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“Sure.”
“Why don’t you take these day trips you clearly are allowed to have to gather the cash and run?”
“Yeah. It would be nice if it was that simple, right?” I wouldn’t need to come to the man who killed my old boyfriend if that were the case.
“Why isn’t it?”
“My brothers,” I said, heart aching at even the mention of them. They’re younger than me,” I told him. “They’re nineteen and twenty right now.”
“And Colin recruited them.”
“Yeah.”
“And he uses their safety against you?”
“Yeah. So I sit back and I let my life slip away and I endure his advances and being stuck in his house because I know he would absolutely kill them if I didn’t. Not only that, he would make them suffer first. Actually, he would probably come find me, drag me back, and make me watch. You have brothers, right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“So you get it.”
“I do,” he agreed, nodding. “Is that the whole story?”
“Ah, well, no. Then there is the issue with the guys Cody was trying to make a deal with.”
“You are in contact with them?”
“Not willingly,” I said, sighing hard. “And I don’t even know how they are doing it, but they are getting notes to me. They’ve gotten increasingly threatening lately.”
“Why?”
“Because they want to go through with the deal.”
“Why aren’t they going to Colin then?”
“Because they don’t like him. Or trust him. And because he doesn’t have access to the money that was supposed to be a part of the deal.”
“Okay,” Massimo said, exhaling hard. “So, what, exactly, do you want help with? Taking out Colin?”
“I mean, I… I don’t want to be the person who decides if someone lives or dies. But I wouldn’t exactly mourn if he died. In fact, the whole town might throw a parade.”
“And then what? What’s the exit strategy for the whole other problem you’ve got going on?”
“Most of the guys who work under Colin are decent guys. I know them. I went to school with most of them. If he was gone, I could probably convince them to take the money and the contact to these other guys, and work out their own deal, if they will just give me my brothers back.”
“Then what? You start over with nothing?”
“I’d be okay with that if it meant I was finally free.”
“I’m confused what you think you have to offer here, sweetheart,” Massimo said, and I went ahead and pretended that the little pet name didn’t make me feel a strange fluttering sensation.
“Money,” I told him. “I mean, I don’t know what the going rate for… problem solving is…”
“Problem solving,” Massimo said, snorting. “I like that,” he decided, offering me a sexy little smirk. Or maybe it was just a normal smirk, but his overwhelming sexiness just made me think the smirk was sexy too.
God, I was losing it.
It had been too long since I’d been around men who I wasn’t forced to be near.
