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An I.D. with her full name. Emma King, CID.
Motherfucker.
CID.
She’s an undercover agent.
My blood heats at this. What did she hope to accomplish by being with me? Did she use me? Did she set me up from the very beginning? Was she hoping I’d pick her up? My arm slackens on her shoulders.
“CID,” I mutter. “You undercover?”
She swallows. The gig is up. “Sometimes,” she whispers.
Santo’s fingers fly over the keys. I watch string after string of intel pop up, revealing who she is, where she lives, what she drives, the year she graduated high school.
She draws in a breath and sits up straighter. “When I met Mario, I had no idea who he was. I wanted a one-night stand. And we… we had that. It was everything I hoped it would be.” Her voice shakes. My brothers stare at her, unmoved. “I took the wallet because I was curious, and wanted to know why someone so powerful had the attention of everyone at the hotel. My instincts were primed, you could say. I needed to know more, it's who I am. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Her voice drops. “I never meant you any harm.”
She stops talking.
I squeeze her knee. “You’re at the mercy of the Rossi mob, doll. You stole from us and you tried to spy on us. Do you know what kind of punishment a crime like that calls for?”
Her eyes widen as she shakes her head.
“You belong to us. We could kill you, and without recourse. You’ve crossed a line we don’t care to dwell on. We want you to understand the severity of what you’ve done.”
I’m working my phone, tapping away and investigating further. Now that I know her identity, I want to find out more information about her. I’ve got her apartment pulled up, when I feel my blood pulse harder.
It looks… ransacked. Someone came looking for her. I know immediately without her even telling me that she’s careful about her possessions.
“Emma,” I ask, changing the subject. “Would you consider yourself a tidy person?”
All eyes in the room come to me, curious.
“I… well, that would be an understatement,” she admits. “I’m… fastidious. A perfectionist. I mop my floors daily and follow a cleaning regimen. I hate clutter and enjoy the peace of a minimalist apartment.”
“Sounds like a party in a bottle right there,” Santo mutters, but Orlando elbows him and he grunts but shuts his mouth.
“So it would be out of the ordinary for your place to be trashed, wouldn’t it?”
She stares at me as if she’s never seen me before. Her brows draw together, and her lips part. Finally, she clears her throat and nods her head. “Yes,” she whispers. “Why?”
I pull up the picture on my phone. “Because this is the current view of your apartment. We’ve got drones in the area capable of zooming in within a two yard radius of any private dwelling in Boston.”
“That’s—that’s against the law!” she sputters.
“Oh, honey,” I say with a dry chuckle. “Let’s not start talking about the legality of anything we do. Let’s just assume that we don’t fuckin’ care. Now, back to your apartment.”
Her eyes fill with tears as she looks at the footage on my screen.
“We’ve got a lot of talking to do, Detective Emma King.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Emma
Sometimes, your life turns on a dime. A fraction of a second when someone blows a red light, hits your car, and paralyzes you. The stroke of luck that wins the lottery, or a stroke of chance that diagnoses cancer. Eyes cast down in a car on a cell phone, and a fatal car accident as a result. The entire existence of our lives could change at literally any moment.
Mine changed in just one night. The night I said yes to sleeping with Mario Rossi. If only… if only I’d stayed away from him.
If only I’d left that morning and never looked back.
If only I hadn’t walked straight into trouble.
His voice brooks no argument. “Tell me now, before I interrogate you in front of everyone. Who hit on you outside that club?”
I didn’t want to tell him before, because betraying the secret would mean telling him who I worked with. One phone call, one stroke of a keyboard, and my boss’s name would be right there in the open next to mine. But now… now that he knows who I am, what do I have to lose?
“It was… it was my boss. Lance Grady.” I shake my head. Mario makes eye contact with Romeo. It’s a knowing look, and I wonder what exactly it is he thinks. I go on, explaining the situation, because I’m starting to realize I’m up shit’s creek without a paddle, and I may have to rely on these guys to bail my ass out. What will happen when Grady figures this all out?
