warm washcloth brushed against her shoulder, followed by a stinging sensation. The cotton of the terrycloth felt like a thousand bristles against her skin. She winced through the pain. Harley liked to live up to her name. She bit her bottom lip and forced a smile across her face. The ogre of a guard got one good grip on her and may have left his scumbag DNA in her skin. She’d welcome the pain to get any remnants of him out of her.
“You told me to get out,” Harley winced at the touch, glad she faced the ocean.
Dante’s right hand squeezed her left shoulder. “So you do everything I tell you, obedient wife?”
She shrugged his hand off her shoulder, and when he chuckled, she smelled the strong rum on his breath. Of course, he’d find the rum. The Torres’s were a big staple in Villa San Juan. No surprise the hotel mogul, Gianni Brutti, struck up a deal with the local family’s business. The Torres’s were embedded with everyone. Dodging Torres Towers was not enough. You couldn’t walk down the street without bumping into a Torres, she thought with a frown. There were a lot of them she’d prefer not to run into around here.
“I went with my first reaction. I didn’t want you to get thrown in with Hannah.”
A frown struggled with the forced smile as she tried to remi
nd herself Hannah would be okay. If anything happened to her, she planned to make good on her promise with the old lady. “I would be able to protect her if I were inside with her. Besides, my reps from Tallahassee Police Department cover for me. That guard saw what happened to Hannah and said nothing.”
