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Samara scrunched her nose up when I turned to look at her while I waited for the answer. The motion lifted her glasses up just slightly, and I wanted to take them off and kiss the lines they hid on her nose. "He burned through that about a year ago."
"The gambling." I nodded, knowing it made sense. Even if his trust fund had been massive when I'd looked into him when Samara started seeing him. "Was the money to gamble more? Something else?"
"I don't know," Samara whispered, chewing the last bite of her toast thoughtfully. "I didn't care enough to ask."
"Okay, I'll touch base with my guy and see if he has anything for me. Then I need to go out for a bit today. Enzo's going to come monitor things here while I'm gone." She stood, bringing her plate to me with her expression, silently daring me to say something about it.
"That isn't necessary. I'll be fine on my own," she argued. "I don't need a babysitter."
"He's not a babysitter. Enzo will be here for your protection today, and I'll talk to Matteo about having a man on you at all hours. Let him pick someone he trusts." I took the plate from her hands when she bent down to put it in the dishwasher. Doing it for her and kicking it shut, I raised a brow at her before I swept her up off her feet and brought her to sit in the living room. I'd have much preferred her to stay in bed, but I couldn't have Enzo looking at her in a bed.
Nope. Just no.
"I can walk," she pouted as her grey legging covered ass hit the cushion of my leather sofa.
"And I can carry you."
"Is Enzo going to carry me around too?" I gritted my teeth, knowing from the innocent expression on her face she had no clue just how much she risked by prodding at my jealousy that way. I'd done what I could to hide it from her since high school, anyway. Once I'd forced myself to stop chasing her dates off, I had no choice but to accept that she would date. That she would take men to her bed, eventually. Men that weren't me.
"No. He's not. The only way you leave this couch is to go to the bathroom, and it isn't far. Aside from that, Enzo brings you whatever you need." I stood, staring down at her and daring her to fight me on it.
A mischievous smile spread across her face, making my breath stall in my lungs. She was so fucking beautiful it hurt sometimes but knowing that we walked along the precipice of her finally becoming mine helped to ease that pain. As soon as she was ready, I'd have all that beauty staring up at me while I made her mine in the way she'd always been meant to be. She grabbed her favorite pillow, the one I kept specifically for her even though it stood out like a sore thumb in my living room. With my clean, almost industrial lines and tan and black furniture, Samara's deep purple throw pillow and matching fuzzy blanket were probably the only personal touches in the house.
Before I'd become a celibate man waiting for Samara's divorce, more than one woman had looked at them with accusing eyes. I'd never explained, not when I didn't owe any of them the truth, that they belonged to my married best friend. They all knew that the only space they could fill in my life was purely sexual, and they were okay with that. I'd been nothing but honest about being unavailable, and many women were willing to use me to meet their own needs.
Quid pro quo.
Laying out on her side like the unintentional siren she was, she stretched and nuzzled her face into the pillow. The most beautiful part of Samara was that she had absolutely no idea the effect she had on men. Part of that was my fault for chasing boys off so much in her formative years. "What if I need something from my suitcase? Should I send him up to the bedroom?"
"Yes," I grunted, but I knew she was going somewhere with it.
She bit her lip, confirming it with that subtle mix of shy and playful that was so endearing. The playful side of Samara rarely came out with anyone else, always so concerned with what someone might think of her to drop her guard. But not with me, with me she always spoke her mind, always felt comfortable to just be who she was. I loved knowing that I gave her that, that in the face of all the goodness she brought to my otherwise dark, work-centered life I could give something back to her.
"So he should just go rummage through the suitcase with my underwear in it if I need a sweater?"
I think I growled, ripping the sweatshirt off my head and tossing it at her. She giggled, looking shocked as she stared up at me. "What if I need socks?" she pressed. With a hiss of frustration, I turned to leave the living room. "I suppose I should probably put on a bra?" she called, making me turn back to look at her. Her arms crossed over her chest, trying to hide the breasts that were fairly large for her 5'4" frame. Samara was all tits and ass, a body made for men to drool over. I'd known of course that she hadn't been wearing a bra. I could feel it when she curled into my side in her sleep or when she'd been snuggled in my lap or laid out underneath me. I just hadn't let myself think about the fact that I could have my hands on the breasts I'd spent my teenage years dreaming about with just a tug of her t-shirt. Having seen them in the shower, perky with dusky nipples that made my balls ache, didn't help anything in the slightest.
I turned back, racing up the steps to bring her a bra and socks. I rummaged through her suitcase, wondering if Linda had specifically chosen the laciest underwear she could find or if Samara just didn't own a lot of variety. I both hoped and dreaded that it might be the latter. I'd spend all my time inside her.
The woman would be the death of me. There was no doubt about that.
???
Talking with Campbell had only made my already bad mood that much worse. His initial probe into Connor's finances had revealed that things were likely far worse than even Samara knew. They'd kept separate bank accounts at his insistence when they were married, and it appeared that was probably the only thing keeping Samara from outright bankruptcy. Not only that, but the fucker was in deep with Tiernan Murphy. A ruthless loan shark who operated in the void Matteo left, he gave money to people with families and kids who depended on them and didn't give the first shit about the fact that it frequently blew back on innocent people. Since Campbell hadn’t been able to find a single trace of Connor anywhere, I knew I’d have to call Ryker in to help.
I'd already planned on going
to see Judge Ed Ryan, but the new information about Connor's debt made that trip even more urgent. It wasn't beyond Tiernan to expect a wife to settle her husband's debt on her back, and if the fucker took a step into Samara's space, I knew I'd start an all-out turf war.
Judge Ryan was as tough as they came and typically favored the Bellandi's. As much as he hated all the crime in the city and the rising gun-violence, he was also practical enough to see that while Matteo operated outside the lines of the law; he kept the city from delving into absolute chaos. Men like Tiernan Murphy wanted that chaos, and Matteo was the only thing standing in his way. Not to mention, Judge Ryan had a daughter a few years younger than Samara and I. I knew he would do anything to protect his precious girl, and if I could play to that sensibility and paint a vivid picture of what Samara had suffered at the hands of her ex, I stood a decent chance of getting her divorce granted that day.
A quick call confirmed he was home, and it gave me the perfect opportunity I needed for my request. His home was opulent, the elite of Chicago's one percent. The Ryan family came from a long line of benefactors to the city. Ryan's lack of a son to pass it all down to had once been the gossip of Chicago, but he'd slowly navigated himself away from the family business in banking and served as a judge, raising his daughter to give back to the city and put the city first in her life.
The tenacious young woman ran a charity for the city's children, orphaned by gun violence. She had a soft spot for her kids, and the city worshiped her for all that she did to help them. With her long raven hair and bright green eyes, she was the pretty poster child every nonprofit could only dream of.
The problem had quickly become that some stains on the city were determined to use her to control her father. He wouldn't tolerate it. Hired security to protect her and consulted with Enzo regularly to keep the security systems and training for her personnel up to date. She was the revolution, and not everyone wanted that to come.
One of the guards I knew by name let me in through the front gate, and another I didn't recognize opened the front door once I pulled the BMW up to the end of the drive. "Mr. Bellandi, he's expecting you," he called. I hurried to make my way inside the mansion as the guard closed my door. It would not be in my best interest to waste Judge Ryan's time. There was nothing he hated more than waste.
