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Until I had the conversation with Matteo about where Sadie and I were heading, I couldn’t risk a more intimate touch with Sadie in his house. I stepped away without kissing her even though I wanted nothing more than to feel her lips on mine. Not being able to visually claim my woman didn’t sit right with me, so I knew we’d have to have it out sooner than later.
“I’ll tell you what he says about you,” I said, stepping away and moving to the hallway. A glance back at the two women showed them watching me. Sadie’s face was twisted into a scowl, but Ivory beamed. Seeing the brief touch for what it was, Ivory would do her best to interrogate her friend before Scar poked his head back into the kitchen.
Matteo sat behind his desk in his office, glaring at the computer screen with pale blue eyes. Stepping in the open door and closing it behind me, I saw Ryker sitting on the couch where Ivory did her blog posts when she wanted to be near Matteo while he worked.
He picked at his hands, the fingertips stained by all the blood and motor oil he touched on a near daily basis. Matteo looked up finally, glancing over at me and quirking his lips into a smirk. “You look like you’re in one piece. That’s a start. Did she give you any trouble?”
“She tried to sneak out in the middle of the night, but she’s been well behaved since.” I shrugged, taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of the desk.
“I told you she was wild,” Matteo groaned, making Ryker chuckle from his spot. “I swear, every bad idea Ivory ever acted on was her influence.”
Ryker stood, fiddling with the gun he pulled from his pocket. He set it on the desk, staring down at the oddly small weapon in disgust. “That was on our boy who is no longer among the living. He claimed he was supposed to take Sadie alive so they could use her to lure Ivory out without protection. Murphy thinks if he has her, then he has you by the balls.”
The room went silent as Matteo and I both stilled, considering the danger to our respective women. The growl that rattled in his chest echoed in mine, the vibrations pulling my monster from the confines of his cage where I fought so hard to lock him down. “And what would have happened to Sadie after they had Ivory?”
“There’s one bullet in the chamber. He was supposed to put it in Sadie’s brain and have Ivory record it to send to us as a warning for what they’d do to Ivory if Matteo didn’t cooperate,” Ryker answered as I picked up the gun off the table.
My trigger finger twitched, wanting to bury the bullet meant for Sadie in her attacker's skull. “He's already dead?” I asked.
“Drawn and quartered,” Ryker said, a cruel smile claiming his face as the psycho came out to play. “Slowly.”
“Mind if I take this?” I asked. Something about knowing the bullet in that gun had been meant for Sadie made me want to claim the weapon for myself. Like we needed to take it back and make it ours to somehow use against the people who wanted to harm her. I didn’t know how I could do that considering the gun was far too small for my hand.
I just knew I’d find a way.
11
Sadie
“I knew you two would be fire,” Ivory whispered, leaning over the counter with a nervous glance at the hallway where Matteo probably lurked to eavesdrop like the creep he was. Don poked his head into the kitchen, coming over to snatch Luna out of my arms like the baby hog he’d become.
“I didn’t even need to be in the room to know this conversation will not be appropriate for delicate moon-girl ears,” he snapped, scolding Ivory with his gaze as she rolled her eyes.
“You wouldn’t be objecting if Luna was a boy!” she called after him as he fled the room, whispering promises to Luna about playing with her favorite stuffed animals.
I couldn’t keep track of which ones were her favorites anymore. Not when she had so many that I’d lost count.
“We are not fire. There’s nothing to be fire about,” I said, dismissing Ivory with a wave of my hand. She didn’t need to know about the way his kisses brought my body to life and stoked a flame I hadn’t known existed.
“Really?” she asked, stirring the pot of whatever she had cooking before she turned her attention back to me once again. “So him looking like he wants to spread you o
ut on the counter and eat you for lunch is just a coincidence? I know that look, Sadie Anne.”
Groaning, I dropped my head to the counter, confident that Ivory kept her kitchen disinfected and spotless. “It doesn’t matter how he looks at me. It won’t last, and we both know why. Stop trying to set me up with a Bellandi man so you can feel better about having a new family. I’m happy for you, even if I think Matteo needs a kick to the nuts.”
“That’s not what this is,” she said, dropping her wooden spoon onto the little spoon holder next to the stove. I needed to kiss whoever invented those things, not Lorenzo Vescovi. “Enzo is complicated, but he’s a good man. He would be good for you.”
“We thought that about Patrick, too, and we saw how that turned out,” I mumbled. “A passive aggressive booty badger who liked to get his rocks off with strange women in my apartment when I went out without him.”
“How did he get in?” Ivory asked, furrowing her brow at me.
“He knew where I kept my hide-a-key for when I stumbled home, too drunk to remember where I’d left my keys. He wanted me to come home so he could get some drunk sex before I crossed the line to sloppy, but I guess he called a hook up when I said no.”
“Was the hide-a-key still there when Murphy’s man came in?” Scar asked, stepping in from the doorway to the living room.
“Fuck no! I got rid of that thing when I found Patrick in my place and dumped his ass. He doesn’t want to admit it’s over, and I’m not giving him the chance to let himself in ever again.” I rolled my eyes, because sometimes it really seemed like the Bellandi men assumed having a vagina made us stupid.
“Is there any chance he has connections to Murphy’s men?” Scar asked, glancing between us before turning to where Enzo, Matteo, and Ryker lurked at the other side of the kitchen.
