AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Cali snickered. “I adore your feistiness, Nova.”
“It hurts me that you don’t think I could take him in a fight,” I pouted.
“He outweighs you by at least a hundred pounds,” she reminded me.
“True, but I’ve got skills he will never be lucky enough to have.” I said it teasingly, but the truth was, I did. No one but Anya knew that, though, so I kept my mouth shut and let her laugh.
When the waitress dropped off the bill, I grabbed it before Cali could and stood. Pietro’s bill was sitting on his table, and I grabbed it as I passed, giving him a smirk when he protested. “You snooze, you lose, big guy!” I singsonged on my way to the counter to pay.
Pulling out my replaced black credit card, I paid for both tickets and left the waitress a nice tip. Cali followed behind me, and I pulled out my phone. Tugging her in for a side hug, I snapped a few selfies of us before she had to rush off to get ready for work.
Pietro and I stepped outside, waiting for the driver to pick us up. When my phone chirped with a text message, I glanced down to find Ryan had finally gotten back to me.
Boyfriend: I miss you, my heart.
Seeing those words on the screen eased the ache in my chest, and I pressed my phone against me, trying to absorb his love. I didn’t know what was going on with work, but I did know he loved me.
And in the long run, that was all I needed to know.
35
Ryan
Sleep was a vital commodity that I’d been lacking since returning to New York. After Ramirez—or whoever the fuck it was—tried to take our supply from the warehouse on the docks, Garret had been all over finding him. But the bastard had gone to ground, completely disappeared, making us wonder if maybe we’d gotten it wrong, and it hadn’t been the Colombian after all.
All the intel we’d gathered was difficult to wade through since we were getting mixed stories from our most reliable sources. Some were saying that it was Manuel Ramirez who had tried to make a move on us. Others said it wasn’t him, but the Irish. After the break-in at my office and everything we’d learned following that, I could believe it was my biological mother’s family fucking with me.
Ramirez was a pussy, but as Garret had said, the idiot was desperate. I could take him on single-handed if I needed to. The Irish were more cunning, had endless resources, and possessed no fear of the Vitucci name. With only rumors to go on, it was hard to determine who was behind the attempt on the warehouse.
I wasn’t just going to let it go, brush it off, and move on. I wanted answers and to deal with whoever had made a move on my territory.
Three days after getting back from California, as Pietro was overseeing the cameras going up in my office for Nova, things got even more complicated. My office was swept regularly for bugs, hidden microphones, and cameras. The Feds were always trying to grasp at something they could use against the Vitucci family, but those fuckers were just as dirty as we were.
While setting up the camera over my desk, the tech had found spy gear. The little device was so tiny that only someone who worked in the trade could recognize it. They were so high-tech, they were undetectable by the scanners we used to check for them. The technician had explained that it was set to broadcast on a live feed and the receiver had to be somewhere within the building, but it could transmit globally.
My first thought was CeCe, who still worked in the building. I’d wanted to keep her close to keep an eye on her. I’d had someone watching her during work hours, and several of my men had been following her to see where she went and who she spoke to.
After she’d left for the day, I had Pietro and the tech search her workstation. That had left them empty-handed, but I’d had them expand the perimeter and search the entire floor she worked on.
The receiver was found in a supply closet, behind the boxes of copy paper. But instead of destroying it, I told them to leave it where it was, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that we now knew someone was spying on me.
The tech had explained that the device only had a microphone and not a camera, but it was so sensitive that it could pick up the sound of a pin dropping in the next room. It would explain how they knew we would be out of town the weekend of Nova’s graduation since I’d spoken to her several times about the trip while in my office.
A search of the serial number on the receiver turned up no leads on who had purchased it, but I knew Ramirez was too stupid to know how to work or even install the little device. While I’d turned my full attention to the O’Brion family and learning their recent movements, I’d kept Garret on the task of finding Ramirez.
Both had kept us so busy, we’d only seen each other in passing at the apartment, normally in the early hours of the morning when one of us was getting home while the other was on his way out. We were both exhausted, and our men were grumpy from the lack of sleep just as we were. But it was not getting to see Nova that was pissing me off more than anything.
I was ready to put a bullet in someone, and I honestly didn’t care who at this point. I just wanted this shit over and done with so I could have time for her.
Walking through the apartment, I was already working on the buttons of my shirt as I pushed open the door to my bedroom. The lights were off, but the city was like one huge night-light outside the window, giving me a soft glow to see by. Tossing my suit jacket on the chair as I passed it, I pulled my shirt from my pants and shrugged out of it just as something on the bed caught my attention.
I knew whoever it was wasn’t a threat. The guards downstairs wouldn’t have let anyone on the elevator, and the stairs were impenetrable, so the options of who could be in my bed were limited. I could just make out the shape of a body, one leg shifting under the blanket. A soft sigh reached my ears, and that was all I needed for my body to react.
“Nova,” I breathed her name and fell onto the bed, pulling her into my arms and burying my face in her neck. Her scent hit my senses, and all the stress of the past two weeks melted away.
She stroked her soft hands up and down my back, her warm breath caressing my chest as she snuggled closer.
“I missed you,” she murmured, her voice imploring. “Please don’t send me away. I just want to sleep beside you tonight.”
